Right now, do you have spreadsheets, Google, email, Zoom calls and a messenger app up on your desktop? You’re not alone.
Tabs covering computer screens have become the norm in office culture, whether you’re in a high-rise office cubicle or clicking away on your keyboard at home. But does it make you more productive – or are you feeling overwhelmed and stressed out?
Researchers in human cognition at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh interviewed people struggling with app overload and found that many felt pressured to keep their tabs open because they might leave tasks unfinished or have to hunt down their current project information again. For many of these people, it’s FOMO that propagates all these tab openings throughout their day.
“People feared that as soon as something went out of sight, it was gone,” the study authors told Science Alert. “Fear of this black hole effect was so strong that it compelled people to keep tabs open even as the number became unmanageable.”
The chronic tab opening culture also creates the illusion that multitasking is possible. But it’s really not. You’ve got this constant mental whiplash of starting a project but then being drawn into a newsfeed three tabs over or jumping to check a new message flagged in Slack.
Now, add your smartphone to the mix of digital noise and focus becomes that much harder.
Cutting through the clutter
One person who has been thinking a lot about this is Tomas Gorny, co-founder and CEO of Nextiva, a software company out of Scottsdale, Arizona that’s committed to making great business communications simple and attainable for everyone. Gorny is a serial tech entrepreneur whose fascination with technology has driven him to make it easier for people to use in their daily lives and business.
He says that business communications are in a state of crisis. Meaningful communication is breaking down, teams are burnt out and, ultimately, customers are unhappy. Those are some serious setbacks.
Here’s an interesting stat that comes from Nextiva: the average employee is using 18 apps to get their work done each day. Surprised? That’s 18 tabs to toggle through all day long, 18 apps a company needs to manage and pay for, and 18 data silos created.
All those sophisticated workplace tools designed for collaboration and efficiency are pretty much doing the opposite when they’re all open at the same time.
One tab to rule them all
Companies, however, are turning to more apps and software to solve their productivity and communication challenges, which Gorny sees as merely compounding the problem. Worse still, when customer and employee expectations are at an all-time high, there’s all this disconnect and dissatisfaction going on. One of businesses’ biggest challenges is communication.
Gorny wants to change all that.
“The future is that all team and customer conversations will live at the center of business software,” he says. What your teams say to each other and what they say to customers (and hear back) is your most valuable business asset.
The app explosion at workplaces has made conversation increasingly fragmented and chaotic, something Gorny predicted as far back as 2014 when he began filing a series of patents to set the stage for Nextiva’s roadmap. Today, the company has more than fifty patents to its name.
Gorny’s idea is that there should be one place for teams to collaborate together, serve their customers and get their work done. He’s calling it a “communications and productivity workhub.” The Nextiva app puts all business conversation and collaboration tools in one place so customers and companies can connect – no matter what channel is being used. Gorny may be onto something, since his company’s unique connected communications offering has attracted more than 100,000 customers, including popular brands like the Amazon Chime, the NHL’s Florida Panthers, Shelby American, Phat Scooters, and Taco Bell.
If companies keep bringing in more single-use applications to improve communication, things will likely get worse.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on the research around the workplace saturation of communication tools, pointing to a 2022 Harris Poll survey of more than 1,200 professionals and executives, where bosses estimated that their teams lost an average 7.47 hours to poor communications every week. That’s almost an entire day each week. Given that the average salary of the employees surveyed is $66,967, that lost time adds up to $12,506 per employee a year.
Consider the impact on customers. According to the National Customer Rage Survey, 74% of Americans say they’ve had a service or product problem in the past year. Just head to TikTok for some dramatic examples. And a recent study featured by NPR concludes, “Americans are more unhappy with the customer service they’re getting than ever.” But when teams are stretched thin across dozens of internal and external communication channels, and there’s no place to get a holistic picture of the customer, should it surprise anyone that so many of us experience lousy service?
Human to human conversations
NPR interviewed futurist Amas Tenumah, management consultant and author of Waiting for Service: An Insider’s Account of Why Customer Service is Broken and Tips to Avoid Bad Service.
He talks about the foundation of business as “human to human” interaction and conversation. He also says that worker empowerment is what companies need to focus on for a better experience for everyone, and a big part of that equation is making sure they have the right tools for the job.
Gorny is aligned with this thinking. For him, worker empowerment is about centering business conversations in one place, so teams can be more productive and rise to the customer experience challenge. “It’s about helping businesses use technology to connect, not just communicate.”
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