By now, you already know the hype around working from home.
In fact, it’s literally the need of the hour. With the current pandemic, a lot of businesses have been severely affected and are on the verge of crumbling down. Though it’s quite unfortunate, the best possible workaround to this would be to utilize working from home.
It ensures your workflow remains stable, and all your employees stay in action as well. In order to efficiently integrate working from home into your business, you’d need to make use of the right tools. And while there is a lot of it, I’ve gone on to pick the best ones we have.
Let’s dive straight into the list.
🖥️ Remote Support Software
TeamViewer
Protected with 256-bit AES encryption, TeamViewer lets you access the desktop and mobile devices from anywhere, even with a 3G internet connection. With the help of their integrated RMM solution, you can keep an eye on various aspects of your allowed devices and also collect essential information.
You’ll also be notified whenever something critical takes place. The best thing about this tool is the inbuilt security. It’ll do everything to keep your IT neat, clean, and free of anything dangerous.
Zoho Assist
You can remotely connect to your customers’ desktop using Zoho Assist. It’s completely cloud-based and secure for both ends. You can use it to provide customer support and empowering the IT help desk to resolve their problems.
Apart from computers, you can also access mobile devices, laptops, and servers. So, it’s literally everything into one. All you need is a few seconds to start sharing screens and perform a variety of tasks like managing, configuring, and troubleshooting issues.
AnyDesk
Another solution that lets you connect to a computer remotely, AnyDesk has over 100 million downloads, and I believe a major chunk of it is because of their security level. They’re great at keeping things within the safe zone.
It is lightweight and has features like:
- Quick built-in file transfer between computers
- Easy collaboration with members
- Auto-record sessions for added security
- Highly customizable user-interface
- Fast data transmissions and frame rates of 60 fps
AnyDesk is compatible with most of the platforms like Windows, Mac, Android, IOS, and Linux.
💬 Chat Software with Bot
Freshchat
Great customer support is super important, and Freshchat does full justice to that. You can engage and keep up with your customers on the web, mobile, and even social messengers.
Apart from that, you can automate the frequently asked questions with the help of their bots and AI. Sending targeted outbound messages to users is also not the most difficult task with Freshchat.
Another interesting thing is, it lets you send proactive campaigns to customers based on user behavior, actions, and other indicators. This way, the AI can literally predict what the user wants.
ChatBot
You can build your own custom AI chatbot within a few minutes using ChatBot. As confusing that might sound, there is literally no technical skills necessary. You can create them for your websites, Facebook pages, and messaging apps.
Choose from pre-made templates, drag and drop elements and connect ChatBot to third-party apps, all thanks to their open API.
Chatfuel
Dedicated to Facebook Messenger, Chatfuel can help you increase sales and engagement while reducing costs. It’s great for engaging with customers 24/7 and automating a bunch of tasks that’d otherwise cost you a ton of time.
You can also let the chatbot connect warm leads to a sales representative to help convert better. Companies like Levi’s, Adidas, Just Eat, and ABC News rely on Chatfuel to create and manage their chatbots.
💁🏻 Helpdesk/Self-service
Freshdesk
The only thing as good as live customer support is a self-service portal for customers to find answers to all of their problems. And Freshdesk is a great solution to build just that. From a self-service portal, customers can look through knowledge base articles, forums, and utilize tools to get answers for their queries.
Some of the main features of Freshdesk include:
- Ability to add an answer bot to further ease the process
- Attach knowledge base content to various channels, including website, mobile app, and chat
- Translate content for customers to easily find answers in their language
- Modify and makeover the knowledge base as per your liking
- Leverage past discussions to help new customers find answers
All of this helps ease the burden of your support team’s shoulders. You can get started using their 21-day free trial.
Helprace
Helprace makes it easy for customers to search, discover, and share answers regarding your products/services. You can set up a knowledge base, FAQ page, and testimonial area for positive word of mouth.
It also allows you to track issues of your customers and collect their latest feedback. Other than that, you can:
- Connect customers with team members through collaboration channels
- Display “related topics” alongside contact form
- Boost team productivity with the help of various tools
- Customize every single element of Helprace
There are probably over 100 more features that I haven’t mentioned, and this tells us how dense this solution is. It works on all devices, and you can get started for free using their 30-day trial.
HappyFox
Another impressive self-service solution, HappyFox, can help you setup your 24/7 customer support run fully by customers. How bizarre that sounds, but that’s actually how it is. They can track support tickets, look through the knowledge base, and even interact on community forums.
It’s great for indirectly showing your customers the way to their answers, instead of directing answering them.
HappyFox has introduced an interesting twist to this entire “self-service portal” thing, where customers can go on to help other customers. Just imagine how feasible that becomes for your support team.
📁 Storage Drive
Google Drive
Sharing files and collaboration is a lot easier with Google Drive. It is secure, and you can store and share any type of files with your team. Also, a single account is good enough to sync data across multiple devices.
Thanks to their Business and Enterprise editions, you can enjoy flexible storage options without any interruption. Not to mention, you can now organize team files in a shared space for easier accessibility.
With the basic edition, you get 30GB of storage. However, you can upgrade at any given time if in case you exceed.
Dropbox for Teams
Another very popular option for storage and collaboration, Dropbox, helps keep all your team’s work into one single place, synced across different devices.
Other than that, you can collect ideas, create project timelines, and assign tasks. Since communication is essential during collaboration, you can also allow feedbacks/comments by members.
This tool is amazing for coordinating on projects and keeping the flow going between members.
Box
While the above two storage options are great, you might want to check out Box as well for its out-of-the-box features. The one that stood out to me the most is the possibility to store data locally.
As in, Box meets residency obligations across multiple geographies to address country-specific data concerns. This helps you choose your own in-region file storage and enjoy strong protection and privacy, irrespective of what region your data is in.
Also, you can integrate it with over 1,400 third-party apps. There are a lot more possibilities that I am sure you’re going to love. ❤
👨💻 Team Chat and Collaboration
Slack
If you have a team that you have to manage, I believe Slack is one of the best (if not the best) solution to do it efficiently. It brings everything, like communication and tools, into one place and increases the productivity of the members.
For example, instead of an overstuffed inbox, you can carry out conversations in dedicated spaces called channels. You can also find the required information easily using their searchable archive. And since time is probably the most important thing, Slack lets you choose the conversations that are the most important and open the other ones later on.
You can either bring all of your members together for a group chat or converse with them individually on separate spaces. There’s a ton of more features that’ll help you massively in your business.
Flock
Flock takes collaboration a notch higher by introducing video calls. It is a lot more than just messaging with team members, and you can customize each channel for different purposes. Here are some other remarkable features:
- Screen sharing
- Easily search for files, links, and other stuff.
- Productivity tools like Note Sharing, Reminders and Polls
- Integrate with over 50 third-party apps like, Asana, Google Drive and Todoist
Flock is trusted by companies like Sodexo, Namecheap, and McDonalds.
Mattermost
Collaboration mainly through messaging, Mattermost is flexible, free, and open-source. It puts a lot of emphasis on good security and privacy, so when you’re seamlessly building workflows for collaboration, there’s nothing you have to worry about in terms of data protection.
You can integrate Mattermost with a ton of third-party apps and also DevOps tools like Git and bots.
Since this is an open-source tool, you’d need to host it. I believe deploying it through Kamatera is the best solution, mainly because their cloud services are technologically advanced and backed with experts on the support line eager to set things up for you.
💡 Training Platform
Thinkific
For creating and hosting training materials like video courses and guides, Thinkific is a great platform to use. It lets you create a full-blown membership site to host your courses and even analyze the overall results to a deep level.
It is basically an all-in-one platform to help make great use of your knowledge and share with the people out there who need it. Whether we’re talking about just ten students or 10 million, you can be assured this platform can handle that.
Teachable
Very similar to Thinkific, Teachable also lets you create and sell your own online courses. You have full control over your pricing and students’ data, which is pretty essential for any instructor.
Once you sign up, you’ll be provided with everything you need to set up your own school and start marketing it to the masses. It’s highly customizable, and you can make your school look exactly the way you want.
Also, the most interesting feature is the ability to provide your students with a virtual classroom experience. Overall, Teachable is user-friendly and well optimized for all devices. You can get started at no cost at all.
LearnDash
LearnDash is a WordPress LMS (Learning Management System) plugin with which you can sell online courses, drip-feed content, and reward your students with certificates and accomplishments. You can do all these right from your website.
Moreover, you can interact with your students, control enrollment, and even group certain learners for better progress. You get all the flexibility to customize and run the courses on your own terms, whether it’s about the pricing or marketing.
LearnDash is used by some of the biggest brands like Digital Marketer, InfusionSoft, and ProBlogger.
🎧 Online/Team Meeting
Zoho Meeting
Great for carrying out conversation and training your team members, Zoho Meeting lets you hold video and audio conferences at any time and anywhere. You can even join meetings and webinars on the go using their mobile app.
It is a brilliant tool for bringing your staff together, discussing ideas, and planning out the next big move. You can deliver presentations, record sessions, and download important reports.
You can get started for absolutely free, and straightaway use the tool.
Microsoft Teams
With a tight grip on privacy and security, Microsoft Teams is committed to providing a great collaboration experience. You can conduct audio, video, and web conferences with a team size of up to 10,000. Or even better, you can host a mega live event all while staying indoors.
This tool lets you access, share, and edit various documents, including Google Doc, PowerPoint, and Excel. If you prefer to chat, then you can do that too, either with your entire team or one-to-one.
Zoom
You’ve probably heard of this tool before because it’s quite popular. Zoom allows you to hold meetings, training sessions, and webinars.
Additionally, you can build conference rooms, make phone calls, and also chat with your members. There’s a cap of 1,000 video participants, but you can have 10,000 viewers, which surely helps.
It is rated highly on sites like TrustRadius, G2 Crowd, and Gartner Peer Insights. The feasibility is just incredible. It is engineered and optimized to work flawlessly, and on top of that, it’s easy to use.
Conclusion
Working from home is not as easy as everyone makes it to be. However, with the use of the above solution, you’re surely going to shed a lot of burden off your shoulders and potentially achieve more than ever before. 🙂
