The moment we lose the synergy between two teams, they end up doing more than what’s required. It leads to doing excess work, wasting more time, and spending more. Ultimately causing a delay in doing the same task that took an hour, now got much longer. Have you maintained the synergy between the teams, especially in remote situations? Well, this needs your attention. This is why cross functional communication is important in any SaaS business.
What is cross functional communication?
We might probably be aware of this being in an organization. Of course, if it has been running for so long, the cross-functional communication is doing great!
“The communication between two operational teams in working towards a common outcome is called cross-functional communication.”
Suggested Read: The Effective way to Sales, Customer Success, and Implementation Handoff
For illustration, the marketing team works in synergy with the sales team to pull off leads. Another such cross-functional collaboration is between customer success and the product development team in offering the customer a great customer experience.
Importance of collaboration in Customer success
Isn’t it so evident that a company even exists because several teams are working on bringing up a product together? Although the tasks are different, the agenda is the same. If this isn’t true, there wouldn’t have been any business.
To specifically add to this;
Develops creativity and innovation
Uniqueness is seen when great minds come together. We aren’t just talking about one person but rather a team with unique skill sets on the table. Resulting in outcomes that are truly intriguing for the organization. A customer success team has to collaborate with sales, marketing, customer support, and product development team on their day to day basis. This synergy works together to come up with the creative solutions needed to give the best experience.
Pro tip: Guide to building a customer success team
Creates a collaborative culture
A company is successful when they understand the workplace that encourages togetherness. They exclude the mindset of individualism. It not only incorporates perspectives, and relationships but also interactions. Ultimately builds a great team that coexists for a longer time for the work culture it has developed.
Diving into be as a leader
It’s a team full of leaders now preparing to be great in the future. This skill naturally comes as they are dealing with accomplishments and challenges every day. Every individual wanting to be a problem solver and innovator with their domain knowledge solving specific use cases to lead through the team is a great spirit an organization can have.
Teams remain engaged
To see how a company works need not come from the manager but the teams themselves. They can engage to see how a company works towards the problem while they know their contributions well enough. With collaboration, it’s natural to boost engagement and interest in a company’s growth as a whole. There is no more exists why while helping one another.
Gets things done faster
It’s no wonder that a bunch of skill sets and knowledge gathering is indulging in faster project accomplishments. This in no way gives upon the quality of the work. Now, who is on the profitability side? The entire organization!
A customer success collaboration with marketing can create useful resources that can train customers. While the customer supports collaboration to combine reactive issues with proactive for a better understanding of the needs. A sales team collaboration to understand the needs of the customers in segments to target the right people.
So this concludes that a company needs a collaborative work culture for meaningful results over the time combustive way of working.
Challenges in cross functional communication faced by a remote team
Their lies and trust issues
The team is wholly new to one another and trusting them with the goal may not come easy. As they have never worked with each other earlier. And it might be hard to trust their working style initially.
Gap in communication
We often tend to fall into one of these categories. Moreover, we have trouble talking to our colleagues in the department. Talking to other departments might just push us away from indulging in effective collaboration.
The notion of losing personal development
Often we think from team collaboration, we are missing time for ourselves to improve. But it isn’t true. Indeed it develops us better than we do ourselves. But due to misconception, this falls under challenges and they fail to work towards the goal.
Difficulty in engaging with different personalities
It’s a usual nature to act defensively toward the personalities that are extremely difficult to handle. Especially when there are a large number of people and multiple personalities then collaboration becomes truly hard if the roles aren’t defined.
How to improve cross functional communication?
A common organizational language
It means, to speak the organizational language with every team excluding the domain language that is specific. Doing so reduces the need for clarifications. It’s a good practice to inculcate it initially as this is a major issue among the cross-functional teams.
Positive impacts of conflicts
It’s common to have differences of opinions as a human. And the same thing happens between people in the teams. And there’s no bummer. What’s crucial is to come to a positive conclusion out of the conflicts and keep us moving!
Define the collaborative tasks
Every task need not start with collaborative work. As it is time-consuming and ineffective in the wrong instances if the task needs no collaboration. On the contrary, when there is a task that truly requires collaboration, it can benefit you way better! Hence clearly define it before putting in all the efforts to work.
A well-defined team blueprint
Before beginning with the cross-functional team collaboration, having a blueprint of what’s the agenda of this gathering can run it in an organized way. A blueprint that defines the objectives the responsibilities of each team and finally the expectations of the collaboration steer clear the way they need to operate.
Measure the outcomes of the efforts
This acts as a point of motivation for each teammate to see their efforts have made it to success! A measure keeps the individuals consistently growing and can foster a strong team environment to have done something meaningful!
Collaboration that deserves rewards
Do you know every failure, mistake, and gain is a learning experience? It certainly is because we learn from it that you built something better than earlier. This must focus on growing the overall system rather than just looking at the bits and pieces of it.
Pick the right technology!
For a successful collaboration, the tool has a bigger hand! In remote situations, it calls for a tool that has video conferencing, screen sharing, project management, and communication which are quintessential to get all the things done.
Although there are various tools every team prefers, bringing in one tech for all aids in smoother operation. You need a customer success tool, like CustomerSuccessBox, that helps in improving cross functional communication.
Bridging the gap
Have you realized how important cross-functional collaboration is? The best use of collaborative efforts can do benefits the organization. That which has diverse skill sets combined to give something unimaginable.
Well, it becomes important for the organization to best utilize these teams. Although there are challenges, they must improvise to bring in true relationships, and to retain all the employees for a great coexistence!
P.S. The main image has been taken from pexels.com
