More and more companies are discovering the big things that can happen when they collaborate with their customers. For example, they increase their capacity to understand their customers and build better relationships—the empowering kind that make customers feel like true partners.
This shift has brought about new ideas about what collaboration means within the context of business and customer relationships, as well as new technologies (like visual collaboration software) that fundamentally rethink what collaboration looks like.
Collaborating with customers can look like a lot of different things—from one-off strategy sessions or brainstorming and ideation workshops to immersive customer experience (or brand experience) centers.
Successful collaboration doesn’t just happen, though; it requires the right mindset and the right tools. Keep reading for a quick guide to deep collaboration software for business, including what it is, what your options are, and how it can transform your customer relationships.
What Is Deep Collaboration?
“Deep collaboration” describes a collaborative approach in which all involved parties work together within a dynamic, shared environment—often supported by visual collaboration technology. All too often, businesses know they need to work more closely with their customers. Still, countless hurdles get in the way, like technological limitations or the sheer difficulty of coordinating everyone’s calendars.
This approach often leads to collaboration overload, where it can simultaneously feel super productive (“We’re meeting so much!”) and non-productive (“Are we actually making progress on anything?”). Deep collaboration represents a rethinking of how businesses and customers work efficiently, productively, and equitably.
What Are the Three 3 Different Types of Collaborative Technologies?
For the sake of this article, we’re going to look at three different types of collaborative tools and technologies:
- There are internal collaboration technologies that help business teams align, collaborate, and work toward common goals and shared outcomes. This category of collaborative technology includes things like resource sharing across teams or departments, project management, and productivity tools.
- Next, there are external collaboration technologies that build bridges between a business and its customers and facilitate online collaborative tools and processes. These can include shared documents, virtual resources, and collaborative software—for developing ideas, mapping out processes, assigning tasks and responsibilities, tracking progress, and more.
- Finally, visual collaboration technologies create dynamic and adaptable virtual environments that increase collaborative equity and accessibility while reducing common sources of collaborative friction (like unwieldy processes or frustrating, unreliable technology).
Alleo’s platform enables collaboration, full stop. Internal, external, and visual. Whatever you need, we provide a dynamic, browser-based scalable environment where companies and customers can connect, inspire, problem solve…the sky’s the limit! It’s everything you need to take your meetings, workshops, and presentations to the next level.
What Types of Collaboration Tools Are Most Popular for Workplace and Customer Collaboration?
Many of the most popular collaboration tools for business are those that pack a wide range of features, meaning many lists will traditionally include things like Microsoft 365, Slack, Trello, and so on. While these offerings come with plenty of brand recognition, more modern options are worth exploring—especially those built for deep collaboration.
At the end of the day, the most popular workplace deep collaboration tools are those that provide the most bang for the buck. By “bang,” we don’t necessarily mean a never-ending features list—we mean the features it includes should be well-developed and tailored to their needs and priorities. The tools that tend to get the most traction within the market enable internal, external, and visual collaboration within a single software.
The best collaboration tools will enable deep collaboration and help an organization to…
- Drive inclusion—as well as collaborative equity and connectedness—through an intuitive and accessible platform.
- Drive productivity by customizing and streamlining workflows and processes and configuring automations.
- Drive adoption by simplifying collaborative processes in intuitive ways.
- Drive innovation, engagement, and alignment through interactive and immersive experiences.
Which Is the Best Collaboration Tool for Working with Customers?
Alleo’s unique platform empowers businesses to work with their customers in productive new ways, helping them to differentiate themselves from the competition. Collaboration shouldn’t be stressful or difficult to orchestrate, but all too often the process of cobbling solutions and workflows together to enable basic cooperation can get in the way.
It’s not like that with Alleo. With our platform, you can build exactly what you want, whether you’re looking to…
- Deliver dynamic and engaging presentations.
- Provide interactive workshops that inspire innovation.
- Optimize training and onboarding opportunities for a wide range of learners and learning styles.
- Elevate routine meetings into lively and meaningful events.
- Drive ideation and brainstorming initiatives.
- Empower teams with dashboards for project management, monitoring progress, and more.
Curious to see what true collaboration looks like, or how you might be able to level up your own collaborative capacity? Learn about some of the most popular use cases for the platform, or schedule a demo today!
