PRESS RELEASE — Scottsdale, Arizona – October 27, 2016 — According to new research from Nextiva, the state of an organization’s communications has a significant impact on its bottom line, as well as its ability to meet business goals and retain talent. The 2016 Business Communications Survey revealed that 63 percent of business professionals surveyed experience communications-related issues with their customers, colleagues or team that stops them from achieving business goals on at least a weekly basis. A full quarter of respondents said communication issues have led to lost customers, and 13 percent of respondents said they lost co-workers over those issues.

Additionally, 53 percent of employees would consider leaving their job for one or more of the following reasons: negative communication exchanges with colleagues or customers; being contacted after work hours by colleagues or customers; frequently missed deadlines due to communication overload; or missing information sent from customers on a regular basis.

“Business communication today is in a state of crisis, one that hurts employee productivity and causes unnecessary customer churn,” said Tomas Gorny, CEO, Nextiva. “Employees are overwhelmed from using too many communications apps that reduce the efficiency these tools are meant to create. Additionally, business leaders are faced with too many options that only adds to the communication overload in their workplace.”{ad}

Consequences of Communication Overload
In fact, 38 percent of respondents say they use five or more workplace and customer communication tools at their organization.

Additionally, 27 percent admit that their worst work communications issue is missing information due to multitasking with the multiple tools, and 28 percent miss important information via email at least weekly.

Unfortunately, this overload has repercussions not just for the workers, but for the businesses themselves; 63 percent of employees face a communications-related issue with their customers, colleagues or team that stops them from achieving business goals on at least a weekly basis.

Platform Preferences — And Repudiations
Though employees report dissatisfaction with business communication tools in general, it is clear that they certainly have preferences when it comes to which applications they use. When it comes to comfort, email takes the top spot. In fact, email is such a popular platform in the workplace that 58 percent of employees say they could not do without it.

Interestingly, face-to-face communication ranked as the second most comfortable method — helping to put to rest the belief that …

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… people today shy away from in-person communication at work — followed in order by phone, text and instant message. Employees are least comfortable with video conferencing by a landslide, with 8 percent being not at all comfortable with video.

However, a discrepancy emerges when respondents rank methods in effectiveness, with face-to-face (53 percent) outranking email. Collaboration tools, like Slack, came in as least effective, with 17 percent saying they are not at all effective.

“Today’s workers have specific needs for both internal and external communications, and it’s clear from these results that some are working better for them than others,” said Yaniv Masjedi, CMO, Nextiva. “Solutions must be versatile enough to cater to many types of workers, while sophisticated enough to deliver superior functionality.”

Business Blunders
Finally, the survey also took a pulse on today’s business communication taboos and how workplace stress inducers stack up.

Drunk emails (26 percent) ranked as the top shocker when respondents were asked which communication misstep they would be most surprised to encounter, followed by private emails forwarded to wrong recipients (25 percent) and swearing in emails (20 percent). The data found that millennials are most likely to be okay with swearing in emails, with only 13 percent of this subgroup being most shocked by this faux pas, versus 31 percent of everyone else.

Additionally, nearly half (46 percent) report feeling stressed or worried when the Internet is out at work, though the majority take it in stride, feeling either calm or relieved, afforded with more time to catch up on other work.

ABOUT NEXTIVA
Nextiva provides cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions designed to simplify the way businesses communicate. Founded in 2006 on the principle of Amazing Service®, Nextiva serves more than 100,000 businesses in the United States from its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. Learn more at www.nextiva.com.

About the 2016 Business Communications Survey
Nextiva surveyed 119 respondents, consisting of business professionals in executive leadership, customer or client service and IT, using an online study fielded by Researchscape from September 20 to September 23, 2016. The margin of error is ±9%.