Google Chat is a messaging and team collaboration app that comes with Google Workspace. It can be accessed from your Gmail’s extreme left-hand sidebar, or you can access it alone by going to chat.google.com.
A central feature of Google Chat is Spaces, which can be used to improve collaboration and communication across departments, teams, project groups, and even with clients. They aren’t a method to chat privately, as all space names are viewable by everyone with access to the Google Workspace installation. While it may sound boring, it’s a great way to organize collaboration and communicate in real-time across teams, departments, and micro-groups.
It even can be used as a light project management tool, with the ability to create threads, assign tasks, and share files. They can even be integrated with non-Google solutions through third-party apps. For example, Asana and ClickUp can be integrated. Google also has their own third-party apps for spaces, including an app to add members in bulk, an app for creating polls in Spaces, and an app which integrates spaces better with Google Drive.
Ideal For a Mobile Workforce
If you’re in construction, hospitality, or any other business where your employees have to use phones to stay connected on the job, Google Chat makes it easy to stay in touch, and spaces make it even simpler. If, for example, your staff are all working at a particular job site, you can put everyone on that site in their own dedicated space.
Our client, Powder Mountain Ski Resort, makes use of spaces for different operational groups to make real-time communication on the mountain possible. If, for example, the road leading to the resort is experiencing issues, the customer service team can be notified by the team member who sees the problem so they can let guests know right away.
As a Powder Mountain spokesperson said, “Having that easy central point of communication is really nice, and it’s easy for folks to pay attention to it, as opposed to it being an email that gets buried in the other 100 emails that somebody receives in a day.”
How Google Chat Differs From Slack and Teams
Microsoft Teams
Transplants from Microsoft Teams may be shocked at how minimalist Google Chat is, and that the meeting app, Google Meet, is separate from Google Chat since both functions are present together within Teams.
Separating the two makes for a better, simpler user experience - plus you are more likely to want to message someone from your email than from a meeting, where you’ll just use the meeting chat to talk to other participants.
Slack
While the messaging component of Slack is very similar to Google Chat in its simplicity, Google Chat’s spaces are superior to Slack channels. Slack channels can easily get overwhelming with multiple daily updates, and they’re harder to search through than spaces.
Both Solutions: Spaces in Google Chat Better for Client Communication
Both Slack and Teams are meant as internal messaging tools. Spaces in Google Chat are very easy to add your clients to, so you can invite them to projects, have a dedicated space for client communication where numerous people are on deck to answer their questions, and anything else you may want to instantly communicate with clients.
This small but mighty app can do more heavy lifting than you may give it credit for. Try out spaces in Google Chat to see what your business can do with it, and let us know if you need any help implementing Google Workspace in your organization.
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