Network Chat as a Tool for Corporate Communications?

rimmon asks: "I'd like to know what experience have you made with [network-enabled chatting programs] as tools to communicate with your boss, with your employees or your customers? Does your company utilize [Instant Messenger or IRC] as a communication tool (to communicate with customers, between employees and Pointy Haired Bosses? If you use or provide [chatting systems]: Is this technology an effective tool to communicate? What are the Pros and Cons? What type of chat technology do you use and what flavor of chat (open, moderated, etc.) works best for you?"

Comments

We do...

[MattCohn.com]

it's called E-Mail. All information is kept track of by a central server, all the important stuff is saved, it can be orginized into folders, works easilly across the network, and people are notified almost instantly (via. outlook) when they have a new message.

E-Mail is the answer here.

Reuters

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Reuters sells a secured, auditable IM service for the Corporate/Financial Services market. Meets FDIC and SEC regulations. It's built on MSFT technology, but uses the Internet. Bloomburg has its own IM, but runs on their own services 'net.

More HERE...

Re:Reuters

[crmartin]

... and a number of firms on Wall Street are killing off their IM services, and even blocking them on internal firewalls, because some judge has determined that IMs have to be preserved just as emails do.

Re:Reuters

[sql*kitten]

It's built on MSFT technology, but uses the Internet.

The "standalone" version uses the MSN GUI, but internally I believe it is SIP over HTTPS. The "real" version runs on a 3000 Xtra dealing workstation.

It can log everything to a database, so it's fully compliant for business use. In dealing rooms, unlogged communication is frowned upon, both by managers and staff. The logs are never looked at unless something comes to court, and they can save you from insider trading charges so there are no "geek privacy" concerns. Banks have recorded phone conversations for years.

Both IM and Email are good

[DrunkBastard]

We pass quite a bit of email around, but if your company is anything like mine, we tend to ignore email for long stretches at a time.

Instant Messaging is good, but invasive, but hey, you're at work, deal. We have a Jabber server setup, with fairly limited abilities for the average user, but some nice administrative features. Jabbers nice, it's free, and it's being continually developed.

Most companies

[CptChipJew]

That use Lotus for E-Mail get Sametime (and AIM-clone sans AIM features plus intranet features) bundled with it. We use it at my computer for instant messenging, which is just more convenient than e-mail for simple discussions.

Re:Fuckers!

[adamy]

Ah, but the telephone is indeed a weapon of mass distraction.

Sorry I couldn't resist that.

I mean, come on. What ever you are doing...it just breaks your concentration and even if you don't have to asnswer it, the zone is gone. So the only real answer is to not answer, and that is no answer. I swear.

Either email me, or come over to talk to me. If it is not super time senstive, I will get it in email. If it is super time sensative, commit as much time to it as you ask me to by walking over to my desk.

Used to use IRC

[MerlynEmrys67]

Worked for a company that was radically attached to IRC (you weren't at work unless you were logged onto IRC)
Personal opinion, IRC (and typing in general) is way to low bandwidth to hold technical conversations on... What might be solved with a 10 minute phone call takes hours to discuss over IRC (especialy with the cross chat). Upside is the whole thing was logged and you could go on a company server and look through ALL of the IRC logs, the Con to that is absolutely nobody did that
The best use I would make of IRC would be
(nick) You there Pete
...
(pete) Hey... did you ring nick ?
(nick) Yeah, can I call you now ?
(pete) Sure
...
(phone heard ringing in the background)
Frankly I will never work on another distributed team if I can help it. I want to sit close enough to my immediate co-workers that I know if I can bother them (based on the music they are playing usually) and take it from there... having people across three timezones suck

Re:Used to use IRC

[sql*kitten]

Personal opinion, IRC (and typing in general) is way to low bandwidth to hold technical conversations on...

Yes and no. Chat systems are infinitely superior for anyone who needs to communicate what to type, especially if like most code or command line text is has case sensitivity or funny syntax. If someone wants a command or a code snippet, you can paste it to them while talking on the phone in real time.

I can't fucking stand it when people walk over and ask me something like that. What, you expect me to sit there reciting space-that, underscore-this, no that's in caps, that's in single quotes, open curly bracket, open square bracket, blah blah, close both brackets, etc? Anyone who wants code spoken aloud - which they won't remember anyway - is a fucking idiot and doesn't deserve helping.

Jabber is handy

[djmitche]

I live in South Carolina, and I work as an admin for a school in Chicago. Since I'm part time, I don't get any perks like long-distance expenses. This makes for something of a problem when discussing thorny technical issues whether a wooden or metal cluebat would be best applied to the latest luser.

I was never one to chat much. Then I tripped across Jabber, and thought I'd give it a shot (it's an open protocol -- lots of fun to hack cool tools onto). Turns out most of my co-workers were using one or another chat system (AIM, MSN, ICQ) for their personal communication. Jabber does a wonderful job of tying all of those networks together, so I can chat with any of them. It also allows me to incorporate some nifty scripts. My favorites are server-monitoring scripts, so I can 'chat' with my servers, and they can send me a message when unusual circumstances present themselves.

For most purposes, I find it easier to chat via Jabber than to talk on the phone -- most of the things we discuss are best seen spelled out (snippets of code, hostnames, etc.).

There was an article about this today...

[AdamBa]

...in the Seattle paper. Corporate America jumps on IM software .

- adam

Very useful

[cyberjam]

It doesn't replace phone, email, face-to-face or NNTP, it's just another tool that's good for what it's good for.

We're mainly using MSN and Exchange IM: main benefits are presence info - although it's not 100% accurate, it's really useful to know if somebody's likely to be at their desk.

Biggest plus for IM itself seems to be the ability to establish a new channel of communication while on the phone e.g. during a boring conference call (lots of those!) or while on the phone to a customer, without having to put them on hold. Also e.g. for PAs using IM to pass short messages to their boss while the boss is on the phone.

Less importantly are the ability to share small bits of text very quickly (e.g. it's quicker to pass a long URL to a colleague at the next desk via IM than via email), and the ability to launch voice chat and desktop sharing quickly and simply - the MSN IM implementation is far more immediate and accessible for users than NetMeeting.

Downside, if you think of it as being a downside, particulary using a public service such as MSN is the amount of private trivia conversations ("have you had your lunch yet, honey?").