No More Breakdown In Communication

Remember the ultimate game of Telephone, the ultimate breakdown in communication? You sit in a circle and whisper something in the ear of the person sitting next to you, continuing on until the last person repeats the original words—or attempts to. Inevitably, the statement that makes it full circle barely resembles the original. This type of muddled communication earns a few giggles at a sleepover, but in business, it’s never a good thing.

How often does your company experience this same sort of breakdown in communication? Perhaps you find yourself scratching your head and wondering how a simple bug fix was lost in translation. You asked Joey from the development team to diagnose a problem so you could provide a solution to a customer. But Joey assigned the bug to another team member, who assigned it to another team member, and so on, and now no one seems to remember the original issue. It seems to have simply been forgotten—except by you, and more importantly, by the customer who’s still waiting for the issue to be resolved. Sound familiar?

Use Screenshots to Overcome Miscommunication

Often we work in hectic environments. Our companies and their many departments are communicating via Slack, Intercom, Pivitol Tracker, Jira, Skype, Asana, text, email, video conferencing tools, and even good-old-fashioned telephone… Differences in communication platforms or styles can often be the disconnect when trying to solve a bigger issue.

This is where a picture becomes much more valuable than words, coming across loud and clear every time. Screenshots, annotated screenshots, and screencasts have shaped the way that many teams around the globe communicate.

Remember Joey? His team started using Droplr and saw from the annotated screenshot below just what needed to be fixed. And since they could easily share a link to the screenshot, there were never any incomplete instructions or miscommunications from one member to the next.

A crystal clear message means less errors and a quicker resolution. No telephone games here: if there’s a man in the middle, he’s always getting the message right.