How to Collect Employee Testimonials with VoIP?

Employee testimonials are statements in which employees describe their job-related experiences. They include a range of topics - general information about their company, typical days at work, personal and professional growth, and overall feelings about their career path in their current role.

Testimonials can vary in form. The most common ones are:

• Videos
• Photos
• Articles or entries on a blog
• Interviews through text
• Social media posts

Employee testimonials are powerful communication tools that the HR department can use to attract new talent.

Potential employees are three times more likely to trust your company when they hear about it from their current employees versus official communication channels.

Using them effectively can have an enormous impact on your recruitment efforts. They also help build a company's brand and create better connections.

Today's workforce demands more flexibility, and one of its manifestations is shifting from traditional office work to remote options. As a result, more and more workers are taking on remote positions, and this trend will continue to increase in the following years.

In North America alone, by 2022, 25% of all employed people will be working remotely.

Remote work presents numerous challenges, ranging from communication to scheduling to performance tracking and more. Still, there are tools to help remote teams for the most purposes.

Building and maintaining trust between remote team members is high on this list. So organizations are trying to find the best ways to improve this while keeping all of the benefits that remote work provides.

This is where employee testimonials step into the game. They have become a valuable resource in connecting employees that are physically distant.

Technological advancements and modern communication methods enable all businesses to make the best use of them, from collecting to sharing them with the public. One of them is Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP).

VoIP and Remote Work

VoIP makes multiple calls possible, bringing significant advantages to many businesses nowadays. Conference and group calls enable uninterrupted communication even when team members are not physically together.

Moreover, the functionalities that VoIP enables in external communication are broad - you've probably seen those call now button sections of the website - this is just one of the ways employees are using VoIP to communicate with their clients.

VoIP is a solution that provides employees with reliable phone service for a business application, and it comes at a fraction of the cost that regular phone calls incur.

Organizations are changing to be more inclusive of remote workers, and better connect them with other team members. Tailoring some communication over VOIP is a unique way to make individuals not left behind.

Another tool that managers use for bringing people together is employee testimonials.

And now, with an increase in remote work, they are combining new technologies such as VOIP with these practices to reap the benefits testimonials bring and improve efficiency at the same time.

Let's take some of the entire remote companies as an example.

Gitlab has over 2 thousand employees working remotely. As such a company, they had to devise a communication and HR plan that kept the company as efficient as if they were working together. Of course, employee testimonials were among the main tools.

Management sees testimonials as an opportunity to strengthen personal connections and professional ties. With the help of VOIP, they are reaping their full benefits in remote settings.

Important Things To Cover Before Collecting The Testimonials

1. Build an amazing company culture

The benefits of strong, unified company culture are many. First, a well-developed company culture ensures that employees share similar values and are on the same page.

If defining and completing goals is one of your company's strongest values, you can expect your employees to do the same. This is how your employees' direction matches those you have strategically set for your company.

Strong company culture will attract top talent and will likely retain it for more extended periods.

It happens because people feel like they truly belong to your company. Lastly, a positive corporate atmosphere will create a better picture of your company in the eyes of your customers and make a good brand image.

You can expect to lose the war over talents if your company culture isn't attractive.

2. Focus On Gratitude

Highlighting the great things remote work brings will make employees aware of the benefits and motivate them to try harder in their roles.

For example, you can encourage giving compliments to your teammates once a day to create a habit of showing gratitude.

Expressing gratitude towards coworkers personally through a chat is something that many managers do. A group email or message is another great initiative.

Testimonials are a great tool when you want your employees to hear about the benefits in their workplace from another colleague in a medium that doesn't include direct communication.

This helps them maintain objectivity and shifts their perspective towards what should be appreciated in work. Motivation to collaborate in a remote environment increases as a result.

3. Encourage Transparency

A transparent workplace recognizes each employee. This relates to hard work, progress, achievement, and the more personal part of their experience in a company.

Employees motivated to share their experiences and emotions will help create more genuine testimonials with a more significant impact.

This, in turn, builds trust between management and employees, and the entire company feels heard and appreciated, which leads to the workforce feeling more seen and heard.

Ensuring that employees in every part of your business have a way of expressing themselves and feel encouraged to be open will contribute to a transparent culture.

The result? Deeper engagement that will help you get closer to your company's purpose and smaller organizational goals.

4. Assess The Current Levels Of Efficiency

Current levels of efficiency matter. As technology evolves, new ways of tracking are opening for businesses.

This is especially important for small businesses, where assessing levels of efficiency often presents a challenge. Before implementing any strategy that will boost the efficiency of your remote teams, you should measure the current levels of it to get to know your starting point.

For example, you can track the number of tasks your employees can complete in a particular time. The frequency of follow-ups is also indicative of the efficiency of your team.

When you have to constantly ask for updates, your employees probably have some problems managing their time.

Project management software is a more formal approach to following your employees' progress.

This is how everyone on the team will know what they are supposed to do, where they are with their project progress and proactively work towards improving.

Tips On Collecting Employee Testimonials Over VoIP

1. Communicate the importance of testimonials to the employees

When remote team members hear about benefits from their peers, they're more likely to listen and become in sync with your company's mission and values.

In addition, these types of "reviews" are precious in connecting with employees who aren't engaging through other communication channels because they are more personal.

Some of your employees, especially when working remotely, won't see any incentive in sharing their experiences with the public.

This is why it's essential to show them why their testimonials are crucial to the company and how easy it is to collect them via VoIP.

For example, employees will not have to leave their homes because your HR department will most likely prepare everything. The only thing your employees must do is be honest about their experiences.

2. Make a schedule

With VoIP available, there is a risk of lightly considering the whole process, which can often be a trap.

Instead, create and stick to a testimonial-making schedule. This is the best way to manage your time and ensure you fit all you've planned into your testimonial-collecting project.

To build an effective schedule, you need to organize and prioritize all the tasks in the project while keeping in mind the medium over which you're going to work.

List out all the tasks you need to complete and make monthly, weekly and daily plans that you will stick to. This is how you'll ensure not to miss anything important for testimonial collection over VoIP.

Create a schedule for taking testimonials and sharing them with the public. Leave space for unplanned events, such as employees changing their minds, leaving the company in the meantime, etc. Have backup "players" that are ready to participate without as much preparation at hand for these situations.

3. Structure the testimonials

To avoid missing the point, you should create a content structure and ensure your employees stick to it.

Again, the writing style is vital here. Employees will understand what you ask from them if you keep instructions concise and include the topics they should share during their testimonials. To create a good testimonial, you must cover the following:

• Make it short. Long, rambling testimonials don't hold the attention of the audience. If you have longer testimonials, highlight the most powerful parts to attract the visitors' attention.
• Be direct. Instruct your employees to be direct and to the point. People usually read or listen to the beginning of a testimonial and decide if they want to continue further. That's why watered-down content without a clear point won't do it.
• Ask yourself the following question: Which parts of the testimonial are the most compelling for your target audience? When you get a clear answer, ensure you are on the same page with your remote workers and include them in testimonials.

4. Add a personal touch

Authentic employee testimonials are a powerful tool in building your business image. Still, preserving authenticity when you collect them over VoIP can be challenging.

Get to know your employees first to help them open up. There is something special about the experience of each of the employees that brings excellent value to the testimonials.

Use this wisely to reach your audience on an emotional level.

Emotional responses are triggers of a large part of the decisions we make. This is the case with your clients and potential employees.

You want to touch your future employees with candid details about the benefits remote work brings to them.

5. Create a distraction-free space for sharing

When you guide your employees through the process of testimonial sharing, pay special attention to finding an environment where they can relax.

This will ensure that your conversations go faster and employees can speak about their experiences more comfortably.

You have the option of delegating the location decision to them. It could be a favorite coffee shop, a park, or a dimly lit area in their house.

What's important is to remove all the distractions that could hinder the message they want to convey.

6. Create contextual relevance

Employees' experiences should have specific topics as highlights of their testimonials. This will make other employees aware of the message you are trying to convey.

If your goal is to attract top talent in a specific area, consider why someone would be interested in working for you and developing the narrative.

For example, your employees might speak about the values they share with the company, how they had advanced when they were in it, and why it would be a good choice for someone looking for a job.

7. Mix up the media

VoIP doesn't dictate the format you should be using to present testimonials.

However, different types of testimonials, for example, video and written forms, will add variety and draw attention to the content.

In addition, such variety will make it more attractive to broader audiences since some of them are tuned to different kinds of media.

8. Automate reminders to look for new testimonials

New employees should be allowed to share their experiences when they join the company. The existing employees, too, if it has been a long time since they last shared their employee experiences.

In the schedule creation phase, set some time apart to plan for the reminders as well - you'll most likely be wrapped up in all the little details and day-to-day tasks in the future.

This creates the danger of neglecting the stories of new remote employees or those who have advanced in the company and have valuable stories to share.

The latter is especially important for the ambitious people that would like to work for you. That's because the possibilities about advancement in the company are important to them.

Hearing about this part from their colleagues will feel more trustworthy, so don't skip the opportunity to use them here.

To Conclude

Since you're reading this, you're already aware that testimonials can become a crucial source of social evidence for your company in a remote setting.

Using VoIP technology in such settings can make achieving this much more manageable. By itself, it can help you a lot due to the speed of communication, reduced costs, and other logistical issues.

Other indirect benefits come from the efforts put into testimonial creation. The most important one here is improved team cohesion.

No matter how far away they are, your remote team will become more responsive to the experiences of their colleagues and provide you with the benefits that employee testimonials are supposed to bring to the workplace.

Dennis Vu is the CEO and Co-founder of Ringblaze, a virtual business phone system company that helps teams to better serve their customers, anywhere. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.