Why two-way radios are best for improving workplace productivity?

Businesses are under more pressure than ever to make every part of their operation “customer focussed” and optimised to work within tight margins and often do more with less resource.

An effective communication network is pivotal to this success, especially when workers are trying to deal with customers and organise stock and items in another location at the same time.

In a retail scenario for example, a customer might be looking for an item which isn’t available in their size on the shop floor, so the assistance needs to check the stock elsewhere – like in the back storeroom.

Equipped with a two-way radio the assistant would be able to communicate point-to-point, or to multiple-point, and have someone check on stock levels while they remain with the customer.

This not only improves the customer experience by making it more personal, but also allows the assistant the chance to upsell or increase the number of other items being purchased.

Without effective communications, the assistance would have to leave the customer on the shop floor while they checked stock, with no guarantee the customer wouldn’t have got fed-up and left.

Similarly, staff trying to use mobile phones in this situation would be forced to call colleagues individually and hope they answered – which takes longer and again takes away from the customer experience.

CLP446 two-way radios for instance can be simply clipped to an employee’s clothes – with no external antenna – while a central call button allows them to easily voice dial any employee they need to contact, rather than scrolling through phone contacts.

The Oracle Shopping Centre in Reading is one example of a busy retail operation which has benefitted from the use of two-way radios over mobile phones.

Spread over 22 acres, the centre needed a communications network that would allow multiple teams to contact each other quickly.

By increasing collaboration between teams that centre was able to achieve a significant rise in worker productivity and efficiency.

Adaptable and scalable

While mobile phones may be great for simple one-to-one communications in calm, quiet environments, they suffer greatly when thrown into fast-paced situations.

One of the reasons for this is that they cannot be adapted to the needs of individual businesses and are difficult to scale into a large or growing organisation.

Two-way radios on the other-hand can be quickly and easily configured to the specific requirements of a company and even more easily scaled as more radios are needed on the connection.

The use of downloadable apps, like and SMC Gateway can also connect everything from call bells, heating systems and mobile phones to a two-way radio.

Similarly, TDMA radios with GPS tracking can be used to identify the team member nearest a location or job where they are needed, so it can be completed quicker, rather than calling an employee on the other side of the store to do the same job.

Environment

The nature of many businesses environments – with lots of people moving around and lots of background nose – can also render mobile phones next to useless as staff struggle to simply hear what they are being asked to do.

Two-way radios and other alert systems – like Scope Wavetracks – are especially useful for solving this problem.

Restaurant and hotel staff for instance can find this feature particularly useful, with each team member given a portable pager hooked up to a Wavetrack which can alert them via a vibrating message when they are needed – rather than relying on them hearing a ring tone in a noisy environment.

When it comes to workplace productivity and efficiency, ensuring your employees are able to communicate quickly and accurately is the only way you can provide customers with a valuable experience and using two-way radio to provide this network is the only answer.

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