3 ways to improve productivity using Playback
Are you one of those people that receives tonnes of emails a day, a thousand Slack messages and dozens of SMS? The charm of phone calls and the personal touch that goes with it has been overshadowed by digital communication since the rise Fax machines, email, Hotmail chat rooms, MSN messenger and then smartphones.
Like me and millions of others you probably prefer a short 2 minute call rather than sending dozens of emails back and forth, and still not coming to a conclusion at the end of it.
Now, the main issue with phone calls is that there isn’t any tangible information we can refer back to after the call, apart from frantically taking down notes. During days where you’re having multiple phone conversations, sometimes you just don’t have the opportunity to take notes. So you’re forced to call the person or write an awkward email to confirm what you have just spoke about. This is where Dubber’s Playback is going to change your life! Seriously, it will.
What is Playback?
Playback is a new product by Dubber that allows anyone with a smart device or a computer to play back the important phone conversation they have just had, skip through the call to the get to the important parts and save it to a dashboard where they can access it from anywhere, at anytime. Here’s 3 ways you can increase you everyday productivity using Dubber’s Playback:
1 — Conversations with customers
Like I have quite a lot of times, I’m sure at one time or another you’ve all been in a situation where you’ve just gotten off the phone with a customer and failed to properly understand what was discussed. This could be due to a bad connection, working with customers or colleagues abroad who have a range of different accents or simply failed to jog down what they said in time. For the past decade I’ve worked for a range of international companies and this is one of the major issues I face every day.
Now, using Dubber’s Playback, you can avoid sending that awkward email at the end of the call to confirm what you just covered on the call and looking like as if you weren’t really listening. Simply play back the call, speed up to the important bits and write them down, or save the call to listen back to when you’re at your desk again.
2 — Project managers and internal conversations
In my previous position at Mailjet, a lot of my colleagues who were based in our Parisian HQ were French (naturally). As I can’t speak French, we used to speak in English during conference calls; and when it came to managing certain projects there were some tasks and requests lost in translation during team calls.
More often than we’d like it to be, we had to go back and forth to establish what’s being said because we didn’t initially take it in. Or worse the wrong work was being done due to these misunderstandings, where we had to go back and double up on the time it took to do a certain task.
If I had Dubber’s Playback then and had the ability to play back some of our calls, certain projects would have run a lot smoother and finished quicker, increasing everyone’s productivity.
3 — Hands-free in car conversations
Britons on average drive 520 hours per year. That’s 10 hours a week! Nowadays most cars are fitted with decent hand-free phone systems and even if they’re not, the drivers use personal hands-free kits. The main issue with taking business or important personal calls whilst driving is the inability to action on the call or at the least take note of what was discussed.
Using a service such as Dubber’s Playback, drivers can now choose to spend some of that 10 hours per week they spend driving, into good use and get some work done. Take business or private calls and when you’re back in the office or at home, save the call, play it back and search for keywords during the conversation so you can fast forward to the important bits where then you can take actions or make notes for later.
Are you a Playback user? Let us know how you use Playback to improve your productivity.
Initially posted on Dubber’s Blog.
