Yammer

Yammer is essentially a corporate Facebook clone, so it offers a decent range of functionality that most staff members will already be familiar with.

For example you can use instant messaging, send private messages, create groups, and post things to your wall.

Apparently the likes of Ford, eBay, Deloitte and Shell have all signed up to Yammer, however I’ll admit to being slightly dubious about its usefulness.

I’ve worked at two companies that have introduced Yammer (including Econsultancy) and it failed to catch on at either of them.

The problem could be that people are simply too attached to email, but I also feel that Yammer offers too many features so it ends up adding additional complications to the working day.

Hipchat

This suggestion comes courtesy of Steffan Aquarone, CEO at mobile payment app Droplet.

In his own words:

At Droplet we were getting sick of emails and felt there must be a smarter way to communicate internally. Our culture is really important, especially with a team working across seven cities.

We chose Hipchat like a lot of startups, because it’s secure and because it had web, mobile and desktop apps. People use it to IM each other, but also to have conversations in rooms that are set to specific topics.  

We even plug our website chat straight into Hipchat so anyone can help customers who come to our site.

Gmail Chat

This recently rebranded itself as part of the ‘Hangouts’ experience on Google+, but don’t let that put you off.

If your company already uses Gmail as its email client (which Econsultancy does) then Chat is a useful way of asking a quick question or having a brief conversation.

It works best if your colleagues are aware that Chat is just for quick informal conversations, so you can avoid all the formalities that kill any potential time savings (e.g. “How are you?”, “How was your weekend?”)

And if you’re not on Gmail, you can still use Hangouts by signing up to Google+.

Skype

When I first started at Econsultancy we used Skype to message each other within the editorial team.

It was extremely useful as we had staff based out of the office and abroad, plus people occasionally worked from home.

Skype has a decent instant messaging option that records your historical conversations, plus it allow group messaging, file sharing and voice calls.

My only complaint would be regarding the annoying sound effects.

Basecamp

This is more of a project management tool than a straightforward messaging platform, but it does have the desired impact of reducing email clutter.

Basecamp is designed to allow companies to more effectively manage projects by creating a centralised platform for the team to share information and deadlines.

It supports messaging, discussion forums, file sharing and task management, which may be more than you’re looking for. But then it might be just what you need.

Asana

Asana counts Dropbox, Uber and Pinterest among its clients, so it’s clearly the messaging platform of choice for trendy startups.

It’s similar to Basecamp in that it’s really a project management tool, so the functionality might be more than you need.

Asana allows users to create a central location for different projects so they can allocate tasks, send messages, share files, monitor progress and ensure they’re on track to hit deadlines.

The idea is that it alleviates inbox clutter as colleagues can access all the relevant information without asking for progress reports or sending questions over email.

It also integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, WordPress and Google Calendar. Very handy.

Do

Do is a calendar app that allows teams to more easily deal with meetings and notify each other of upcoming tasks.

As with other tools on this list it enables users to store all their files in one central location, share meeting outcomes and post progress updates.

It’s a fairly simple tool, and one that would benefit from having an explainer video on its site to fully summarise its functionality, but it seems to be a useful way of cutting down email traffic.