How Push-to-Talk Communication Enables True Collaboration 

Communicating with frontline logistics teams is challenging because frontline teams often work in remote locations, and they are constantly on the move in warehouses, at depots, or on the road.

Companies rely on radios to communicate with frontline workers, but radios fail when teams communicate across long distances and through physical barriers like concrete walls.

Communication is often disjointed, with workers isolated for extended periods of time. These communication blackouts decrease efficiency and clog the supply chain.

Most companies are beginning to realize the importance of real-time communication for frontline workers. According to a Harvard Business Review survey, nearly 86% of companies say frontline workers need better technology to support accurate, real-time judgment calls. Many companies are investing in collaboration software to connect their entire workforce.

Why Is Real-time Communication So Important in Logistics?

Effective logistics is a complex coordination of warehousing and transporting goods. Successful logistics increases efficiency, lowers costs, and improves production rates, inventory control, and use of warehouse space. Both customers and suppliers are more satisfied, ensuring better long-term relationships.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, logistics has remained in a constant state of flux. Logistics teams continue to face challenges, including high fuel prices, labor shortages, disrupted supply chains, geo-political upheaval, and difficulty sourcing raw materials and securing available transport.

Many of these logistics challenges are exacerbated by communication delays and disruptions, making effective logistics communications across supervisors and frontline teams more important than ever. The world is moving fast, and logistics teams need to keep up.

How Radios Fail Logistics Teams

Frontline employees and management teams need real-time collaboration to operate at the most efficient levels. Radios are the most common communication choice for logistics and warehouse teams, but they are not the best choice. Radios don’t provide the collaboration capabilities required to successfully navigate today’s complex challenges.

1. Radio networks are geographically limited with connectivity issues. They don’t effectively link workers distributed in warehouses, shipping depots, and on the road. Radio transmissions are impacted by the number of floors, stairwells, and walls in a given location and communicating in concrete structures with radios is almost impossible. Dispatch centers and supervisors need continuous contact with all team members, but radios have gaps in connectivity.
2. Radios are single-function devices, restricted to voice communications. Voice alone is not always enough to explain a situation clearly or provide detailed instructions to a team member. The longer it takes to accurately describe a situation, the more likely you are to have delayed shipments and deliveries.
3. Radios do not keep track of team members. One of the most common uses for radios is determining the status and location of deskless workers, but radios can’t tell dispatchers where workers are, which vehicles are in motion, and who’s online and listening. The first question dispatchers usually ask is, “what is your location?” Dispatchers must wait for the workers to stop what they are doing to respond to know where they are. It is difficult to optimize operations when you don’t know where everyone is.
4. Radios do not enable automated processes. If a frontline worker has a question, they must contact someone on the radio, ask the question, and then wait for that person to find the answer. There is no quick way to access information from back-end systems, and routine status checks and verifications of procedures require a two-way conversation.
5. With radios, incidents and emergency situations like incapacitations, location breaches, and panic alarms are handled with a call across a radio channel. Someone must hear the call, respond, and manually start emergency procedures. If no one is listening at that moment, the incident response is delayed. If there is a fire in a warehouse or a driver has broken down, you want to begin emergency procedures as quickly as possible.
6. Radios do not record and archive conversations, so you aren’t capturing any information from communications shared between team members. This information is useful for optimizing operations and during incident review and compliance meetings.

The Solution: Push-to-Talk 2.0 (PTT)

Maintaining connection with your entire logistics team doesn’t have to be difficult. With a unified communication platform like Orion’s PTT 2.0, you can reach your team any time, anywhere. Logistics challenges can be solved faster with increased range, complete connectivity, and automated processes.

With Push-to-Talk 2.0, you can:

1. Stay connected with frontline workers no matter where they are. PTT 2.0 does not have the connectivity issues that radios have. Logistics teams located in warehouses, depots, and on the road stay connected over any network, including LTE, private LTE, Wi-Fi, satellite, and mesh. Workers can communicate over any distance, including on-site, on the road, across town, or across the continent and maintain connectivity through floors, stairwells, and concrete walls.
2. Tell the complete story with multimodal communication. If a team member needs to document an event from the road, a warehouse, or any remote location, they can capture the situation using texts, photos, PDFs, videos, and any other supporting documents. Management gets a clear picture of the situation, enabling better incident review and analysis as well as improved compliance reporting if required.
3. Use advanced location services with real-time geolocation of each employee to always know the exact location of every asset and team member. With real-time visibility across the entire logistics team, operational command can monitor and adjust plans, optimize routes, and update delivery estimates without interrupting workers for status checks.
4. Enable automated processes, so routine and structured tasks don’t require a person-to-person connection.
   1. With process automation voice bots, frontline workers use voice-activated checklists and automated check-ins. For example, workers responsible for transporting goods can use voice bots to complete checklists and compliance forms prior to moving goods. This ensures smoother movement of products through the supply chain and provides complete visibility for compliance checks.
   2. Intelligence amplification bots provide frontline workers real-time access to systems, data, and subject matter experts from the road, in the factory, or in the warehouse. Workers can consult manuals and receive instructions from bots, so they don’t have to wait for a person to manually search for information.
   3. AI bots automate safety check-ins to monitor the location, status, and movement of each team member. No one in operational command has to stop work to wait for a response, and frontline workers can quickly click a button to respond without interrupting their work.
5. Use Emergency Response Bots to enable automated emergency response with a single word, ensuring the fastest response. If there is a problem, the worker simply uses a predefined codeword and voice-activated, real-time automated workflows are triggered to manage the emergency response. Push-to-Talk 2.0 AI bots provide multi-step workflows that deliver on-demand intelligence, enabling faster, smarter responses to location breaches, lone worker situations, and other incidents or emergencies. Operational command receives notification of the incident in real time and can monitor the situation and response.
6. Record and archive all staff messages and interactions, including voice, text, and visual media. Operational command can monitor communication groups and process information in real time or on demand. Management can search and retrieve information for incident reporting, reaction analysis, and compliance reporting. This information also helps teams optimize operations.

Learn How PTT 2.0 Can Help Your Logistics Team

As logistics challenges continue to grow, frontline workers need better technology to support accurate, real-time judgment calls. With PTT 2.0, logistics challenges can be managed more effectively, ensuring faster delivery of goods, optimized transportation, and safer work environments.

How Real-time Translation Helps You Navigate the Current Labor Crisis

A Push-to-Talk translation solution can help you combat the severe labor shortage currently challenging hospitality organizations. According to a survey conducted by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, almost 97% of respondents are experiencing a staffing shortage, with 49% experiencing a severe shortage. This extreme staffing shortage is compounded by the post-pandemic rebound in demand for travel and entertainment.

Push-to-talk language translation can help by enabling you to hire non-native language speakers and make them effective day one. This is critical, since many hotels are hiring staff with little or no experience. Keeping hospitality employees can be as challenging as finding them. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average turnover rate in the leisure and hospitality industry is 84.9%.

Hospitality Communication Challenges

Even with increased wages, more flexible scheduling, and better benefits, 97% of hospitality managers surveyed have been unable to fill open positions. To fill these open slots, hospitality managers must be open to every possible candidate. Eliminating people just because they don’t speak the manager’s required language disregards too many strong applicants in a time when hospitality organizations desperately need to increase staff.

At the same time, hiring people who speak a different language presents some challenges.

• Teaching new skills can be difficult if you don’t speak the same language.
  • If new hires don’t understand what you are saying, you have to repeat instructions or find other ways to clarify, making the training process slower and lowering team productivity.
  • You need to onboard staff as quickly as possible to minimize disruptions to guests, but you also need to onboard correctly to ensure the highest quality of service to guests. Your new hires need to understand and follow correct procedures and work well with the rest of your team.
• Managing routine tasks is more difficult when your staff speak several languages. Some staff members may misunderstand instructions, creating delays and more work for the team. Some tasks require collaboration, which is difficult if team members can’t communicate with each other. According to a study by Urban bound, an estimated $37 billion dollars is spent annually managing employees who do not understand their jobs.
• Emergencies and unexpected events can be impossible to manage. If an unusual event occurs, describing the event and coordinating the response and steps required to resolve it may cause confusion, resulting in delays and disrupting guests’ experiences.
• Customer service will suffer. If staff members are confused, their frustration may become evident to your guests, impacting customer service.
• Turnover will remain high. Keeping good staff members is difficult if you can’t communicate with them. Their confusion about job requirements or daily communication can make them feel isolated and frustrated, leading them to find new jobs that are less stressful.

The Communication Solution: Push-to-Talk 2.0

What Is Push-to-Talk (PTT) 2.0?

Push-to-talk is a voice-first communication solution. When you need to communicate, you push a button on a handheld device to instantly stream your message to one or many people at once. You let go to listen.

Unlike radios which have spotty coverage and limited range, PTT 2.0 has unlimited range. It works in basements, through concrete stairwells, and across large properties. It also enables more than just voice communication. Workers can share photos, videos, and documents – whatever they need to clearly communicate with their team.

Push-to-talk 2.0 is powered by Voice AI Bots and platform integrations, moving beyond simple communication to voice-activated automated workflows, real-time asset location services, bi-directional language translation and transcription, and more.

Push-to-Talk Language Translation

Orion’s Language Translation instantly translates over 60 languages with the push of a button. Your team members simply push a button, speak in their language, and let Orion’s Voice AI bots translate their voice into the right language for other team members or managers.

Teams hear messages in their languages individually, and respond in their languages, and Orion translates it back to the original language for the original speaker. Orion’s Push-to-Talk Language Translation provides real-time, two-way, translate out and translate back communication to any location with any network connection using any communication device.

This is extremely powerful for onboarding new staff and ensuring guests receive the best possible experience. 

• Teaching new skills is easier if staff can understand the instructions they are provided. New staff can ask questions with confidence and receive clear answers they understand. Without effective training, it takes about 8 months for a new employee to become productive.
• Onboarding is faster, ensuring teams are more productive. Onboarding is more effective, because new staff understand directions and can follow correct procedures. Research on successful onboarding shows that when onboarding is done correctly, new employees have higher job satisfaction, stronger commitment to the organization, and increased performance levels.
• Teams are more collaborative and effective. Everyone on the team can communicate clearly and effectively with the rest of the team. They work together better because they can communicate with each other without struggling to find a common language.
• Managing tasks is easier because everyone receives instructions, and can ask questions, in their language. All procedures are understood and followed.
• Emergencies and surprise events are handled efficiently and effectively. If an unusual event occurs, staff can describe the event clearly in their chosen language. Management can provide guidance and the team can collaborate to determine how best to resolve the issue. Everyone can ask questions in their language, ensuring complete understanding of the problem and the steps to resolve it.
• Guest experience is improved.
  • Because the staff is onboarded faster and more completely, guests receive the best experience. New staff understand processes better, having received clear directions in their primary language.
  • Staff members are not confused or frustrated trying to figure out their jobs. They work with more confidence and ease, providing a more positive presence to guests.
  • Research by Cornell University shows a direct link between better guest experiences and employees who are motivated and engaged.
• Staff are less likely to quit. In a recent survey, employees at organizations with little collaboration reported being 4.5 times more likely to quit their jobs. With Push-to-Talk Language Translation, staff members no longer feel isolated or confused. They can communicate easily with coworkers, ask questions in their primary language, and collaborate on projects without difficulty.
• Onboarding is less expensive. Because it takes less time to onboard staff, you save money training them and they are productive more quickly.

Do Even More with Voice AI Bots and Automated Workflows

Orion’s PTT 2.0 provides hospitality organizations more than just translation services. Since workers always have their PTT-enabled device on hand for translation, they can use the device for additional services like emergency response.

With PTT Emergency Alerts, workers can use a predefined emergency word – “help-help-help” for example – to trigger automated workflows that implement the correct procedures with that one voice command. External resources like emergency response teams can be automatically contacted as part of the automatic workflow. Hotel managers, maintenance, and other members of the team may be contacted as well.

Push-to-Talk Translation Can Help

Hospitality organizations endured years of upheaval during the Covid-19 pandemic. As consumers venture out more, these organizations face new challenges finding enough workers to meet demand. Translation solutions enable hospitality organizations to widen their applicant pool without compromising customer service, efficiency, or company standards. Onboarding is faster and better, ensuring the best guest experience.

Watch a Quick Demonstration of Orion’s Translation App

Delivering the Best Customer Experience

Good communication in the hospitality industry is essential for long-term success. Hospitality success requires consistently excelling at customer service and exceeding guests’ expectations. You must create experiences to make guests feel welcome and special.

Customer service is critical to hospitality success because delivering the best customer experience creates loyal customers who will repeatedly return. Happy guests also provide positive personal recommendations or submit positive reviews online, helping drive growth and profits. According to a study by American Express, 42% of consumers said that a recommendation from a family member or friend would influence their purchase more than a sale or promotion.

The opposite is even more true: unhappy customers can destroy a business. These statistics from Inc. demonstrate the impact of unhappy customers:

• When customers are unhappy, there’s a 91% chance they won’t do business with a company again.
• Dissatisfied customers typically tell 9 to 15 other people about their experience; some tell 20 or more.

In fact, only 4% of unhappy customers will complain to you directly about a bad experience. Instead of providing feedback to you, unhappy customers are more likely to complain to friends, family, and the internet. Negative customer experiences lead to bad online reviews, and bad reviews hurt your business. You need a lot of 5-star reviews to erase the damage of just a few 1-star reviews.

Why Hospitality Teams Need to Communicate Effectively

Good Communication Drives Good Customer Service

Providing the best guest experience requires good communication. You can’t provide top-notch customer service unless you listen to your customers to understand exactly what they are telling you. You need to clearly and effectively share that information with relevant members of your team and collaborate to deliver the ultimate guest experience.

Resolving an issue quickly and effectively can delight customers. For example, suppose a hotel guest loses her wallet. She immediately calls the front desk to ask if anyone found it. The front desk manager must listen to the guest with empathy and concern while gathering relevant details: where has the guest been, what does the wallet look like, when does she think she misplaced it? If the front desk manager is distracted or acts indifferent to the guest’s concerns, the opportunity to delight the customer is lost whether the wallet is found or not.

Having shown the appropriate level of concern, the manager must now communicate with her team. This is where a unified communications platform (UC) helps. Unified communications platforms enable teams to communicate with each other without requiring everyone to use the same type of communication device. With Orion’s UC platform, team members can seamlessly communicate across VoIP desk phones, radios, and Orion’s PTT 2.0 solution.

If the guest arrived early in the morning, played a round of golf in the morning, enjoyed a massage at the spa, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant, the wallet could be in several locations. With a unified communication platform like Orion’s Push-to-Talk, the manager can communicate with all the relevant departments at once with the click of a button.

She quickly explains the missing wallet to the valet, golf course, spa, and restaurant. Everyone in these locations is alerted and can quickly have someone check the golf carts, spa rooms, restaurant, and surrounding areas to locate the missing wallet.

If the hotel team does not communicate effectively with each other, the process is completely different. The manager may attempt to reach the spa, but she can’t reach anyone because no one is monitoring the phone, and they are out of range as they move around assisting guests. She tries the golf course, but they communicate using radios and reception is bad on the course. She attempts to contact the valet, but they are busy in the garage where there is no reception, so she can’t reach them either.

In this scenario, the manager struggles to find anyone to help while the guest nervously waits for an answer. In an effort to help the guest, the manager may even leave the front desk to try to find someone to help. If she had a way to reach everyone at once across the entire property, the guest would have her wallet, and peace of mind, much sooner.

Good Communication Improves Productivity

Good communication also improves the hospitality team’s productivity. In the example above, when the manager could not communicate immediately with the spa, valet, and golf course, she had to spend time calling them over and over again. She neglected other tasks while she tried to find someone to help her.

Unified communications enables the manager to reach every team no matter where they are located and what communication device they are using. There are no “dead zones” and everyone is connected even if they are walking around helping guests.

In this example, team members may have additional information to help with the search. If the spa responds to the initial call saying that they remember the guest using the wallet at the spa, the golf course and valet do not need to search for it because the guest had the wallet later in the day. They have already narrowed the search.

If the manager could only reach the golf course without a way to contact the other teams, the golf course crew would begin searching golf carts or even go out on the course to check for the wallet. They may continue to search long after the wallet is found, simply because no one can reach them as they search the golf course.

If the manager leaves the front desk to search for the wallet herself, she spends time running around the property. While she searches, she postpones helping other guests, so overall customer service may decline even if the wallet is found.

Good Communication Ensures Guest and Employee Safety

Good communication is never more important than in an emergency. If there is an incident, your team needs to calmly and effectively communicate among themselves and implement the appropriate emergency response and protocols. The team must share information with guests to help them understand the situation and what steps they need to follow to stay safe.

Automated processes enable the fastest emergency response. If you have a communication platform like Orion’s, one voice command “Fire” can automatically trigger the correct process: notify the fire department, activate alarms, alert all employees both onsite and in remote locations, unlock all doors, secure elevators, initiate building checks, etc.

With one voice command, the process is started, leaving your team free to ensure the safety and security of all employees and guests.

Why Is Communication in the Hospitality Industry So Difficult?

Hospitality Teams Work in Dynamic, Fast-paced Environments

With hospitality teams spread across the property, communication is challenging. Employees are constantly moving around, whether it’s housekeeping going from room to room in a hotel, valets driving back and forth to a garage, or grounds keeping ensuring a golf course is well-manicured. Reception on a golf course may be spotty, so employees miss calls or cannot understand garbled conversations. Parking structures are often underground, where reception is difficult or impossible with traditional communications.

Team Leaders Often Have No Idea Where Employees Are

Because frontline workers are always on the go, finding them when a problem arises isn’t easy. If there is a spill in a conference room, and no one can find or contact housekeeping because they communicate with radios and are out of range, the spill continues to inconvenience guests or interfere with programs until someone can be reached.

Language Barriers Create Challenges

Not all staff speak the same language, which can make managing tasks difficult. Some staff members may misunderstand instructions, creating delays and more work for the team. If an unusual event occurs, describing the event and steps required to resolve it may be difficult, resulting in delays and disrupting guests’ experiences. If staff members are frustrated and confused, their frustration may come across to your guests, impacting customer service.

Additionally, you may have a hard time keeping good staff members if you can’t communicate with them effectively. They may get frustrated and leave. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual average employee turnover rate across all industries is between 12-15%, yet the hotel and motel industry reports an employee turnover rate of 73.8%.

With high levels of turnover, you are constantly interviewing and onboarding new candidates. The best candidates may not speak the same language, so you limit your options if you only interview candidates who speak your preferred language.

You also need to onboard staff as quickly as possible to minimize disruptions to guests. Teaching new skills can be difficult if you don’t speak the same language, making the training process slower and lowering team productivity.

Building Effective Hospitality with Push-to-Talk (PTT) 2.0

Push-to-talk communication has been around for decades in the form of radios with a button you push to talk and release to listen. These radios have significant disadvantages. Radios have limited range, do not work well in locations like basements and garages, can’t transmit photos and supporting files, and can’t tell you where members of your team are currently located.

Push-to-Talk 2.0 brings push-to-talk communication to the 21st century, delivering instant high-quality communication powered by Voice AI Bots and platform integrations. With PTT 2.0, you can:

• Communicate over any network and any distance without installing special network equipment or applying for licenses.
• Enable always-on Voice AI Bots to listen and respond to commands, events, and actions.
  • Utilize voice-activated checklists, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and compliance forms.
  • Voice-automate routine work like daily check-ins or hourly status checks to make frontline teams more productive.
  • Digitize emergency alerts, location breach notifications, and lone worker monitoring to keep employees safer.
• Share all relevant information, including texts, photos, videos, PDFs, etc.
• Use mapping and real-time location to know where your team is at all times, enabling faster deployment of resources to resolve issues.
• Ensure guests and employees clearly understand each other with bi-directional language translation and transcription.
• React faster in critical situations with real-time communication that reaches everyone on the platform at once, no matter where they are and what they are doing.
• Store all messages for safety, compliance, and incident reporting.

Good communication in the hospitality industry is essential for long-term success. Orion’s PTT 2.0 helps hospitality organizations like The Boca Raton deliver exceptional experiences to their guests by providing the instant ability to cater to the whims, preferences, special requests, and concerns of guests. All staff can easily collaborate to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

The Journey from Radios to Digital Push-to-Talk

Connecting frontline teams with real-time voice is critical, but many organizations struggle to connect deskless workers with team members, management, and the operations center. It is difficult to serve clients and partners when communication breaks down.

Push-to-talk (PTT) technology was introduced roughly 80 years ago with the invention of radio transceivers. With radio transceivers, people could talk to each other across long distances using a mobile device. Push-to-talk technology is simple: users press and hold a button on a handheld device to talk, then let go to listen, instantly transmitting messages to one or many people.

PTT revolutionized communications during World War II, enabling military leaders to communicate to their troops. Today, industries from hospitality and manufacturing to transportation, retail, and security all rely on push-to-talk technology to communicate with deskless workers. Deskless workers are constantly moving throughout their work days and are more difficult to reach than workers who can consistently be found at their desks.

Historically, push-to-talk communication was voice-only, but today the technology includes more intelligence. Modern push-to-talk platforms connect frontline teams with corporate systems and third-party internet services to provide real-time intelligence, enabling deskless workers to better serve customers and perform important tasks.

Radios: The Origin of Push-to-Talk

Traditional push-to-talk solutions include two-way radios that require users to purchase and set up their own network equipment and apply for operating licenses. Radios have significant challenges:

1. They are limited to small usage/reception areas, making it difficult for decentralized and distributed workforces in industries like transportation, where vehicles and drivers are constantly on the move. In these decentralized and distributed industries, workers need to maintain real-time voice communication with dispatch and operation centers.
2. Radios can’t tell dispatchers where drivers or assets are, which vehicles are in motion, or who’s online and listening.
3. With radios, incidents and emergency situations like incapacitations, location breaches, panic alarms — even fires — require manual processing of events and responses. Radios cannot provide automatic safety check-ins, monitoring for incapacitation, and automatic emergency workflows including all-call notifications, notifying headquarters, and enabling bots to begin running safety procedures.
4. Radios can only provide voice communications. Deskless workers often need to send texts, photos, videos, and PDFs while they’re on the job. Being able to send these file types improves communication, reporting, compliance, and productivity.

Walkie-Talkies: More Suitable for Homes than Businesses

Consumers are often familiar with push-to-talk walkie-talkies, which look and operate much like two-way radios but are built with less powerful technology. Walkie-talkies typically fail quickly in business settings because of extremely short communications range, unstable audio quality, and other limitations similar to two-way radios.

Push-to-Talk Apps: The Simple Digital Solution

One recent push-to-talk solution is a simple push-to-talk app for workers’ phones. The app enables users to communicate via push-to-talk using their own cellular or Wi-Fi connection. While they can be convenient, these apps don’t offer encryption or specialized functions that professional organizations need.

Push-to-Talk Platforms

Push-to-Talk platforms solutions deliver more functionality than radios or simple PTT apps. With these platforms, workers can:

1. Communicate over any network and any distance without installing special network equipment or applying for licenses.
2. Share texts, photos, videos, and files in addition to voice messages.
3. Enable mapping and real-time location services so everyone knows where all team members are.

PTT platforms are a huge step forward from radios, but they still lack automation, intelligence, and analytics to help optimize frontline operations.

Push-to-Talk 2.0

Push-to-talk 2.0 (PTT 2.0) is powered by Voice AI Bots and platform integrations to digitize, optimize, and power frontline operations. In addition to voice communication and all the benefits of a PTT platform (multimedia sharing, real-time mapping, etc.), PTT 2.0:

1. Provides value-added services like real-time bi-directional language translation and transcription.
2. Voice-automates routine work to make frontline teams more productive.
3. Calls for help in emergencies, automates safety check-ins, monitors for incapacitation, and tracks geofence location breach alerts. Always-ready Emergency Response Bots listen for voice commands and create multi-step workflows to intelligently manage and coordinate complex actions across teams during an emergency.
4. Automates previously manual procedures like pre-ride vehicle inspections and radio checks required for safety and compliance, eliminating manual radio checks.
5. Utilizes Process Automation Bots for voice-activated checklists, standard operating procedures, and compliance forms. These voice-automated processes ensure completion on time, in the right order, by the right staff.
6. Augments employee intelligence with Voice Bots that have instant access to knowledge bases. Workers can access information dynamically (e.g. employee request), or it can be automatically triggered (e.g., event, geofence breach, etc.) or intelligently routed (e.g., data- or application-driven, IoT sensor alerts, etc.) to deliver the utmost value to the frontline worker.

PTT 2.0 technology has standard end-to-end encryption and can be deployed over public networks, private cloud networks, or onsite at a specific set of locations.

PTT 2.0 Use Cases

PTT 2.0 can benefit organizations of any size, but it’s critical for companies with large frontline teams that require reliable communication. It is a voice-first communication method, so deskless workers can communicate without stopping what they are doing or moving to a different location. It is easy to activate and enables quick, efficient communication with one person or an entire team. If supporting documents are required, workers can attach documents, images, or any additional information the team needs.

PTT 2.0 also provides real-time employee mapping to improve employee safety. You can improve workflows and processes using PTT 2.0 analytics and save time during emergencies with automated safety protocols.

Some examples include:

1. Security operations officers and dispatchers use push-to-talk to communicate quickly as they protect the physical security of a worksite. This webinar examines how security teams use push-to-talk.
2. On-call transportation and delivery vehicle fleets coordinate via push-to-talk to dynamically dispatch pickups of people or packages. With PTT, drivers can stay hands-free and don’t have to stop to make phone calls or send text messages.
3. Retail workers use push-to-talk to help customers find the perfect product by querying inventory with voice commands instead of disappearing to search for what’s in stock.
4. Hospitality teams keep hotels and resorts running smoothly, using push-to-talk to coordinate all their teams and delight their guests with great service. Learn how The Boca Raton uses PTT 2.0 to provide frontline communications across various departments, including housekeeping, engineering, food and beverage, security, events, recreation, and concierge.
5. Defense organizations use advanced push-to-talk capabilities to coordinate their field teams and improve situational awareness. This video presentation demonstrates how they do it.

What to Look For in a Push-to-Talk Service Provider

The best PTT service providers will help your organization modernize its communication platform and build a path to innovation and digital transformation.

You can evaluate critical PTT features in this Buyers Guide, including all the basic and advanced functionality you should consider, such as:

1. Coverage (communications range) and audio quality
2. Security and encryption
3. Multimedia message support
4. Device support and interoperability
5. Deployment options
6. Automation

Real-time communication, collaboration, and engagement are essential to ensure worker safety, improve productivity and customer satisfaction. Push-to-Talk 2.0 delivers the connectivity and collaboration you need to optimize operations, improve safety, and enhance customer satisfaction.