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.

Voice-enabled devices are appearing everywhere in the technology landscape. Smart speakers, TVs, gaming consoles, watches, and of course our own smartphones all have voice technology built into them now. “Voice is primed to become a productivity powerhouse,” as Orion CEO Jesse Robbins wrote in Forbes earlier this year. And enterprise push-to-talk is a cornerstone of voice-powered productivity.

The massive trend is about more than just voice calling; it’s about getting relevant information quickly, controlling equipment from a distance, and having always-on access to groups. More and more enterprise companies are looking for ways to use voice technology to their advantage.

Orion Push to Talk, our workforce collaboration app for frontline teams, provides just that. Orion Push to Talk is a simple, powerful enterprise push-to-talk solution for efficient group collaboration and access to business systems all in one. Teams can connect anytime, anywhere with reliable push-to-talk communication and business automations — using only workers’ smartphones.

Now let’s look at 5 ways enterprise companies are succeeding with enterprise push-to-talk.

1. Keeping employees heads-up and productive

Enterprise businesses depend on the dedication of teams, not solo contributors, to accomplish goals and complete projects. And those teams work most productively when they stay connected to each other while performing their individual jobs every day. But it’s important that the voice tools they use are heads-up, not distracting and time-consuming. Traditional tools like email, voice calls, and texting are all heads-down, whereas enterprise push-to-talk helps workers stay in the moment.

With enterprise push-to-talk solutions like Orion Push to Talk, workers don’t have to check their phones for updates. Voice messages from managers or colleagues play instantly through phone speakers and headphones, even when the phone screen is locked. So it’s easy for workers to stay focused on a project until the moment they’re needed by their team.

Unlimited communication range also enables enterprise teams to connect anytime and anywhere. This means that coworkers can still take advantage of the high-bandwidth communication value of voice without having to schedule meetings or constantly locate each other in the workplace to check in. Enterprise managers using push-to-talk instantly connect with their teams in the moment, giving and getting important information. Then employees can immediately get back to work.

2. Using voice-driven workflows to accelerate work

Unlike legacy push-to-talk solutions, smart push-to-talk solutions like Orion Push to Talk help enterprise teams to do more than talk. People accomplish increasingly complex tasks by using only their voice.

For example, a multinational mining company uses smart push-to-talk to fill out safety checklists for daily tasks. In doing so, they transformed what used to be a pen-and-paper process into a voice-driven process. When a worker is preparing to begin a routine but hazardous task, they tell Orion to “start my next task.” Then, guided by a voice bot, they run through a safety checklist to ensure they have everything they need to begin work safely. As a result, Orion Push to Talk has broadened the company’s opportunities to share information between teams and even conduct department-wide safety reviews.

Another example of how smart push-to-talk solutions enhance work communications with data is through instant translation. Enterprise push-to-talk with instant translation enables workers to speak their preferred language and be heard in their coworkers’ preferred languages. Organizations can also choose to add profession-specific vocabulary, such as medical dictionaries, to their translation solution. Instant translation is a huge benefit to globally distributed teams who may sometimes face a language barrier.

3. Gaining visibility into team activity with location and status tracking

Smart push-to-talk solutions offer enterprise team leaders two important ways to stay in tune with their teams. The first is GPS Location Tracking, which gives managers insight into their team members’ physical locations. Being able to quickly assess every worker’s location on a map can help managers ease daily planning, save time when unexpected needs arise, and reduce chatter.

The second is worker status. With traditional radio solutions, it was impossible to tell which team members were actively listening in talk groups. With smart push-to-talk solutions, managers instantly read each employee’s status: blue for online group members, yellow for muted members, and gray for offline members. Managers also easily page workers from within the mobile interface, eliminating the need to waste time figuring out how to get employees back online.

4. Flexibility: choosing the right communications tool for each worker

A good enterprise push-to-talk solution also offers flexibility with team access. Workers perform a variety of roles for your enterprise organization, so why not offer them a variety of ways to stay connected? A factory floor worker might need a push-to-talk wearable, while her manager who tends to work at a desk might be more productive with a smartphone-based solution. Smart push-to-talk solutions can serve the needs of both roles. It’s better for the organization and the team if employees can get instant, high-quality voice communication without having to use the same type of device or the same network connection.

Another aspect of device flexibility to consider is legacy solutions like land mobile radios (LMR). Traditional radios typically take months or years to select, configure, and deploy. Also, there’s often a corresponding training cost with legacy communications solutions. For companies that already have legacy solutions in place, they can still add smart push-to-talk easily, because new solutions have interoperability built-in. For an organization choosing its communication solutions for the first time, it makes sense to choose smart push-to-talk solutions that work with more devices than just radios.

Today’s communications solutions are easier to use than ever. With enterprise push-to-talk solutions like Orion, your team can set up devices and start talking quickly, whether they bring their own phones and tablets or use smartphones issued by the organization. Setting up a push-to-talk solution for an organization takes minutes or hours now, instead of months to years as it did in the past. That way, managers don’t need to force everyone on the team to fit the same mold, and organizations don’t have to rip out existing communications solutions.

5. Choosing security-focused solutions

Managers choosing communications tools for their enterprise teams must consider security and privacy. Using unsecured walkie-talkie apps designed for consumers means risking the loss of financially sensitive data, intellectual property, or personally identifiable data. It’s important to choose solutions designed with security in mind.

Enterprise companies choose end-to-end encrypted push-to-talk solutions for their team communications. Strong encryption is one security feature that makes it difficult for outside parties to gain access to valuable enterprise data. Additionally, it’s important that the communications provider not hold its customers’ encryption keys or retain data for long periods of time. Encrypted solutions like Orion use streaming protocols to limit provider exposure to company data.

Individual security features are important for team communication, too. With smart and secure push-to-talk solutions, enterprise managers control access to groups through a central command interface. They also rely on a range of privacy and permissions settings so team leaders can easily create groups, add and remove users, and set speaking modes such as Single Speaker Mode and Listen-Only. Additionally, managers and employees listen to messages privately using headphones and other accessories.

Learn more about Orion enterprise push-to-talk

Enterprise organizations increasingly count on Orion to keep their teams in sync. Learn more about how Orion can help enterprise teams and request a demo to get started.