People are used to seeing read receipts in WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook
and other consumer messengers but read receipts are strangely absent in business messengers such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and other popular collaboration workspace platforms (with an exception of Stork). We ran a survey to see what people in general and knowledge workers in particular think of read receipts in a business environment with Twitter and LinkedIn results below:
Amazingly, 100% of business folks want to see read receipts in a business setting, here are some of the reasons:
Sense of confirmation
Read receipts give the sender of the message a sense of confirmation that their message was not just received, but actually read. It's a bit more complicated to implement read receipts for channels than for one-to-one messages but the benefits of having read receipts both for direct messages and channel messages far outweighs the development costs. Enter asynchronous communications within a company when video and voice messages are posted to a channel and the author, manager or not, wants to know who viewed or listened to a video.
Information is not overlooked
Read receipts is a wonderful tool in a business context, especially when it comes to ensuring that important messages are being seen and acted upon. Read receipts can provide confirmation that a message has been received and can help to ensure that important information is not missed or overlooked.
More accuracy and promptness
One can get a better understanding of who is aware of the current status of a project or task and who needs to be updated, read receipts can help a team player to encourage more timely and accurate communication as people will be more likely to respond promptly if they know that their messages are being tracked.
Awareness within a team
Read receipts can be useful for messages in a channel, especially in cases where it is important to know who has seen a message and when. For example, if you are using a channel to communicate updates or important information about a project, read receipts can help you to confirm that the message has been received and seen by all relevant team members.
Additionally, it's important to keep in mind that read receipts are not always an accurate indicator of whether a message has been read or acted upon. Some people may read a message but not take any action, or they may not see the message or a video until much later. It's important to use read receipts in conjunction with other forms of communication and follow-up to ensure that important messages are being seen and acted upon.
At Stork.AI we provide read receipts in chats, channels and not just for messages but also for recorded conference calls that are played back later by other members of a workspace. Our customers find it quite useful. What do you think?
