How Your Work Group Chat Is Quietly Ruining Your Business — Guy Weiss | Why An Always-on Culture Drains Teams, Why Mixed Chats Risk Company Data, How Your Business Data Gets Lost, How Smart Integrations Boost Workflow, What Makes Zenzap Different (#453)

In this episode, we dive into the silent killer of e-commerce team productivity: using personal chat apps for work. 

Guy Weiss, CEO and founder of ZenZap, shares how relying on apps like WhatsApp can quietly harm your business through security risks, employee burnout, and lost data. 

He reveals the "hidden cost" of the "always on" culture and explains how a business-focused messenger can keep your company's secrets safe, integrate with your tools, and make your team highly productive.

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why personal chat apps break work. 
• The hidden cost of "always on" culture. 
• Why personal apps ruin work/life separation. 
• How your business IP is lost on employee phones. 
• Why unstructured group chats cause missed orders. 
• Why staff privacy matters as a business grows. 
• How ZenZap solves complex communication. 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://www.zenzap.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zenzap/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zenzapapp
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@zenzap_app

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/yeym4uyb

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:06
Unknown
We are fighting the sense of chaos, the sense of not getting things done, and the resolution for chaos and not being to the point is Zen and zap, you want to be calm. You want to be super, super essential and easy to use, but you want to be very effective.

00:00:23:08 - 00:00:42:04
Unknown
Hello. Welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. Did you know that your work group chat is quietly killing your business? Missed orders, burnt out team members and customer data sitting in What's up forever? It's a problem many e-commerce teams feel every day, but if they don't see it that it is happening, it's a problem. Today we're going to fix that.

00:00:42:05 - 00:01:03:04
Unknown
Joining these guys is the CEO and founder of Zen Zap. He comes from the world of cyber security and ends up to give e-commerce teams a clean, secure and truly professional way to communicate. So let's get started. Guy, welcome to the show. I thank you as to be here. Guy Let's dive into it. What's the core problem was using personal personal chat apps for work?

00:01:03:06 - 00:01:38:11
Unknown
Well, so I think everybody feels it, but essentially businesses, especially frontline slash people that are heavily lean on mobile, you know, e-commerce, retail stores, they are all running on operating on using tools weren't built for work. We end up using the fastest and efficient way to communicate, and that's probably WhatsApp and text messages. It creates three areas of problems.

00:01:38:11 - 00:02:07:04
Unknown
It's separation through work and private communication. It creates security issues for the business. You know, data that stores on employees phone and whatever sits on their phone, even if they leave. So secrets and your business IP onboarding of boarding employees like so many different aspects of those things and productivity. How do you make sure your business runs smoothly and that you operate on time and in e-commerce?

00:02:07:06 - 00:02:27:21
Unknown
You know, the fast delivery is making sure everything is on time, making sure your inventory is in place. All of those things are directly aligned into how your business operates, and all of those things are broken when using private messaging apps to run and operate with your team. Mm hmm. I want to touch on all of these topics.

00:02:27:21 - 00:02:51:22
Unknown
So let's let's unfold them a little bit for our listeners. First of all, this always on always on culture, specifically with chat. How does that drained a team? What's what's the negative impact there? The hidden cost of always on culture. That's the the worst part of separation because you cannot have a mental disconnection between your personal life and your work life.

00:02:51:22 - 00:03:17:09
Unknown
So you probably feels like a blurred line between work and private communications. And how do you see that? You see that by getting notifications late at night from groups you are part of. But the notifications weren't meant to get to your hands. But you're just you're just there. So it's just like a shout outs every now and then, things that are not really related to you or your responsibilities.

00:03:17:11 - 00:03:39:24
Unknown
Making your private life goes into your workday. So when you work in your I don't know, for me it's my wife sending me a text and says, Hey, can you this and that? And I'm really not available to answer right now, but I'm online, so I really have feel like the obligation to answer, although I'm actually working. But for her, it seems like you're online.

00:03:40:00 - 00:04:10:14
Unknown
You are. What's the problem? Just answer. So a lot of small parts of your day, you're kind of like burned out from this and blurry lines. It's similar to having a Gmail being used for work and private communication. But the the only difference is that we really don't really you're not really you don't have the need to be to answer quickly and to be responsive.

00:04:10:17 - 00:04:39:20
Unknown
And that's making instant messaging and private messaging apps even worse when talking on our business environment. So that's basically where we see the pain, especially for larger organization. Think about 50 people team. So many, so many notifications, so many messages. And because you have no ability to structure the communication. So it all goes back into like, I don't know, one or two or three groups, group chats.

00:04:39:20 - 00:04:59:08
Unknown
So it's a huge mess. In these things, you there's anyways, it's a big structure. I can totally relate to that and I think all of our listeners might have the same problem there. Know you coming from the world of cybersecurity, and I think that's the second point and I want to touch on mixing business and private in one app.

00:04:59:08 - 00:05:23:10
Unknown
It's probably not a good idea when you're dealing with data of your company. Talk me through it. What what's the biggest risk there? Yeah, so I think there two risks. The first risk is I guess to risks. One is for employee, but it's not really a risk, it's just an outcome. And the the big excuse the risk is for the business.

00:05:23:11 - 00:05:58:04
Unknown
Think about you as a business owner running your entire show on let's call it What's up? You can't avoid by sending invoices, claims, Dirty, Dirty talks about customers prices. Suppliers like everything that is basically your business. IP is basically out of your hands when you click send because it is that the message is being delivered to so many devices.

00:05:58:05 - 00:06:23:11
Unknown
Your employees, a.k.a. your employees, stored on their device. And even if you let them go and you ask them or make them live their group chat, everything is stored on their phone until that point of time. So all your data is basically is their data is being backed to their private cloud. So when operating on WhatsApp or any other private message, you gap, I don't have anything against WhatsApp.

00:06:23:11 - 00:06:46:15
Unknown
We love WhatsApp. Basically all your information, all your IP, all of your secrets, all of the the way you operate as a business is not being owned by you. And I think you are working pretty hard to sustainable business and grow a business and basically you're letting your data go every day by choosing to work on those type of platforms.

00:06:46:17 - 00:07:10:05
Unknown
Mm hmm. The second risk is obviously, you know how you control data, how you make sure you can archive data and get an access and search data. How you make sure there's no vulnerability is getting out to know PDFs without being scanned for an antivirus. If somebody sends you or your business a malicious code and like a PDF or a video.

00:07:10:07 - 00:07:29:19
Unknown
So there are cyber security risks and encryption risks, and there are security risks. Like, I mean, how do you secure your data, how you security of business to different risks. And both of them cannot be handled and private messaging apps don't makes perfect sense. And I think if you're running a business, you want to make sure that you keep the business.

00:07:29:19 - 00:07:49:08
Unknown
You might have some turnover of his employees and then all of a sudden you can't access the data anymore because they left and they have it on their phone. So that's the worst case scenario with it, I can imagine. Now, I was he came up with the idea for then zap. Talk me through how did the idea started and what makes the difference between sends up and other direct messaging apps.

00:07:49:10 - 00:08:28:06
Unknown
So we started the company with a simple core. I would say simple, just core business problem. In the tech industry, you have solutions like Slack or Microsoft teams for enterprises, and we find them quite too broad for the use case. All right. It's more for collaboration tools, platforms or other than a quick, simple instant messenger. So that's making it not accessible, not too costly, too complex for the use case of most of the businesses out there, especially retail.

00:08:28:08 - 00:08:53:21
Unknown
And on the other hand, you have private messaging apps, which are amazing in the speed, finesse and how they deliver the experience and and what they can bring in terms of setting up to people, to members and make them run smoothly because everybody knows how to use it. So the the effectiveness there is is amazing. But there are missing parts.

00:08:53:23 - 00:09:18:15
Unknown
You know, those reasons we've we've gone through and lack of structure, lack of security, lack of separation, lack of productivity and connectivity, which we will I guess we'll talk about in a second, makes them not enough good tools. And then we kind of like had this realization where what's up is amazing in the experience level, but they like the business needs and those business collaboration tools are great.

00:09:18:15 - 00:09:43:12
Unknown
On giving CIOs and I.T managers the features, but they forget the user and that's how we decided to kind of like come up with with the idea freezes up and then the names ends up is all right, we want it as simple. Fast feels like personal messaging but actually built for business. And we said okay, so what's the enemy?

00:09:43:12 - 00:10:16:16
Unknown
What are what are we fighting? We're not fighting WhatsApp. We're not fighting teams. We are fighting the the sense of chaos, the sense of not getting things done. And the resolution for chaos and not being to the point is Xen and zap, you want to make you want to be calm, you want to be super, super essential and easy to use, but you want to be very effective.

00:10:16:18 - 00:10:45:11
Unknown
You want to zap things very quickly. So then Zap was was our choice to bring a familiar and accessible chat that is secure and comply that is connected to your work tools and it makes you productive. But in a Zen, in a Zapier way, so everyone knows how to use it, it's simple, it's intuitive, It's it's fun. So that's how we came across this name.

00:10:45:13 - 00:11:08:09
Unknown
I like the name. It's a great idea. And I think it's summarizes what people want and people need. Now, obviously, integrations and you mentioned that integrations APIs are very important for businesses. And as this gap, you said, if you have like for instance, tons of integrations there, what's up? Not that much. So you solve the problem. Tell me about what kind of integrations do you have?

00:11:08:13 - 00:11:35:08
Unknown
How does the integration work? Yeah, so I think as I as I mentioned, integrations is a is a super broad word. You can integrate via APIs and code yourself or vibe codes nowadays and you can do more of an Apple where Apple style product ization where you just like you get 80% of what you want, but it's super easy to access those 80% of the features.

00:11:35:10 - 00:12:04:21
Unknown
We have both ways. We have the APIs and we have an app store within and ends up where you can in few clicks connect any app you use. And I give you the Ecom classic, classic stack and example. You run your business on Shopify, yet you have 20 people running with you and working with you around the clock.

00:12:04:23 - 00:12:38:13
Unknown
You have five, six different dimensions of your business. It's new orders, maybe large orders. You have bad reviews that are getting in the way. You have failed payments, you have end of inventories. So you want to make a reordering. You have so many things and moving parts throughout this journey of setting up a an income business. And I used to own a very large UK e-comm business called everything.

00:12:38:13 - 00:13:07:09
Unknown
So I you used to be one of the owners, so I know what I'm talking about. It's a rough business. So all of those things are being handled in two separate ways. You get notifications, what we call the siloed database. Everything goes through, I don't know, Yacht Pull or Shopify or whatever of Stripe and it stays there. The max is you get an email notification and everybody misses those things.

00:13:07:11 - 00:13:34:00
Unknown
And then you have the team that is, you know, having operates in a group chat that is separate from the business. So think about onboarding 2 to 5 clicks and everything is out of the box ready for you and your team with the right people in the right context. Getting the right messages on time to support smooth operation and make things run efficiently.

00:13:34:02 - 00:13:54:19
Unknown
So if there's an inventory for a specific shoe, the right team will get a notification to the phone. Nobody misses it and nobody can tell you, Well, I know 100 messages went through this group chat. I missed it. No, it's a specific base for those specific items. It's your responsibility. And I can see those whenever you see that.

00:13:54:19 - 00:14:22:19
Unknown
So you had to be responsible for that. So I think about connectivity is not just to integrate, is to enable workflows in how you business operate, be better. And that's how we see integrations. Integrations is how is not the what the what is to make e-com businesses run smoothly with a team that operates around those jobs that needs to get done on a daily basis.

00:14:23:00 - 00:14:45:03
Unknown
So that's basically how we view integrations and what are we aiming for. And I can get some specifics, but it's all like, you know, a few clicks and the integrated no need to be technical, no need to know APIs, just like super easy. So it's an out of the box main workflows for e-commerce to run smoothly with their team.

00:14:45:05 - 00:15:01:19
Unknown
I love that you mentioned that e-commerce business is a rough business and that you have been in for so long. I think a lot of all of our business is not nodding like I do their heads and saying, Yeah, it's rough. I just had a long call yesterday with somebody running a medium sized business and yeah, it's a rough business.

00:15:01:19 - 00:15:30:09
Unknown
There's so many moving elements and parts in there. You know, I can share a story, a personal story. I started the after being six years in cyber security, I started a bootstrap company called Stuck Media. We used to help large into larger marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, to drive their quality traffic to their sites. We were very big and the company got acquired pretty quickly.

00:15:30:09 - 00:16:03:21
Unknown
After two and a half years, we had a lot of price comparison websites and product search back in 2015 and and since then I'm very close to e-commerce and I am an investor in many B2C businesses, so I see many of those rise and fall and I see the complexity. And I used to run a company called, as I told you everything, £5, where we sold a fashion, fast fashion for £5 in the UK.

00:16:03:23 - 00:16:29:04
Unknown
So I know how hard e-com business is and I know what it takes to run the operations of it because successful e-commerce business is all about operations, is all about making sure the moving parts and everything is runs like a symphony. So I really, really feel the pain and I really, I really know what I'm talking about. So I should very confident by single stuff.

00:16:29:08 - 00:16:51:05
Unknown
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So communication is the key there. And talking about communication to talk me through a basically you're working with a lot of brands, different size brands is what kind of results when it comes to productivity and better communication. Did they see when they switched over to your solution? First of all, we work with not just ecommerce businesses, right?

00:16:51:06 - 00:17:15:23
Unknown
We work with, for example, we have an e-commerce businesses that integrates a monday or Shopify or Asana. So we have also project management companies and, you know, architects and whatever. But when I drill down to e-commerce, the general rule is 70% reduction in the time to onboarding new employee. And why is that? Because they have access to history.

00:17:16:00 - 00:17:45:11
Unknown
They can do a search within the chat and so when they have a question, they don't need to shout out in the group chat. And as they have all the historical data being delivered to their hands super easily separate, quickly. We like local small business, so onboarding new employees is a is a huge thing for for, for businesses we cannot quantify really.

00:17:45:11 - 00:18:13:14
Unknown
But and it's actually interesting for me to check but the time and the net promoter score of I look at sends up and I and I try to measure it as a net promoter score like NPS. But to do a reverse NPS, not saying how much how satisfied I you as ends up by asking now that you have signs up, how how angry would you be if I'll take this from you and you revert back to what's up?

00:18:13:19 - 00:18:37:14
Unknown
And that's that's the perfect question. And the answer is 100%. Don't do that. It's just go home. So that's the first thing. But regarding we see a quicker time for handling what the what they say is tickets, because they have internal tickets like that review who will going to to go to comment What's the comment. Let's chat about what we want to answer for.

00:18:37:14 - 00:18:57:00
Unknown
And so all of those things being been shrinking to just get things done. I'm not sure how to quantify it, but I'll come back with an answer, come back with an answer for that. I think for our listeners, I mean, after we were talking for a while, it becomes very, very clear that this is something that is a must have in the business.

00:18:57:02 - 00:19:22:03
Unknown
A question for my side is when is the right moment to switch over to your tool and is it any kind of homework that the brand the business needs to do before they can get started? All right. So that's a beautiful question because I think for specifically for e-commerce, let's split the conversation into a very small team. One, two, three, four people and more than that, right.

00:19:22:05 - 00:20:05:14
Unknown
We have businesses of 800,000 people working on ends up and even more, by the way, we have hospitals and etc., etc., hotels and other other categories. But I think that as a small team you have the benefits of making operations smoother around the events going in your business, and they are making you very effective of how you operate around those events for larger team, it also creates a good boundary of a digital workspace for this company as a professional place for us to work, you know, you handle to dos the handle.

00:20:05:16 - 00:20:30:03
Unknown
And of course using those events is a part of of of of the workflows. But for small teams, it's not about team communication. It's more about being an efficient business and try to grow as quick as possible and compete with incumbents or with with with your larger competitors. And for for for the for the bigger ones is to create a culture, is to create a way to work and operate.

00:20:30:03 - 00:21:09:00
Unknown
Because a small team is not like a 50, 60, 7000 people team. It's a different age. Partly. I'll just give you an example. Privacy Are stuff's privacy actually like teamwork and privacy? You think about somebody from our sales being in a group chat with a girl. I don't know from a customer support and now having a number and can show up in her WhatsApp privately just because he wants to in our private chat and creates harassment so that those kind of issues are a big thing when you grow up as a company.

00:21:09:02 - 00:21:30:15
Unknown
So you will want to have the high personal details flag on on the ends up. So even if we work in the same place, I don't need to have your phone number. I can ask you for your phone number, but I need to have it as a result of being in the same group. So that's that's where the where the link regarding how quick you grandma can use ends up.

00:21:30:15 - 00:22:05:16
Unknown
It's easy as WhatsApp you can migrate. Actually we have an ad coming soon with with that when my son tried to use ends up but it's a zero friction to on board with companies at the board in less than an hour you can migrate all your WhatsApp groups into the ends up you. We can import thousands of messages and a get control of those messages and data be use them for you I to start learning from them and make them as a knowledge base for your company and make the transition smoother.

00:22:05:16 - 00:22:24:09
Unknown
So you continue from the same place in stop. You need to create new works. So we allow all of those things to happen. Super quick. Onboarding is is a non-issue. For me, that sounds like a no brainer to use. Sends up. Now. Key question is how does your pricing work? What kind of pricing structure do you have? The products is for free.

00:22:24:11 - 00:22:52:09
Unknown
It has almost no limitations. So as a team you can use it for free for as long as you wish with how many users you would like to. You can upgrade into two types of plans. The first one is pro, second is business. You get extra features in each, but they're not a must with, I don't know, 70% of our use of our workspaces uses the free version.

00:22:52:09 - 00:23:19:13
Unknown
It's amazing for them. So end the cost is super cheap. You're just to give you a sense for the plan, which is super extensive for 100 people. You would pay around, I think $100 per month. So it's yeah, it's it's incredibly cheap as I told you sends ends up wants to be accessible and affordable for everyone. So we're not going to be pricey.

00:23:19:15 - 00:23:45:07
Unknown
We want to be a tool for real operators, real people, real businesses, not for the tech industry. And not that I have something against, but there are so many businesses out there that deserve a proper communication tool and we don't need to rob them with high prices. We have enough market to chase a huge market. So we're going to stay with low prices.

00:23:45:09 - 00:24:11:23
Unknown
Okay, Perfect. No final question before we come to the end of our coffee break today is where can people go and find you Just below it's YouTube. It's you just go to App Store or you go to Google and you'll see some some content we invest a lot in in them videos to make as I told you accessible to make all the data accessible and easy to understand.

00:24:12:00 - 00:24:34:08
Unknown
We have videos for managers and for business owners that explain to them what's the upside, who needs it, who doesn't need it, who needs to stay wherever they are? We have video for teams. If you want to involve your team, you can share a quick video video team to tell them why they want to have this up in their work life and why it's good for them.

00:24:34:10 - 00:24:53:22
Unknown
So we have content available across the web. We're super active in creating easy and fun content, so you can just check it out. Perfect for our listeners, I will make it even easier to find the links in the show notes. And then Zanzibar is just one click away. Guy, thanks so much for your time today. I think it's a no brainer that it's a free.

00:24:53:22 - 00:25:24:02
Unknown
You can use it for free. It has all these features in there. And for our listeners, go check it out. I don't think you will regret it and you probably will move away from what's or whatever you have right now. To Suzanne, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you. Thank you.