The 6 Most Important Communication Channels in 2025

mohamedasar Published On March 7th, 2025 Tech Talks

Explore the six different types of communication channels in this guide, including video calls, instant messaging, and SMS. Find the one that best suits your needs.

3 P.M., Feb 17, 2025, I was in the middle of an important client presentation over video call. Suddenly my internet connection dropped. 

As I quickly tried to reconnect, I realized the client was calling my phone. They had received my text message about the situation and suggested we continue via phone call instead. 

We finished the presentation successfully, and later I followed up with an email summarizing our discussion.

One question stuck with me. What if we did not have multiple communication channels? 

I would have either missed the presentation or the million-dollar client. 

Multi-channel communication is turning into a basic need for most businesses. When one channel fails, others become lifelines.

In this article, I’ll walk you through 6 main types of communication channels that every scale of industries use. If you are in business, this guide will help you figure out which of these channels you’ll need for your team. 

Let’s get started! 

What Is a Communication Channel?

Before we get into the types, let me clarify what a communication channel is:

A communication channel is the medium through which information flows between people, whether within a company (internal) or with external stakeholders like customers and vendors. 

These channels are nothing but the pathways for conveying ideas, sharing information, making decisions, and achieving tremendously bigger goals as an organization.

You can classify communication channels in 2 ways:

• Internal channels: The employees, leadership, and team members within your company can communicate with each other through this channel. 
• External channels: Customers, partners, prospects, and clients outside your organization can get in touch with you using this channel. 

This is simple logic, yet you’ll need a strategic approach to implement the right channel for the right purpose.

Why is it necessary? 

“Communication is the oxygen of a distributed company. If you don’t invest in clear processes, you’ll struggle to build a successful remote team.“

– Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier

Additionally, there are statistics and reports that back the fact – it really matters to choose the right communication channel, especially in remote work environments. 

Let’s take a quick look at them:

What benefits do you get from Omnichannel Communication Channels?

• Continuity across different touchpoints
• Meeting users where they are most comfortable
• Redundancy when primary channels fail
• Comprehensive data collection for analytics

64% of business leaders believe that effective communication across multiple channels increases team productivity.

Top 6 Essential Communication Channels For Your Business

Let’s explore the six most effective communication channels that every business should consider implementing:

1. Face-to-Face Communication

Meeting people in-person is a sophistication these days. However, with traffic, timeline, and travel expenses considered, online video meetings are turning more powerful to connect businesses and prospects effectively. 

Internally, teams working in different parts of the world can quickly get on a video call to say hi and share reports.

If you are a developer building communication apps, you can plan to incorporate non-verbal communication features – like high-quality video, reaction buttons, and visual cues. This is one of the most effective ways to make virtual meetings as effective as in-person meetings. 

“According to research, over 95% of workers agree that communication directly affects their workplace effectiveness (Expert Market).“

When will you need a face-to-face communication channel?

1. For executive-level meetings
2. To conduct team-building activities
3. Virtual calls that can close high-value deals

2. Instant Messaging

This one is everyone’s favorite. Team chat apps having features to directly send a message to another employee or a client/ customer can make processes quicker and efficient.  Honestly, not everyone likes to get on long calls, while they can send out a simple text and get replies in real-time. 

If you are working for an organization or building one, I’m sure you’ll use one of these messaging apps – Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google chat or Discord for secure communication. These tools are not just for simple DMing but act as a central hub for overall communication of an organization. 

When will you need Instant messaging as your communication channel?

1. To get your team to collaborate
2. For quick questions and instant responses for them
3. To update the status of a project/ task.
4. For building team culture through casual conversations. 
5. For sharing documents, resources and links.

3. Text Messaging (SMS)

SMS might seem outdated. But not for businesses. You can notice that most businesses use SMS as a medium for communicating updates, offers and reminders to react to a customer even if they are offline. Unlike in-app chats, SMS guarantees that your business message is delivered to the customer no matter what. 

They may not pick your call, or turn on their internet. Even in these instances, text messaging ensures that you can deliver your message to your team or your customer without the worry of getting unnoticed. 

In short, the numbers speak for themselves: 89% of people read SMS messages within 30 minutes of receiving them, with 34% reading them within five minutes. This makes SMS 134% more likely to be read than email.

When will you need text messaging as your communication channel?

1. To send out time-sensitive messages to your customers
2. Reminding on upcoming appointments
3. For two-factor authentication
4. To confirm a sign-up/ successful payment with simple messages

What are the Limitations?

• There are limitations on the number of words you type and send 
• Sometimes its costier than other digital channels
• On and off, there are privacy concerns like GDPR and TCPA
• You can format the messages in SMS as you do in instant messaging

Overall, pay careful attention to compliance issues and user preferences when implementing SMS capabilities. 

You can also show that you respect your customer’s boundaries by building opt-in/opt-out mechanisms, frequency controls, and personalization options. This builds trust and a positive experience to customers without giving them a spammy experience. 

4. Phone Calls

Phone calls are absolutely a fundamental communication channel. Maybe it was a trunk call earlier, but now it has transformed into a handy mobile phone call. The switchover from traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a good reason they are still relevant today. 

When will you need phone calling as your communication channel?

1. Situations where texting can’t communicate the message clearly
2. Making the client-team relationship stronger
3. For follow-up after meetings or emails

Modern VoIP phone systems offer features like:

• Call queuing and routing
• Automatic call recording
• Integration with CRM systems
• Analytics and reporting
• Multi-device access (take calls from any device)

If you’d like to build a VoIP phone communication system, I’d recommend you to focus on seamless transitions between channels (like escalating from chat to call). To do this the easy way is to go for reliable VoIP APIs that are easy to implement and can significantly enhance user experience.

5. Video Conferencing

Video conferencing has seen explosive growth, especially after the pandemic. Zoom reported a 326% revenue increase in just one year during this period, highlighting how important this communication channel is. 

In terms of team communication, this is a good number. People can easily get to see reports, meet clients in some faraway country, and customers can have a live demo of the product they’ll purchase. 

Even if the person is not present at that place, businesses happen with video conferencing. If you are building video conferencing for your business, make sure that you focus on bandwidth optimization, error recovery, and accessibility features. These are some of the factors that your competitors now might be lacking. 

If you’d like to go furthermore, implement AI-powered background noise suppression and automatic transcription – your teams and customers will love the experience on call. 

When will you need video conferencing as your communication channel?

1. For conducting members with team members working remotely
2. To present proposals to clients 
3. To conduct training sessions for new hires
4. For candidate interviews
5. To host webinars and large-scale events

6. Live Chat

Need help? – enter live chat. This feeling makes your customer trust your business more, knowing that you got their back when they need help with your business. 

Immediacy is a factor that can change how 

Live chat has transformed customer service by providing immediate assistance through websites and apps. Between 74% and 85% of companies now use live chat to connect with customers.

When will you need live chat as your communication channel?

1. To set up customer support on your website
2. For sales inquiries on websites
3. Providing assistance when onboarding customers
4. To engage your website visitors proactively  

How To Choose The Right Communication Channel For Your Business? 

You’ve got ample options to select the appropriate channels for your business. Let me give you an easy framework to help you guide your decision:

1. Know What Your Audience & Team Wants

Before setting up your communication system, it is very important to understand the needs and wants of your people who’ll use your platform channels.

• Which channel do they prefer? 
• Is the channel you pick necessary? 
• Where are they located and will the channel connect them from right there? 
• What features and capabilities do they offer?

These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself to arrive at a decision. 

You can identify these answers easily by having a quick discussion with your internal team. For external audiences like customers and clients, you’ll need to get their demographic data through surveys or analytic tools. 

2. Analyse The Security & Privacy Requirements

If people are going to have conversations on your platform, it means they are going to register an account with their personal/ professional details. 

These users will also have discussions that may be sensitive to their personal, professional or any confidential information. 

What if their security is at stake? 

It must not be, at any circumstance. 

Build communication channels that can exchange messages/ calls as end-to-end encrypted data. 

Choose secure communication providers that can offer SDKs and APIs built compatible to GDPR, HIPAA and data retention policies. 

3. Select Based On The Nature Of Your Message

Each channel dominates in unique messaging/ calling functionalities: 

For example, 

👉 You’ll need video conferencing or face-to-face meetings for discussing important projects or concepts. 

👉 If you need to send/ receive updates urgently, you might want phone calls or SMS.

👉 For not-to-urgent communication, and for larger groups, you can simply send out emails. 

👉 You’ll need instant messaging for quick, short and instant exchange of conversation. 

If your customers need help and resolve their queries immediately, you may need to implement Live chat or contact center software. 

You’ll have to analyse which of these communication channels are necessary for your business and implement them strategically.

4. Assess Your Technical Infrastructure

When you implement your communication channel, you will have to make sure you have a; the necessary front-end and back-end components. 

This may include, 

• Hardware requirements like phones or servers 
• A solid internet connection
• Software like VoIP apps and chat apps
• A powerful team of developers who can support the implementation. 

5. Establish Community Guidelines

There are a few corrupt ones out there, who might disturb the integrity of your app and the experience of your target users. 

For this, you’ll need to set up a few policies:

• You can set rules to use specific channels for unique types of communication. 
• Protocols to communicate after-hours
• Paths of escalation when primary channels fail
• Documentation that explain how to use these communication channels

These guidelines can keep the boundaries intact and ensure that your platform is safe for users. 

Building vs. Buying Communication Solutions

Now comes the big question: How to implement these communication channels?

As the heading suggests, you can either build the entire platform all by yourself or buy communication SDKs and APIs to develop a full chat platform. 

How to make this decision?

Let’s analyse when to build and when to buy:

When To Build: 

Your entire business model centers around communication and you need to customize it to the max to deliver the experience you desire to give your users. 

You aim for deeper integrations with proprietary systems and need to have specific security and compliance systems in place. 

When To Buy:

When you’ve got no time! 

You need to build a communication system so you can connect your team or customers at the earliest, so you wouldn’t miss out on potential business conversions. 

Both your budget and development resources are limited. 

However, some businesses go for a hybrid approach, using enterprise instant messaging software like MirrorFly. These providers come with almost all the core features along with options to customize their APIs and SDKs. 

If you need more details on this, here we go:

Why Choose MirrorFly for Omnichannel Communication?

MirrorFly has been in this game for over 16+ years and is still getting stronger as the best CPaaS provider. 

It strategically approaches every customer, by understanding their unique needs. When you onboard with MirrorFly, you’ll get on a detailed call with real-time communication experts, who’ll analyse your business, and recommend what works best for you. 

MirrorFly takes this as a responsibility to deliver what the customers require, rather than just selling out a product. That’s one of the reasons why 1000s of brands still choose this CPaaS pioneer, to drive millions of conversations in their businesses.

If you wonder what you’ll get from MirrorFly to implement omnichannel communication, take a quick look at its offerings:

• 100% customizable communication solution
• Integration in less than 48 hrs
• Unlimited chats and calls
• Topic-based chat (Buyer-seller chat)
• Custom security
• WebRTC, SIP/VoIP calling
• Upload files of any size/ format
• Full data & source code ownership 
• Flexible hosting (On-premise/ On-cloud)

Sounds like a deal? Wait no more! Get on a call with MirrorFly experts to get their communication SDKs or hire their team right away. Your business deserves the best solution, after all!