In every business venture, effective communication has always been an integral component in order to become more successful. Having the right medium and tools in being able to learn how to communicate effectively is essential in order to achieve more goals and attain more objectives in the business organization.
Communication is considered both an art and a science. There has been that old adage which says that effective communication is 20% about what you know and 80% of what you feel about what you know. In order to be more effective communicators, we need to be able to understand the message that we are trying to get across.
This is because when we communicate, we don’t just transmit mere words and information. We also transmit how we feel about the information and our understanding of it. We cannot give what we do not have so just merely passing on words or information, which we ourselves do not even understand, would be dangerous.
Communicating effectively to both internal and external customers needs to be developed by every individual in order to contribute and provide more value to the objectives of the company.
Internal Communication
Being able to communicate effectively to your internal constituents is important since being able to get the message across easily to your teammates would help make operational work easier be more efficient. There is nothing more wasteful than time wasted due to work that was not properly done that needs to be re-worked because of miscommunication.
In an age wherein we have a lot of options to communicate, we need to be able to understand what medium of communication would be effective for each member of our team. Certain personality types have a preference for certain mediums so it would be important to know which method works best for certain personality types.
Some people are visual; these are those who prefer seeing or reading the information. Others are auditory; that is, they like hearing the information. While some others are kinesthetic; that is, they prefer face-to-face encounters when receiving information.
Having a team that effectively collaborates and communicates would certainly place a major step forward towards the success of your business operations.
External Communication
If it is important to communicate internally to ensure operational excellence, it is also important to communicate to external customers effectively to achieve higher customer satisfaction hence greater profitability.
External customers or shareholders are the source of revenue for the company. Without the external customer, there would be no business. Winning the customer and providing them with a good product and service experience would make them stay and they would even recommend your product or service to others.
Communication is even more important especially in the case of customer service business processes. Clients would normally call customer service when certain expectations are not being met on the product or service that they availed.
It is important to have really effective communication skills when delivering the customer service request since the customer’s experience with the representative would spell his or her experience with the whole company.
External customers usually have the tendency to limit themselves to their one encounter with customer service associates. Therefore, it is doubly important for the associate to have excellent communication skills, being able to communicate and get their message across to the customer and helping them in what they need.
Call-To-Action
In order to be able to communicate more effectively, the following actions are necessary and must be kept in mind:
- It is important to be prepared whenever you are about to relay important communication. Choose your words wisely. Be firm and consistent.
- Write down details for clarification. Communicating requires listening; therefore, in order to make sure that the information passed on is a legitimate source, it would be important to write down what you need to convey before saying it. It should be helpful for the messenger to be able to remember the details again.
- Make sure you are uninterrupted. Distraction can spell the difference between understanding and misunderstanding. We need to make sure that there is
- Be precise. Saying the right words spells a lot. You do not really have to say a lot of eloquent words but just to keep your words at the minimum but precise and effective would do wonders for your team.
- Reinforce your messages by consistency and repetition. It is always helpful to be able to relay your intended message more effectively by repeating the message again and again.
- Request for confirmation. Ensure that your listener understands what you are saying by asking them questions that would confirm that they understand. Reiterate to the concerned receiver of the message and request for acknowledgement until the message is confirmed that it has been fully understood.