The essential instrument for a businessman is proper communication. You can fail in achieving your goal without proper business communication with your employees and customers. Proper communication is vital when you’re doing business. An employer who can communicate with employees could gain a better working relationship. Your staff’s attitude and the way they handle work would also improve. Aside from that, proper communication will keep the data flow easy in your job.
Types Of Business Communication
However, business communication doesn’t solely focus on you and your employees. Before knowing what tips to do for improving business communication, it would help to understand the following types:
External Communication
External communication includes prospects, sellers, partners, or consumers. Here, you may need to use technological advances such as a more advance phone system. There are many websites to learn about these services such as www.openphone.co which you can check out.
Internal Lateral Communication
Internal lateral communication occurs among employees in the company of the same level. As of today, many types of communication can be used. The most common is the email, followed by chats, messaging, and other software used for communication. You can see this constantly within a department. In addition, repeated communication between workers is the key for participation and efficiency.
Internal Downward Communication
Internal downward communication is when communication comes from the higher-ranking head of the company to the staff. This is in the form of a memo, letter or verbal command. The head of the company directs the communication in a brief and concise manner with the workers. One example of this is a memorandum about a new policy in the company like on safety and new rules.
Internal Upward Communication
Internal upward communication is seen between a junior and a manager or between employees of lower rank to leaders with higher positions in the company. This usually includes forms and reports that will be submitted to the leaders or managers by their staff. Examples are statistics on website visitors, social media participation, or total leads as part of a marketing report.
Ways to Enhance Business Communication
Whether you’re communicating with employees, higher-ups or customers, you need to improve how you do it. Thus, doing the following tips may help:
Be Brief and Understandable
When you’re talking to a colleague about work, you need to think and include what is your objective all about. You need to talk directly and say what your communication is about. To avoid confusion, you need to be frank and direct when speaking. You have to be particular in giving information so that the people who are listening to you will easily understand. For instance, sending email may be misunderstood at times. Thus, you must include the data needed whenever you’re sending an email. An incomplete email would lead to misunderstanding with your co-worker and may take up more of their time in doing the job.
You also need to be specific. For example, instead of saying “You have to pass the requirements as soon as possible,” try saying, “You need to pass the requirements at 4 p.m.” This will avoid confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the person receiving your message. Remember that giving the exact details in an email is useful in attaining what you want to say to these colleagues or even to your customers.
Invest in Communicating and Collaboration Tools
Whenever you receive a communication, you could get lost in all the voluminous data, failing to see some important messages. There are many examples of a collaborative tool used to trim communications, make relevant business relationships, and collaborate important projects. These tools will help you communicate better while avoiding missing messages.
Include Social Media
A strong aid for business communication with consumers is social media. It improves inner collaboration. You should inspire your colleagues to share fascinating stories about your company. It also helps if they will “like”, comment, and share your business page so that it can gain more exposure. Social media can help more people understand your company. For instance, you can use videos on social media to engage more customers. These will help in engaging your co-workers to educate other potential customers lurking in social media. This will also help your colleagues know about the company.
Avoid One-way Communication
A lot of businesses use a top-down approach at work. This has been usual for a long time. This type of communication not only controls what you say, but it also assists you. There’s no proper discussion. Remember that you’re now in the modern time, and communication is important in attaining goals in a workplace setting. Therefore, to achieve good communication, ask for recommendation, advice, and comments in meetings. Co-workers will be encouraged to participate more, and they’ll put more effort in completing a job. Include also your co-workers’ ideas and thoughts to make discussions more interesting. This could help in improving your business operations. Letting your colleagues participate would encourage them to enjoy more in working in your company. Aside from that, they’ll feel valued in your company.
Be Accurate
Writing emails is a trouble-free job. When writing accurately, you can conserve work and time. You don’t want people to ask you a lot of questions. Writing the data accurately will lessen and avoid miscommunication. Also, a complete email will avoid mistakes in the job. Employees can conserve their time when they’re given exact details on what to do.
Communicate Personally
Aside from writing emails, it’s also important for you to communicate with a colleague, partner, or consumer physically or face-to-face. Through this, you’ll gain trust, and your connection will also improve. There’s also information that you don’t want to include in emails, it’s better to choose to speak in person. Also, you can talk more in detail about the plans that you agreed to talk through in your emails.
Learn To Follow-up
Communication is a two-way process. It’s not only about sending emails, then thinking it was read by the recipient. Follow-up is making sure the receiver received the message, especially when communicating with clients. Remember always to follow-up to ensure that the receiver understands your message. It could be done through meetings, surveys, tracking, and others.
An organization doesn’t work without communication. With proper communication, you can make the job easier and foster better understanding between you and your team. You should put in mind that communication is the key to how your co-workers’ actions will affect the job that you’re in. Remember that communication will help your organization to gain trust and improve the workers’ skills and management. Aside from that, proper communication will keep the data flow easy in your job. It’s better to work smoothly rather than to be confused.