How do businesses deal with the constant flow of information? Different communication methods used internally and externally by an enterprise company are crucial to its success.
While the hierarchy of the stages consumers and employees go through might differ, the principal goals of the communication process are to deliver the right messages and ensure they’re understood by all audiences.
But the absence of effective communication can cause businesses to crumble. Identifying barriers to successful business communication or, better yet, creating efficient strategies can help with all forms of corporate communication and brand communication.
Companies looking to resonate with employees and their target audiences need to effectively manage the flow of information and streamline workflows to ensure that no communication is overlooked. Let’s explore in more detail why communication is crucial for business growth and how you can leverage dynamic communication tools and software to ensure effective communication with your organization’s stakeholders.
What Is Business Communication?
From the business perspective, companies use communication to process and deliver information to their employees, clients, investors, partners, or the media.
Here’s what companies can achieve through business communication:
- Distribute information across different digital channels
- Send out information to numerous departments
- Manage internal and external communications
- Close business sales deals
- Manage organizational marketing tasks
Today, business communication is not only limited to phone calls and paperwork. The advent of technology has completely changed how consumers, employees, and businesses communicate. Now, the constant flow of information goes in multiple directions, including mobile devices, email, messaging programs, IVR systems, chatbots, and so much more.
The variety of businesses flooding the market constitutes a variety of business communication approaches. That’s why the types and goals of communication may vary from business to business.
Here are some of the most common communication outcomes companies pursue:
- Keeping employees informed: Providing key information about the company’s offerings and training employees to convey the company’s principal benefits to customers and other audiences.
- Leveraging leadership communication: One of the primary jobs of every leader is to maintain staff morale during meetings, team-building events, and daily interactions.
- Practice clarity: Clear communication is crucial to high employee engagement and productivity levels. With clear communication on best practices, companies motivate employees to meet KPIs and capitalize on current trends.
- Automate marketing processes: Around 58% of marketers point out that one of the principal benefits of automation is the concept of timely communication. Brands can improve internal and external communication by gaining access to audience insights, personalizing the customer journey, delivering high-quality customer support, and mapping out successful touchpoints.
Since business communication is mainly goal-oriented, brands often have to communicate specific rules, company policies, and regulations to employees, clients, and people outside the organization. Sure, the concept of business communication is complex. But as the foundation of decision making, it’s a critical success factor for any company.
What Is the Role of Communication?
Every business has its norms, rules, and regulations, many of them focusing on communication within the organization. For instance, improving how your company runs meetings can significantly impact employee communication and collaboration amongst team members.
Let’s take a closer look at the effect of business communication on different aspects of a business.
Fostering Everyday Decision-Making
It’s no secret that decision-making is an essential part of any business. In addition, companies can connect with consumers and employees through communication, share ideas or marketing solutions, communicate plans for product improvement, and inspire employees to engage in continuous learning.
Running Effective Meetings
Companies are no strangers to running meetings to come up with solutions to day-to-day work issues. Naturally, the standards of such meetings depend on the specific team and organization. But these types of meetings are crucial for building strong bonds within the company through various methods.
With that, it’s easy to assume that one of the core functions of any brainstorming session and team meeting is to address specific issues or solutions. But, at the same time, one of the main jobs of company executives or team leaders is to ensure clarity while managing employee communication.
Connecting With Consumers
Direct contact hasn’t been the only way to win customers for a while now. However, the lack of communication or wrong timing can reduce conversion and retention rates. Successful and effective marketing communication strategies largely depend on how accurately you segment your audiences and communicate to them.
On top of that, access to demographics and psychographics can significantly support your marketing efforts, narrow your focus, and deliver only relevant and valuable information to the right audiences.
Improving Employee Retention
Employees typically wish to keep the jobs they genuinely enjoy. But in some cases, lack of communication and empathy can result in them leaving an organization.
In this case, communication can either decrease or increase employee turnover. For instance, a good support system within an organization and a work-friendly environment can help employees feel secure and motivated. Besides, engaging employees in innovation meetings and rewarding their creativity will help retain top talent.
The Most Important Goal of Business Communication
The principal goal of business communication is to ensure clarity and understanding. Whether the receiver is a prospect or your employee, they’re on the receiving end of the communication process.
Every receiver has specific feelings and ideas that influence their response to any piece of delivered information. That’s why the response may differ, and it’s your job as the communicator to be aware of these ideas and feelings, consider them, and craft a message that will trigger the desired actions and reactions.
Types of Business Communication
Historically, people use a mix of verbal and nonverbal communication, even during a classic phone call. However, from the business perspective, the message clarity also depends on visual and written communication.
When having in-person conversations or running virtual meetings, it can be helpful to deliver information in all forms simultaneously. Sure, it might not work for customers calling or messaging customer support teams. But it sure can come in handy when dealing with business communication within the organization.
Internal Communication
Companies can have internal upward and internal downward communication depending on the organizational hierarchy of information.
Transferring any information from a subordinate to a manager implies conveying it up the company hierarchy. Classic examples are surveys, sales reports, feedback forms, requests, time off request forms, or disputes.
The flow of information can also move downward. One of the primary use cases is when superiors transfer crucial instructions to staff through managers. For instance, it can be job instructions, specific procedures, performance feedback, or onboarding documentation.
External Communication
External communication occurs similarly. For example, when a company needs to transfer essential data like annual reports to stakeholders or business partners, they use external upward communication.
As for external downward, it occurs when an external party (i.e., a stakeholder) initiates the communication process. For example, it can include requests regarding sales indicators, product training, or joint marketing plans.
Assessment of the Effectiveness of Business Communications
Evaluating the effectiveness of employee communication and the level of employee engagement come hand in hand. These assessments provide valuable insights into staff commitment, work ethics, and communication skills.
The ability of employees to practice active listening and effective communication in their day-to-day activities is a necessity in all areas of business. After all, without a rapport and mutual connectivity between coworkers, companies can’t maintain high levels of productivity and effectiveness.
Employee Productivity
It’s imperative to assess employees ‘ business communication skills and productivity for customer-facing companies in the insurance, home services, or financial services verticals.
Implementing a marketing automation solution like Phonexa’s Call Logic, a call intelligence platform for call tracking and distribution, can help businesses with their verbal communication processes. With Call Logic, your business can track every call and leverage call data, plug up funnel leaks, and map out successful outbound call strategies.
With a comprehensive call recording feature, you can keep a record of the time and conversations between your call representatives and calling customers. Whether you’re looking to use these recordings for quality control or training purposes, having these records is an excellent way to monitor employee productivity and conduct agent scoring.
Employee Engagement
Monitoring the level of employee engagement is crucial for every company. While the key metrics may vary from business to business, many companies pay attention to open rates and CTR on the information a company distributes within the organization.
Annual employee engagement surveys and feedback forms can also come in handy if you’re looking to get a data-driven understanding of the current level of engagement. It’s also helpful to establish a benchmark that would serve as a reference for future efforts.
On top of that, companies can launch short pulse surveys to find out about the emotional component of internal communications.
The HR department or company executives can launch specific programs or activities depending on the way departments, teams, or individuals feel about their work-life balance or established workflows. These activities can include training programs, sports events, or thematic meetings to support the company spirit.
Ultimately, creating a work-friendly environment implies the ability of company staff to share feedback and make suggestions.
Trends of Business Communication
It’s no secret that progress doesn’t stand still. That is also true of business communication. Here are some of the latest trends businesses should follow to maintain thriving workspaces and business growth.
AI Reporting and Analytics
Organizations require agile solutions to meet the demands of modern business communications in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. AI-powered reporting and analytics is one such solution. This functionality can help teams predict communication trends, conduct sentiment analysis, monitor performance metrics in real-time, and more.
Communications platforms that leverage AI, like RingCentral RingEX™, enable companies to do just more than stay connected with internal and external contacts. They can automate routine tasks, unlock insights, and create a streamlined approach to day-to-day processes—all of which contribute to improved business performance.
Digital Workspaces
Modern workspaces are fluid. Companies must recognize that team collaboration occurs in the digital space and the office.
One of the latest business communication trends is collaborative digital workspaces that enable company staff to share ideas, co-edit documents, delegate tasks, and communicate in real-time.
Marketing Automation
Harnessing the power of automation solutions allows companies to cut back on hardware costs, improve customer relationship management, streamline workflows, help different departments share data, and maintain a coherent business identity regardless of their employees’ location.
From the business communication perspective, marketing automation provides brands with all the crucial customer data, allowing them to adjust marketing messages and keep their communication accurate.
Messaging Services
Apart from video calls and email threads, employees need a direct way to communicate with team members. Messaging platforms like Slack allow company staff to share information across teams with no extra effort required. On top of that, businesses can easily integrate it into their digital workplace.
Key Points: The Role of Communication in Business
A brand’s success depends on how a business and its employees share information. Whether the communication is in verbal, nonverbal, visual, or written format, learning to communicate effectively is crucial for the company’s success.
Naturally, business communication is complex. But when delivered effectively, it can enhance customer satisfaction, improve the company’s image, increase employee productivity, and boost the level of engagement.
Schedule a consultation to learn how Phonexa’s Call Logic enables companies to enhance their internal and external business communication methods, maximizing business efficiency and productivity.
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