Have you ever wondered if communication is really that important to your business?
Let me just say: I hope that question never crossed/crosses your mind. Without a doubt, it’s important to both the customer experience and the employee experience – and to building solid relationships with both constituencies.
Communication has three components: talking, listening, and hearing. Yes, listening and hearing are different, as I mentioned in this post. Hearing what is said is as important as saying what is said. When you talk, make it easy for customers to listen and to hear.
I started to think about the qualities of effective business communication; I came up with just a short list of how companies must tell customers about the brand and its products, services, issue resolution, etc. Their communications must be…
- Clear
- Timely
- Honest
- Relevant
- Facts-Driven
- Accurate
- Easily Understood
Then I found this video, which got me thinking about the “Power of Words.”
What if you wrote or said the same thing but with different words?
Perhaps the real qualities are slightly less rigid. While the above qualities still apply, in order to effectively communicate and to convey the right message, businesses must, most importantly…
- Make it easy to listen
- Say what they mean
- Mean what they say
- Be empathetic
- Tell a story
- Solve a problem
If you want customers to both listen and hear, make the story you’re telling be about them. Tell them what you are doing for them, which of their problems your products solve, what jobs your services do for them, what value you will add to their lives.
Words are powerful. Are you using the right words?
The problem with words is that too many of them say the wrong things. -Torley
