Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Online or offline, when it comes to conducting business and managing staff, you need to be on top of your communications game if you want to stay productive and continue to grow. Luckily, with the internet and modern technology at your fingertips, sourcing the right products and systems is easier than ever before. Here are five ways you can improve communications in your company today.
1. Upgrade Your Work Phones
If you upgrade your smartphone to a new model every year or two, why are you holding onto an outdated telephony system you’ve had for years in your business? Upgrade to a broadsoft voip system which utilizes mobile network connections and cloud services, and your staff will be able to take calls, no matter where they are located and even if there’s a power outage! Missing an important business opportunity because you do not have the means of calling overseas, call forwarding or recording is inexcusable in 2019.
2. Reduce Meetings
Meetings serve an important purpose. They allow you to share business information and updates with your staff and stakeholders, and, give them the chance to provide their input and get involved in brainstorming and decision-making. The problem is that if scheduled to excess, meetings disrupt productivity, can distract peoples’ workflow and waste time.
You can prevent this by making sure all meetings have a clear agenda. Cut down on general check-in meetings or progress updates (you can use other tools to track this) and only invite those who are directly affected by the meeting agenda. Team and whole-of-staff meetings should still occur, just not frequently.
3. Reduce Emails
Many are guilty of sending too many emails. If you have ever felt lost looking at your inbox, it’s time to make a change. Emails invoke a false sense of urgency; you’re always going to rush to attend to a message sent by a client, and employees will always do the same from their seniors. Think of the collective time wasted from someone putting a pause on their workflow, only to read “thank you” or any kind of statement that is not on-task. Before you click the compose button, ask yourself if your message is important or productive and then act accordingly. Encourage all your staff to do the same to really make a difference.
4. Measuring and Tracking
Being able to track your business activity and internal communications is extremely valuable if you want to boost productivity. You can set task milestones for your employees and track their work progress by using an intuitive CRM, measure customer engagement and online sales leads via digital marketing tools and monitor your shipments and commercial activities with freight management software. Quantifiable data of your business progress goes hand-in-hand with the above points on effective communication – you’ll never be tempted to send a useless email about progress updates when you can see the numbers for yourself!
5. Include Your Customers in the Conversation
Don’t let too much focus on your internal communications stop you from considering your customers. You can have the most productive workforce in the world who only communicate with transparency and purpose, but if you are not serving your customers’ needs, they will stop coming to you. Use customer feedback surveys, customer events, interactive newsletters, and social media to learn about your clients’ ever-changing needs and opinions. Then, use this to your advantage, to serve them and improve your business.
Oftentimes, improving your communication processes can seem intense but now you’re aware of these five easy changes, you can get started today!