Improving your company’s communication efforts can help save time, money, and even potential sales. With poor communication methods, you’re doing your business a disservice. Customers, clients, and potential partners will have trouble reaching you, making the relationship that much harder to maintain. Here are five communications improvements you can make in a day or less.
- Ditch the Gmail Account
Are you still using an @gmail account for your digital communications? Or perhaps another such website like Yahoo! Or Hotmail? If so, you’ll want to upgrade to a business email account as soon as possible. Luckily, this change can be made almost immediately.
If you already have a website, you’re on the right track to obtaining a more professional email address. Your site will be hosted via your domain name, which will act as the second part of the email address. You can use just your name or something different. Some combinations are:
Firstandlastname@yourbusiness.com
firstinitialandlastname@yourbusiness.com
yourinitials@yourbusiness.com
Whichever combination you choose, be sure that your email address will be relatable to you so there’s no confusion about who the sender is emailing. Using slang or any other unprofessional speech can be frowned on as well, so keep it clean, professional, and easily recognizable as your own.
From your website’s control panel, you should have an “email” tab or “setup email” option. Here, you can set up multiple email addresses for your company’s employees, ensuring no one is stuck using the Gmail or Yahoo! Email addresses for professional correspondence.
- Use a Conference Call Service
One way to give your communications a major upgrade is to get a professional line from a conference calling service. A professional conference line can help upgrade your meetings, client calls, and even your interviewing process.
A professional line will cost you a monthly or yearly service fee, but you won’t ever have to worry about long-distance charges or multi-caller charges on your company’s phone bill. The conference service is entirely web-based, meaning you can contact any number of people anywhere in the world for one fee.
With a web connection, you won’t have to worry as much about dropped calls or a poor connection. Some subscriptions even come with extra tools like screen sharing software and video conferencing for when you need a more in-person feel to your calls. This is especially useful for interviewing, particularly when you’re interviewing someone who will be working remotely.
- Have a Dedicated Support Line
A dedicated customer support line with a live virtual receptionist answering calls cannot be understated in terms of significance. Your business depends largely on the value of your customer service, as poor customer service can cause customers to disengage and even go to the competition for better service.
A dedicated support line will handle customer concerns, comments, complaints, and more. You’ll need to have someone available to answer the phone, whether it be your store associates or a dedicated operator to take calls as they come.
If you already have a phone line, you can simply create a customer service extension and assign a team member to operate it. You’ll likely need to call your phone service provider to set up an extension, but this process shouldn’t take much time and your line will be ready for use in less than a day.
- Productivity Software
If you’re having trouble getting your employees to communicate effectively, you’re likely having issues completing projects as well. A team that doesn’t communicate well cannot work punctually or provide high-quality results. Communication is the key to effective teamwork.
Productivity apps allow you to assign and monitor employee tasks, providing a unified platform for everyone to work from and view each other’s requirements. The software will usually have some sort of chat room or messaging service, so you can hold everyone accountable for answering messages and remaining on task.
This will help create better organization, improve communication, and help hold everyone accountable for their part in the project. You can purchase, download, and install productivity software in just minutes, making for an easy fix to your team’s communication problems. Here’s an article on the best productivity apps of this year.
- Create and Open Door Policy
With an open-door policy between management and labor, you’ll be able to bridge the gap between the two and gather information and address issue much more effectively. Often, management can seem intimidating to your team. We’ve all been in the position where we didn’t want to talk to management about an issue that probably should have been addressed by a supervisor.
Letting your employees know that your door is always open and they shouldn’t be afraid to discuss work (or even personal) issues will help them feel more comfortable with their workplace. Mental health is something that affects everyone in the workplace, and being able to talk about it with superiors can mean the difference between an employee feeling isolated or feeling understood.
Conclusion
Communication is the key to a successful business, both externally (with customers/clients/the public) and internally (between team members/management/etc.). Without good communication, projects fall apart, tempers rise, and you’ll experience an overall drop in productivity and satisfaction. Keep your business running smoothly by improving the way your team communicates with each other and with the customers on a daily basis via software, new policies, or simply reaching out.
