Communication: it’s imperative to your business, even if the COVID-19 pandemic has recently limited many companies’ means of communication to telephony and digital platforms. The good news is that, even given the “new normal”, you can still forge a pretty watertight comms strategy.
Of course, your business has to interact with two broad sets of people: its own workers and those people outside the company, such as customers or clients. However, many of the essentials of effective corporate communication still apply regardless of where it is directed.
Show enthusiasm
If you aren’t passionate about the product or service you offer, you can’t expect anyone else to be enamored with it, either.
Therefore, you should make sure that, before your business starts offering something new, you genuinely use it and believe in it. How could your target customers use it in a practical sense?
Social Media Today suggests: “For instance, is there a charity or cause that your product can help promote, or fund?” If so, you should convey this benefit as you market the product.
Encourage two-way conversions
Simply spouting lots of information about your product, without letting the potential customer get a word in edgeways, is too likely to come across as spam selling.
You should invite the recipient of your pitch to ask questions – or, indeed, ask them your own questions. As the conversation starts to take off, you can learn more about what the person truly wants, as it might not be what your company actually offers… yet.
Build trust among your workforce
We mentioned the word “cohesive”, and this means ensuring that every member of your team is moving in the same direction. Before you can ensure this, though, you need your workers to have strong faith in each other.
If you sense a lack of trust between your recruits, you could lead by example by trusting them yourself – with one article on the Forbes site suggesting that you could show this through delegating more of your responsibilities.
Survey your employees about what they expect
The Business 2 Community site lists various questions you could ask your internal team members. For example, you could survey them on whether they can easily access updated requirements and whether these workers feel they are able to clearly address all stakeholders about project issues.
Can all of your employees also readily share documents, such as on a centralized platform where collaboration could take place on individual projects? The answers to questions like these could make or break the success of your projects.
Reach out to your target audience where they are
This obviously begs the question: where are they? In truth, they could be scattered across various communication platforms – meaning that you could need to firmly connect your business to all of these, especially if your company is still relatively small.
There are various reasons why small businesses can especially benefit from offering omnichannel customer service, which would enable your staff to switch seamlessly between platforms while handling the same customer’s query or complaint.