If you’re feeling frustrated in your business with your employees – or with your customers – you’re not alone. Communication breakdowns are rampant in the communication age and it seems like it’s harder to get someone’s attention than ever before.
The reality is that the old ways of communicating simply don’t work they way they used to, and the research backs that up – not to mention that we’re all seeing the evidence of those changes each day in our businesses.
We often spend a lot of time and money trying to fix problems that are mere symptoms of a deeper communication crisis. Communication problems impact more than you realize.
Imagine the following scenario:
You are traveling abroad and you are welcomed as a dinner guest at the home of a friend’s family who lives in the area – the friend will not be there. When you arrive, you realize that your friend’s family does not speak your language. Your hosts are gracious and go out of their way to welcome you and make sure you feel at home. As the meal goes on, you all get creative with how you communicate – there is lots of gesturing, drawing, Google translation, and broken phrasing in languages no one is entirely comfortable with, and a great deal of laughter as a result. You leave with warm hugs, leftovers tucked under your arm, and feeling honored and grateful for the family’s welcome home and eager to return on a future trip.
Now, imagine the same scenario, slightly altered:
You are traveling abroad and you are welcomed as a dinner guest at the home of a friend’s family who lives in the area – the friend will not be there. When you arrive, you realize that your friend’s family does not speak your language. The family serves a delicious meal, and carries on an engaging conversation – but you can’t understand a word, since you don’t speak the language. You grow increasingly uncomfortable and try to speak broken phrases in their language, but when they respond it’s too fast for you to even cobble together a guess at a translation. You leave soon after the meal feeling embarrassed.
These two scenarios are just one way of illustrating the impact that great communication can have on the experience people have with your business. If you want people to have an exceptional experience with your company, then you have to be willing to meet people where they are when it comes to the way you communicate with them.
So, how do you communicate effectively in the “communication age?” Here are the four keys that, we believe, will transform the way you communicate with your team and with your customers:
High Visibility
Visual Appeal
Engaging, Relevant and Current Content
Repetition
We’d love to give you the tools you need to transform your communication and eliminate your frustrations. And, we’ll do that for free! Just click here and schedule a 30 minute communications consultation with one of our experts and we’ll help you cure your communications crisis.