Have you heard about Better Business Communication Day?
It’s a day that falls on the fourth Monday of January each year and was created to celebrate the individuals and businesses who are communicating effectively. You may think that it’s just another made-up holiday that doesn’t need to be recognized, but we think that Better Business Communication Day is a great opportunity for businesses to celebrate great communication strategies in their team as well as analyze areas of weakness.
Poor communication within a business can lead to slow turnaround times, employee unhappiness, and errors that lead to losses at the bottom line. Understanding how to improve business communication both internally and externally is key to improving the overall success of operations.
What is Business Communication?
Business communication is exactly what you think it is: the way in which a company sends a message to their target audience with the goal that it will be correctly understood and responded to.
The basic forms of communications may include oral communication, written communication, pictures and signs, body language, etc. In the current digital era, communication also includes the posts, shares, likes, and comments that businesses upload online to social media platforms or websites. All these forms of communication are used by businesses to send a desired message either to their customers or employees.
The Importance of Clear Business Communication
Businesses with strong lines of communication reap the benefits. Externally, having a good communication strategy is key to portraying your business effectively in front of your customers. It ensures that your words are not misinterpreted, and that your customers are able to truly connect with the brand. Internally, strong communication is key to ensuring that operations run smoothly, and employees feel satisfied with their job.
Is Your Business Communicating Effectively?
How can you use Better Business Communication Day to analyze how well your business is handling communication both internally and externally?
Start by taking the following self-guided quiz!
Give yourself, your team, or your business a score between 1-5 (1 being poor and 5 being excellent) on each type of communication to find out your final communication score. You’ll be ranking how well your business displays clarity, conciseness, consistency, and relevancy for internal face-to-face communication, internal written communication, and external campaigns.
Take notes of the score you give yourself for each category, and then add them all up at the end. Here’s what your scores say about your communication:
12-24 = You need to improve your communication skills/strategies. It seems like your business isn’t effectively communicating internally or externally and could be facing some problems in overall operations. Use Better Business Communication Day to meet with your team and discuss how you can all improve your system of communication. Going through each of these categories in the quiz together will help your team discover where your areas of weakness are and strategize improvements.
24-48 = Your business has some strengths and some weaknesses when it comes to communication. Focusing on the areas of weakness (scores less than 3), discuss with your team how they think your business can improve. Celebrate with your team the areas in which you scored well to encourage them to continue working towards improvement!
48-60 = Looks like your business is communicating well, congrats! Your business has developed an effective line of communication both internally and externally, which will help avoid unwanted problems and misunderstandings. Share this quiz with your team members and some key customers to see if they agree with your score!
5 Tips & Tricks to Improve your business’ communication
Here are some tips to help your business improve your communication skills:
- Have a plan for how to discuss problems.
Many employees would love to talk with upper-level management about their concerns or challenges they’re facing, but don’t know how. Think about how you can streamline the process of an employee recording a problem with the team so that your employee feels heard and your team can resolve problems quicker.
- Take time to communicate about things non-work related.
It’s important to know non-work-related things about your team and your customers, as their lives outside of work affect their work inside of work. Don’t get too tied down in the busy work that you forget to talk to people about their personal lives as well.
- Invest in some time-saving tools.
Many businesses lack a strong line of communication because they aren’t utilizing the right tools. Communication takes time, which a lot of people would say they don’t have. Using an outside communication application can help your team to streamline and improve internal communication, while also helping you to analyze how customers are communicating with you externally.
- Collaboration is more important than dictation.
Not many people like being lectured. A better communication strategy would be to collaborate instead of lecturing. For example, online with your target market, invite them into a conversation rather than a one-way dialog about yourself. Internally, use meetings as a way for every voice to be heard in collaboration instead of one voice speaking in power.
- Listening is a powerful form of communication.
Listening is just as powerful as speaking. It’s the best way to understand what’s really going on and respond correctly instead of simply responding quickly. If your business is filled with a lot of talking and very little listening, speak with your team about how they can listen better to each other and to your customers.
How SubCaptioner helps improve business communication
SubCaptioner is an online closed captioning service that helps businesses add closed captions and transcripts to their media files to improve the way they communicate. When a business adds captions to their videos that they share with employees and customers, they create an inclusive environment for individuals with disabilities while also improving the watch quality of the video for everyone.
For closed captions and transcripts starting at $0.25/minute, visit subcaptioner.com.
