As we, all know good communication with our customers is vital to the success of our businesses. Just as important is the type of communication that we have with our employees at all levels of our organization.
The technologies that are available to today allow us to communicate from anywhere in the world and enable us to do it instantly! In fact, we can actually view each other’s images on line. With all this technology, there is no way that we can have bad communication problems with our customers and staff. Wrong!
Here are some observations on communication today:
- Next time you are at a restaurant or coffee shop, notice how many people have their heads down texting, and especially those sitting at the same table.
- When you are in a meeting how many times do members of your staff have their heads down texting or have to step out of the room to take a call?
- When wanting to communicate with a member of your staff how many times are several texts exchanged instead of initiating a call that would could solve or answer a question?
I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Hard to believe, but there was a time that companies did not have fax, email, or cellular phones available to communicate with customers or staff.
Our communication process was:
- A telephone call from a landline and it was not unusual to return to our offices at the end of the day a have a pile of pink papers that said MESSAGE at the top. Customers would actually wait half a day for a response.
- When a customer called about an issue we actually went to see them!
- Communication with our staff was in most cases a face-to-face conversation.
Despite the lack of technology, organizations grew and were successful.
Now all that being said, I am glad that we have these new forms of technologies that enables us to enhance our communication with our customers and our staff.
The caution is not to mistake the speed of communication for quality of communication.
All the devises in the world will not replace a face-to-face meeting or at the very least a good old telephone conversation.
I thought this quote was good:
“The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
J. B. Priestley
