EDV

As we’ve touched on before, your business communication choices are the keystone to your enterprise. But what matters more than the fact of your practices, is that they’re quality – that your communication is good.

There are two fundamentals to consider here that comprise good communication: trust and active listening. Active listening is vital because it is the practice by which your customers actually recognise they’re being heard and that what they’re saying matters to you. So how can you ensure your business is reflecting these values? Well, in this day and age of internet communications and social media, it’s easier than ever before.

Though basic, the following two measures allow a broad-based understanding of your customer’s reactions to your methods of communication:

Negative Feedback
Despite being relatively uncomfortable for most people, an intentional analysis of negative feedback can be far more useful than any other kind. Granted, it’s not complimentary, but that’s half the point; this is feedback being delivered about your operations on a silver platter: what are you doing wrong, what – by proxy – are you doing right, what specific points require improvement and more attention. There is nothing more valuable than being told in frank terms how you could be providing better service.

Positive Feedback
Everyone’s natural preference. However, unlike negative feedback, customers don’t always take the time and effort to address this to you directly. As often as not, if you’re doing your job well you’ll never hear a word about it. This issue is now surmounted by the proliferation of social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all of them – because now it just takes a bit of knowledge and a choice keyword search to find a treasure-trove of useful comments. This remains, however, a passive attribute unless your company has seen the wisdom and ROI value of having a well-funded Internet Marketing department. If your company does, then you stand to benefit greatly by utilising these positive feedback findings to directly engage with happy customers – and their own networks – and promote new services, promotions, and information.

The Takeaway
We all prefer to think that common sense, grounded thinking, and rationality are our primary decision-making guides, but the actual case demonstrates that people’s preferences and choices are determined by emotions – or generally worse, an emotional reaction. The savvy executive will be more than a little mindful of these patterns and their long-lasting effects. Understanding emotional impulses are the key to short and long term consumer decisions, as well as your ace to a robust marketing plan.
The Harvard Business Review conducted studies around this very issue in their search for what makes a consumer likely to follow through with a purchase decision. The study was broad and very insightful, but the pertinent takeaway here is this: consumers are so inundated with virtual marketing efforts that now over-engagement may be more dangerous to sales than no effort at all. In the end, people respond to decision simplicity more than any other current factor. Which for us, is perfect; after all, what company could be in a better position to provide that streamlined simplicity than one that actually delivers simplified communications as their product? Cutting down the tedium, streamlining the process, and optimising communications and operations – our actions speak far louder than our words, and we deliver.