7 tips for effective corporate communications

We always hear about the need, the urgency, of listening to our customers to secure our success, it help us to deliver value where our customers need it the most.

But much less has been said, about the difficult task of communicating with them, and what tools and strategies we may use to achieve it.

Here, we share with you 7 tips to improve your corporate communications and start really listening to your customers.

1) Don't push your customers to the phone.

Offer an alternative suitable to your customer needs or particular circumstances.

If your customers speak another language, chat or mail them.
If your customers hit the street all day long, try texting them using sms.
If your target audience participate in social networks, get in touch using Twitter and Facebook.

2) Announce clearly your contact addresses.

There's something worse than hiding from your clients, and it's to be there, but your customers not knowing.

Announce clearly what contact channels exists, announce it in your web site, in your business cards and in your email signatures.
Each contact is an opportunity, so make it easy for your customers to get in touch with you.

3) Profile each contact

There's nothing worse than being put on hold for a long time, or being transfered many times because no one knows who's the one responsible for taking care of your situation.

Serve every customer by the right member of your team.

Setting up telephony routing groups by roles or business units, has been something doable for a long time even in basic telephony platforms, today, with free alternatives such as asterisk, there's really no excuses for not having your communications organized.

4) Who am I talking to?

The next worst thing to be transferred five times, is to have to repeat to each of them: What's your name? Why are you calling? what's your account?

Databases do exist, you have my email, my phone number and my MSN contact, why are you asking me for information you already know, repeatedly?

Your customers have enough pain having to get in touch with you, embrace technology and eliminate unnecessary frustrations.

5) Anticipate your customer.

Don't wait for your customers to call you to tell you something's wrong.

Have you detected a problem with the service?
An error ocurred with a bill sent to a customer?
It's the time of the month that particular client calls you to fulfill an order?

Get in touch!

Your customers need to know they're been taken care of, anticipation is the way to let them know, building trust and loyalty.

6) When communication fails, switch channels.

It's still amazing the number of times someone spends one hour on the phone, handling an issue that would take five minutes if an email were sent.

A critical skill when dealing with people, is to understand when communication is not really working.

Many times, the best way to deal with it, it's by changing your communication channel, if I was chatting switch to the phone, if I was on the phone switch to chat, or if I already sent 10 text messages, I would be better writing an email.

Coach your team in early detection of miscommunication, and gave them the tools needed to make the proper switch.

7) Learn from past mistakes.

Even when doing everything by the book, sometime, some customer won't be happy about the treatment received, at least not according to expectations.

Besides apologizing, it's neccesary to go through the whole interaction process, understand what happened and learn from it in order to avoid the same scenario in the future.

With the right technology, going through a serie of emails, a chat transcription, or listening to a recorded call, will always be an investment in your customers.