Communication channels are the means by which an organisation can exchange information with its employees. Communication channels can be broken down into three categories: oral, written, and electronic. Oral communication channels are face-to-face conversations or telephone conversations. Written communication channels are letters, memos, or emails. Electronic communication channels are instant messaging, chat rooms, and social networking sites.
Creating a dedicated, loyal and result-oriented team is a necessary goal, but it’s not always easy to achieve, especially if your team is scattered across multiple locations and works remotely or pursues a hybrid work model. And the more employees are engaged in a project, the more difficult it is for them to maintain remote communication while staying productive. It is important to find the right communication channels for your business, and to ensure that everyone is using them effectively.
6 essential types of businesses communication channels
Today, a successful business cannot exist without a strong brand identity, a memorable design, and most importantly, efficient communication channels. Luckily, modern technologies provide an array of opportunities to run your business in a digital environment, communicate with your employees remotely and reach your clients and customers. This article covers popular mediums of communications and describes what’s best for your business goals. Let’s start!
Communicating with colleagues and clients |
Colleagues | Clients | ||
| 2022 | 2023 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| 40% | 30% (-10%) | 65% | 51% (-14%) | |
| Online Tools | 28% | 45% (+17%) | 16% | 31% (+15%) |
| Phone | 2% | 6% (+4%) | 9% | 7% (-2%) |
| Face-to-face | 23% | 12% (-11%) | 5% | 5% |
1. Face-to-face communication
Face-to-face communication features a direct contact between two teammates. In some cases, this type of communication may be the quickest and most reliable method of interaction. People have been working, arguing, and discussing ideas face-to-face for thousands of years. It also brings intimacy and trust to your business relations.
However, such a communication channel may not always work, because it often happens that the same organization has several branches located in different parts of the city or even country, and the employees still need to stay in touch. Besides, effective marketing strategies are crucial in business success. As the proverb says, “it takes a village to raise a child”, and the same goes for a successful business: you cannot build a team without having collaborative discussions, meetings, and standups.
How face-to-face communication improves business
There are many benefits to face-to-face communication in business. First, it allows for immediate feedback and two-way dialogue, which is essential for problem solving and decision making. In a meeting, people can share ideas and get immediate feedback from others, which can help them to come to a consensus more quickly.
Face-to-face communication also allows for nonverbal communication, which is often very important in business. Gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice can all communicate important information that is not conveyed in words alone. This can help to build trust and better relationships between coworkers.
Finally, face-to-face communication can help to build a sense of team spirit and camaraderie. When coworkers are able to meet in person and get to know each other, they are more likely to work together cooperatively and be more productive.
2. Video conferencing
In any business, meetings are held to discuss current issues or reflect on team’s work during retrospectives. However, it is not always possible to gather the key employees at the time of the meeting for various reasons. A good solution for organizing joint work in this case would be the use of a video conferencing system. This communication channel saves companies money and maximizes collaboration, keeping productivity high.
Video conferencing is equally beneficial for any sphere or vertical case. For example, video meetings can help doctors run online appointments, facilitate virtual court environments, or provide your clients with options to communicate with call agents without visiting physical branches.
How Video conferencing improves business
The use of video conferencing completely replaces the need for business trips, significantly saving the company time and money. Another advantage of this type of remote communication is the reduced time for decision-making. Since today’s market is very dynamic, sometimes the speed of reaction to certain events can determine the success of a company, and using the technology of video conferencing, you can put together a video meeting in a couple of clicks.
3. Phone calls
Can you imagine life without mobile phones? Over the past 30 years we’ve heavily relied on mobile technologies to communicate with our friends and relatives and be available 24/7, in any location. This is especially beneficial for businesses that need to successfully achieve marketing goals and be both quick and flexible in ever-changing market contexts. For contractors, this flexibility is crucial. An answering service for contractors can ensure that businesses remain responsive to client needs 24/7, even when contractors are on job sites or unavailable.
People get used to phone calls, so there’s no need to create an onboarding series for the older generations – this is a medium of communication that is equally available to any person. However, phone communication does not really help to manage a distributed team because it does not provide visual contact as opposed to video conferencing.
How Phone calls improve business
Phone calls are an extremely important medium of communication in contact or call centers – as a way to quickly connect clients and support or sales teams. Phone calls are only tied to your mobile phone and do not require any equipment to stay in touch. You can move to another office, another city or even another country, but all your business numbers stay with you.
Phone calls are still widely used for sales purposes. However, to use this type of communication more effectively, call center software is required. It provides a seamless operation where you can track, monitor, and manage every call with your clients.
If you are running a digital business, you may find video conferencing or instant messaging a more personal and useful way of communication with your partners. However, phone calls are still one of the most relevant ways to communicate ideas.
4. Email
You might consider email an endangered species of communication exchange with Whatsapp, Slack, Faceapp and Trello being so popular nowadays. Surprisingly, email is still the most reliable means of information exchange even for those businesses that rely heavily on social media and other digital ways of communication. To enhance the efficiency of this crucial channel, employing an advanced email finder tool can streamline contact management and improve lead generation processes. So finally, it’s worth considering to validate email addresses and find potential leads. Alternatively, you can use a contact management software to have centralized repository for all your contacts.
However, businesses use emails not only for internal communication but for other purposes as well, such as reaching out to customers by sending cold emails, and to do so, they utilize different outreach tools.
How Email communication improves business
Email is one of the most important channels for various businesses as it helps in communicating with internal and external entities. One of the advantages of email is the open protocol. Users do not need to be in the same system to send each other a message. The email format makes it easy to store and retrieve important information that may come in handy not right now, but in the future. It can be difficult to find the information you need in a messenger or social network, especially if the correspondence with that user is ongoing.
Besides, if you want to send important information to a certain circle of people, you don’t need to copy the email multiple times and send it separately to each participant. To solve this task, you will only need to CC all of the recipients’ addresses and click “Send”.
5. Instant text messaging
In the evolving landscape of corporate communication, where messengers are used for advertising mailings, technical support, and order updates can greatly enhance message delivery efficiency and reliability, ensuring optimal communication with clients and colleagues.
The functionality of messengers is developing and now they can be used for advertising mailings, providing technical support or notifying the customer about the status of an order.
What’s important, instant messaging becomes a hub for asynchronous communication, meaning that you can answer your colleagues at your own pace and at your own time.
How messaging improves business
Businesses often require immediate reactions from their team to certain events. Instant messaging tools (or service SMS) allow you to real time, exchange documents, create personal and group chats, send video and audio, set a status or mention a colleague in a chat.
In addition to instant messaging tools, incorporating shared inbox into your business operations can enhance collaboration by providing a centralized hub where team members can collectively manage and respond to incoming messages, fostering efficient communication and streamlined workflows.
6. Social media
Social media refers to online platforms and applications that enable users to find people, communicate and create, share, and interact with content. Due to the rapid development of social networks, it is no longer necessary to consider them solely as a means of communication that enables people to send Instagram or Facebook messages to each other, now with the right approach they will become a powerful tool for the development of your business. After all, tens of millions of people around the world use them daily, receiving huge flows of information.
Impressively, there are more than 2.3 billion active Instagram users each month. This staggering figure demonstrates the platform’s enormous potential and reach for companies looking to engage with a large consumer base. To efficiently manage and enhance these interactions, utilizing an smm panel can provide businesses with the necessary tools to automate social media tasks, optimize their marketing efforts, and achieve better results in engaging their target audience.
How Social media improve business
Through social networks, it is easier to get feedback from the target group, because they are already adapted for mobile platforms and you do not have to worry about increasing traffic from search engines.
Incorporating content marketing statistics into your communication channels can guide your efforts, ensuring that your content is customer-centric and resonates effectively with your audience and contributes to the overall success of your business.
In addition to creating quality content, it is also important to publish content regularly. For example, consistent social media publishing will help you build a loyal follower base for selling your product or services and implementing marketing strategies. The advantage of using social networks for business is that promotion reaches only interested users, advertising is often hidden and does not annoy anyone.
Wondering how to use TrueConf channels for workplace communication?
TrueConf is an all-in-one solution that combines several communication channels at once, while improving business collaboration and productivity.
TrueConf key features:
Video conferencing
With TrueConf users can create a 4K video conference with up to 1,000 participants. There are many flexible layouts and every participant can change their own conference view, while the moderator can modify and fix the layouts for all meeting participants. Apart from point-to-point video calls, TrueConf supports three group video conferencing modes: multipoint conference, role-based conference and virtual classroom, which are fit for different business needs.
Instant messaging
Thanks to instant messaging, the team always stays in touch and works on common projects promptly. You can send images, PDF files, emoji, videos or audio. Group and personal chats are available to users both in and out of the conference.
VoIP integration
Thanks to TrueConf Server integration with corporate PBXes, users have the ability to call mobile and landline subscribers to communicate with those who are not currently available in the client application.
Mail and calendar integration
Connecting TrueConf to the mail server allows you to automatically notify participants about upcoming conferences, send links to conference pages, and inform users about missed calls and messages.
Conclusions
Communication is an essential skill for any entrepreneur, employee or manager whose work is based on the ability to influence and persuade rather than coerce and command. The main challenge of the manager is to provide all employees with a quick and convenient communication channel to get all the information they need and successfully perform their tasks.
Some businesses may be fine with one well-chosen communication channel, while others need several types of communication in one solution that work perfectly together and complement each other. The best way to introduce new communication scenarios in a business setting is to adopt a unified solution that includes all important features for your employees.
