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. Employees need to be trained on how to use the tools, and managers need to be available to help resolve any issues that may arise.
6 essential types of businesses communication channels
Today, a successful business cannot exist without a strong brand identity such as social media marketing, a memorable logo 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. One of the digital solutions that businesses can take advantage of is creating custom photo cards to promote their products and services, as well as to establish a personal connection with their clients. 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 | ||
| 2020 | 2022 | 2020 | 2022 | |
| 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, the proverb says “it takes a village to raise a child”, and the same goes about 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. 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 communication channel 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.
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, CRM software is required. It is also wise to use a phone validator to ensure the numbers are correct and avoid wasting time and energy on incorrect ones.
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.
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 cold email outreach tools. Email is a favorite way to exchange important information in any enterprise, allowing businesses to convert more sales and enhance ROI. Before sending cold emails, you need to use an email warm-up tool or email verification API to avoid getting into the spam folder. Since this information is highly important, you need to secure it by using DMARC, DCIM, SPF, and regularly run a DMARC report analyzer to prevent any cyberattacks. Additionally, consider using an email signature to add a touch of professionalism and credibility to your correspondence. Include your name, job title, company name, and relevant contact details in your email signature to ensure recipients have all the necessary information.
How Email communication improves business
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”. However, you can automate your email marketing using a CRM with email marketing software to engage better with your prospects and send personalized email campaigns.
5. Instant text messaging
Today, every company has at least one messenger for corporate communication between colleagues. The number is growing all the time. 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
Business often requires immediate reactions from the team to certain events. Instant messaging tools allow you to communicate in real time, exchange documents, create personal and group chats, send video and audio, set a status or mention a colleague in a chat.
6. Social media
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 DMs 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.
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, as in the case of a regular hosting website. In case you want to foster the mobile version of the platform, you may consider doing behavior analysis through mobile analytics tools. Make sure to use an AI writer tool to produce highly-converting, informative, and unique copy for your website and social media platforms. In addition to creating quality content, it is also important to publish content regularly. Consistent social media publishing will help you build a loyal follower base and keep them entertained. Besides, there are many influencers on social media channels that can help your business to reach new audiences. For example, you can start working with a social media influencer agency to reach all your marketing goals. Even you can use Pinterest to generate higher reach & for that you can use a Pinterest scheduler from the best scheduling tools. You can also use Discord to grow community there and increase brand awareness. If you manage to do your Discord management properly, you will achieve good results contributing to your marketing efforts. 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.
