By Sharon Jones
A big part of your workload as a business or start-up owner is going to be communication.
While working, promotion, marketing and actually living your life are going to take up a large part of your day, communication might be the biggest chunk of that.
Look at it this way. Working, promotion and marketing to some degree involve communication, whether it be a brief you are working to or a phone conversation you are involved in, you’re going to be constantly communicating in some form or another.
Let’s not forget customer service. Does your business simply ignore the customer once a sale of a product or service is completed? Why? It certainly shouldn’t be like that!
What does your workplace communication set-up look like right now? Are the desks of you and your employees distant, are they in a regimented layout?
A key part of getting your business to move forward is to ensure that communication is the central hub of what you do. Get your employees talking and make the place a light-hearted area to work in. Ensure that employees can openly discuss issues, and that everyone can work together to fix them.
In terms of technology, if your business isn’t working well at one thing and you don’t know why, seek help! Plenty of external third-parties will be more than happy to share their knowledge with you. The trick here is to either educate yourself, seek help if you don’t have a clue or to learn from your mistakes. In fact, this is why a lot of businesses are switching to a UCaas Provider to streamline communication technologies. You can read more about this elsewhere, but the underlying idea is that you have a unified communications network where all the technology is in the same place and running side-by-side. It makes it easier for tech to work together, while improving business communications.
Regarding communication solutions, what happens when people call into your business? Do they have to jump through hoops to speak to you? Do they have to wait on hold because you don’t know what button to press? Trim down or improve your business phone systems and make sure that they work not only for you but for the person on the other end of the phone. A complicated process might look nice and sound nice, but it might not be the best option.
What about your work stations? Do you and your employees work separately? Are all your files stored on separate computers with different passwords? Centralizing your workflow with software like Basecamp might solve a lot of your issues. If you’re running your business through emails and texts, things are going to progress slowly. Getting your work and communication in the right place is going to make your business run better. Why use many apps and software packages when you can use one? Software like Basecamp puts your work, reminders, to-do lists and everything else in one place. Correctly using software can save your day and streamlining your workflow and communication is going to give you and everyone else less of a headache when things get stressful!
If you’re not communicating right in the workplace, you’ve got a problem. Thankfully changing this starts with yourself. If you enact the right changes, you’ll see the results instantly. Use all the tools at your disposal and sort out the communication in your workplace to get it firing on all cylinders!
