Every business needs to communicate reliably and effectively to be successful and understand who has received the message and who has not. Each communication may have a wide range of different audiences. Core audiences will include employees, suppliers, customers and investors. Further audiences may include regulators, residents, students and site visitors, amongst others.
The content of the messages will vary significantly. Some communications will be private or confidential – legal or financial information, for example. Many will be regular operational or informational messages. Some may be motivational.
The nature of the communications will vary. Some will need a response, some may need to include images, video or documents as an attachment.
The size of the audience will also vary wildly. In some cases, it will be a handful of people, in others it will run to everyone who works for the company, visits your sites or are customers, which may run into many thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
The content and tone of these messages is critical if they are to be effective. Here are some tips for how to make your messages most effective:
- Remember that routine messages in business communication serve to document the “who, what, where, why, and how” of daily operations.
- Most routine messages consist of templates that can be customized with pertinent details about a customer, an issue or the item requiring communication.
- Managers who reduce the frustration level of producing necessary documentation can help increase productivity and teamwork.
- Managers should carefully test and review templates to ensure that they meet legal and financial requirements.
- Business leaders should review routine message templates for brevity, errors and extraneous information that could get in the way of a core message.
- With most routine messages designed for quick scanning by readers’ eyes, communicators must quickly capture attention and convey crucial details.
- Keeping routine messages efficient and effective requires editorial courage and managerial efficiency.
Depending on the nature of the content of the message and the size of the audience, regular and free office tools, such as e-mail and WhatsApp, will often be used for the job. But in reality, they will not be sufficient from a security or accountability perspective, and this may even be true for routine but nevertheless important business communications.
The Crises Control communications system can meet this need and act as a host for not only your critical but also your routine business communications.
We’d love to have a conversation.
Please reach out to us or request a free personalised demo now.
Shalen Sehgal
Managing Director, Crises Control
