Providing solutions for common business communication problems:

Johannesburg, 20 April 2020: Most small business owners are usually experts in their fields and become operations specialists on the job. Communicating effectively with customers, suppliers and the marketplace is often a secondary consideration, even though great communication has the potential to make or break a business especially in light of the current Covid19 crisis.

Technology has both reduced the time required to communicate with multiple stakeholders and provided many more channels for doing so, but this is not something most business owners have the time or expertise to implement.

InsideData COO Edward Sewnarain says without assistance in using various distribution channels, businesses tend to do what’s most convenient for them, rather than focusing on what their customers need.

“Local businesses frequently select an inappropriate messaging channel, which either lack tracking functionality for follow-up, are not fast enough to reach all stakeholders in time – such as JSE contract notes which need to be delivered to clients within three working days – or are too costly.”

Sewnarain says an engagement specialist can help businesses make the best and most efficient use of available technology and communication channels.

“Take the example of a broker business which needs to communicate with many clients and provide a lot of documentation: most brokers have opted to move to email-only distribution models, but there are more options that can actually be far more efficient, such as QR matrix bar codes and providing online platforms where brokers can track which clients have viewed documents. Using an API (interface) the broker business can seamlessly integrate composed documents into their online platforms.”

One of the causes of inefficient customer communication and relationship-building is a siloed or departmental approach to communications. “Departments of the same business can have opposing views on how best to clean and use data at their disposal. An engagement specialist can help drive return on investment and select communication streams, be they digital or traditional print,” says Sewnarain.

Businesses can also be too pushy with customer communications, rather than allowing customers to “pull” or fetch the information or messaging they need when they need it. Communication channels are often not fully integrated to complement each other, and messaging is seldom stored appropriately so that campaigns can be tracked and built upon.

Customers may be increasingly open to digital and mobile channels, but these need to be handled with all due respect to trust, security, privacy and personal preference. Every customer is at a different point of the client life cycle with a business, so proper reporting information about communication and delivery success or failure needs to be dealt with appropriately to enable proper dialogue.

A great example of a South African business using effective communications blends – which can include personalised communications via email, SMS and MMS, WhatsApp, print or the web – to boost its bottom line comes from a local bank.

“The bank was able to more effectively promote its rewards programme, and in turn generate revenue using MMS-Lite technology. This boosted non-core revenue through third-party promoters and featuring cross-promotional slides in the MMS campaign,” Sewnarain says.

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Author: Business News