Without effective communication, a business is doomed to fail. Not only does poor communication impact your employees and company morale, it can also impact your customer relationships. Proper communication in the workplace is needed so that your business can thrive, allowing you to meet customer expectations, exceed company goals, and build solid relationships inside and outside of the company.
In fact, poor communication is the number one reason for employee unhappiness. A 2014 survey found that 62% of employees don’t like their jobs because of communication issues, including lack of direction and constant change. Here are 7 ways poor communication is ruining your business and what you can do about it.
1. Unmet Expectations
The key to keeping your customers happy and coming back for repeat business is to always exceed expectations. When poor communication is rampant throughout your company, you’re likely to face unmet expectations which in turn lead to unhappy and unsatisfied customers.
As a business owner, there’s nothing worse than missing customer meetings or not meeting a deadline. This often occurs when there’s no one in a leadership position who is clearly communicating priorities and expectations.
To avoid upsetting customers, ensure your employees are well aware of their daily tasks and meetings. Use calendars or a big whiteboard with information about who is working on what and who needs to be where on which day. This way everyone knows which projects have priority.
2. High Levels of Stress
Poor communication creates the perfect environment for stress. When no one is communicating due dates, tasks, and upcoming projects, your employees will always be on edge. Without knowing which tasks are most important and what’s coming down the pipeline, your employees get the idea that everything is urgent.
This causes everyone to feel tense, hurried, and stressed. High stress leads to overworked employees, including yourself! In turn, not only do you have to deal with poor communication, you’re also left facing low morale and decreased employee productivity.
To avoid creating a stressful workplace, schedule routine meetings that occur daily or weekly. During these meetings, discuss current tasking as well as upcoming projects that employees need to be aware of. These meetings are also the ideal opportunity for employees to voice any concerns or roadblocks that they’re facing.
3. Breakdown of Customer Relationships
Poor communication not only impacts employees but also customers. The key to taking care of your customers is to routinely engage and communicate with them to ensure that their needs are being met. Have you ever opened your inbox or listened to your voicemail, only do see or hear a message from an upset customer?
Missing a business meeting that you scheduled weeks ago or forgetting to return a phone call all create a bad impression of your company. Because of this, relationships with your clients will start to crumble, especially if poor communication isn’t addressed immediately.
Straying away from the types of content your customers want counts too, so make sure you keeping tabs on your website traffic. It’s important to utilize lead generation plugins, so you can get data about your customer’s time on your website. Keep going for the types of content people are spending the most time on.
4. Poor Customer Service
When your employees don’t have the information they need to do their work effectively, they’re less likely to do their job properly. Over time, the poor communication and mismanagement impacts customer service and customer satisfaction. Not giving your employees the data and resources they need to do the job right will always impact the quality of service that customers receive.
Effectiveness aside, poor communication also leads to confused and unhappy employees. When your employees feel unprepared, most customers pick up on these feelings.
The fix here is to prepare your employees. Make sure they have everything they need to be successful so that they can in turn best help customers. A study found that happier employees led to a 1.3% increase in customer satisfaction. This then boosted sales and revenue!
5. Uptick in Employee Absenteeism
As poor communication impacts work/life balance and the overall happiness of your employees, they will start to seek ways to avoid the madness that is work. Some will seek positions outside of the company while others will take more time off of work, just to escape.
While everyone deserves time away from work, knowing that employees are taking off because of the company environment is a problem. As a growing number of employees show up less often, the risk of missing deadlines increases even more.
If you can, try to give flexible hours or remote work opportunities to avoid these situations. Even if an employee isn’t physically in the office, the ability to connect to work from how could stop the issues with absenteeism. You can even use your site as a means of communication, and with the best security plugins, your team and visitors are sure to browse safe when they visit. Security helps employees and customers feel safe, and safe is a good feeling.
6. High Turnover
Along with increased absenteeism, poor communication is also likely to cause high turnover rates. Having fresh faces and ideas flowing into your company is surely beneficial, but not when it comes at the cost of losing employees who have history and are rooted in the business.
Losing long-time employees can have a huge impact on your company. New employees must be trained and as current employees start to leave, you’ll be left with a rotating team of new people.
Conclusion
Poor communication is a common problem yet one that can bring down the largest of companies. To avoid unhappy employees and therefore unhappy customers, it’s best to address ineffective communication before it starts to chip away at your company’s success.
