Effective Business Communication, Pt. 2
Last week I touched on how to best communicate with you team, peers, and leadership. The final two were communication with customers. And I’ll close with some basic advice for all areas.
Internal Customers
These are the people outside of IT within your company, those that use your products or services. Keep in mind that as part of the same business, your broader goals should be aligned. If your company provides, say, a financial or healthcare service, then the support we provide our internal customers should reflect our desire to help them provide the best service they can and we should understand that keeping them informed contributes to the overall success of the company. If there’s going to be some down time for maintenance, communicate that proactively, along with how long it will take, when you expect things to be working again, and that you have a strategy if things don’t go according to plan.
If you’re in a position to provide technology, spend time and get to know your peers on the business side. Sit in on their staff meetings from time to time if possible, or set up regular one-on-ones with them so you stay informed of their needs, problems, and goals. If you have the opportunity to provide a solution via technology, you have a quick and easy avenue to do it so long as you’re proactively involved and communicating with them. Eventually, they’ll start to understand your desire to help and will start proactively communicating back to you!
External Customers
If you provide IT services to customers that are not part of your company, similar communication is needed. As with internal staff, external customers need to know well in advance if there is scheduled maintenance; or if there’s unscheduled downtime they need an assurance of when the problem will be resolved and what will happen to prevent future issues. And in these cases, there’s no such thing as too much communication! Think of your own experiences with service providers who have left you hanging with no updates on when, or even if, a service would be available.
Finally, I’d like to just offer some general advice for all levels and types of communication.
A key, important thing to remember is that whatever you communicate, it’s vital to be accurate in what you’re stating. If you’re referring to a white paper, study, or specific fact, be prepared to validate that the information is accurate and up-to-date. Make sure the source is trustworthy; for example, Wikipedia is something often used as source material, but as that can be changed by almost anyone you should never assume something found there is correct without the corroborating links or facts.
Context matter as well. We live in a time where the sound bite is king, but when you’re communicating for business you need to take care not to exaggerate. Avoid broad statements, like ‘a majority of people’ or ‘literally’ if you don’t know the actual data. In my years of being in leadership roles, I’ve seen data manipulated in some crazy ways to make a point.
The ability to communicate verbally and with the written word is an important part of being in a leadership position. Like anything, it takes work, but ultimately it will pay off!