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Blog posts tagged communication
Tips on managing a multi-cultural, de-centralised workforce
May 26, 2010
I currently find myself in the fantastic city of Chennai, India. Sadly it’s a strictly business trip. I’ve flown in for six days to spend time with the Actinic team and hire a new team member. Hiring outside the familiar waters of the UK has been a very interesting process. Sometimes it’s a little frustrating, but it’s been a masterclass in managing a distributed team.
So, while it is fresh in my mind here are my top three tips for managing a diverse, dispersed and multi-cultural team:
1. Communication is key
Of course it depends on the roles and responsibilities within your organisation, but having everyone well-versed in a common language is the essential requirement for any team. However it’s also important to remember that you may not be talking to someone in their native dialect. So take care on phrasing, be patient and understanding.
2. Encourage questions
If someone hasn’t understood something you have communicated, it’s easy to put your head in the sand. Some cultures find it embarrassing to ask questions, especially to supervisors. So my tip is to actively encourage queries and questions as much as possible. Also, put yourself into situations where you have to be the one asking the questions - it’s empowering for the others involved.
3. Boots on the ground
Nothing beats getting together. If you are willing to employ people in far-off lands you need to be ready to get on a plane and visit. The Internet has given us hundreds of different ways to communicate, from Skype to Twitter, but nothing compares with talking face-to-face. You learn more about a team and its dynamics over a five-minute coffee break than you would ever do over the phone or by email.
Ben Dyer is director of product development for Actinic
- Get more tips on recruitment from our Management, recruitment and training section
Crafting the email
May 21, 2010
Emails are the lifeblood of your communications.
- You want people to read your material and respond.
- You want people to feel good about seeing an email from you in their inbox.
- You want to give your readers a reason to open your email.
That is all your email has to do.
It doesn’t have to close the deal. It doesn’t have to take the payment. Leave that for your website to do.
Then your reader has the option whether to click on the link and take it further or just consume the information you have provided.
To test the sort of content that is right for you, call a couple of prospects or clients and give them the information you want to send in an email. If you find your hands going clammy at the thought, then perhaps your message is not right at this time.
People will buy when they are ready to do so. There is nothing you can do to get them to buy quicker or differently to the way they will do so. It is your job to understand how your prospects buy and map your communications accordingly. A couple of things will happen – less of your emails will be found in the spam box and the number of sales will increase.
This blog post by Karen Purves originally appeared at HaveMoreClients.com
Your lips are moving, but I can’t hear what you’re saying …
November 24, 2009
In this short video, Tim Smit talks about use of financial jargon and complicated accounting terms which can be overwhelming for the entrepreneur embarking on a new business venture.
Take a few moments to think about how you communicate with clients. Does your business make it easier or more difficult for clients to deal with you? And if you don’t know, why not ask one of your clients!
Riding the Google Wave to better business collaboration
November 03, 2009
We've all played email tennis, either with friends, family or business colleagues. That's fine, if you have the time. If you're working on a proposal document and you're using Word, you can bounce revisions around forever and a day. That's also fine, if you've got the time. Problem is, time is a premium asset these days and if you want to get the most out of your time, you need to save as much of it as possible. And what time you do use, you do so as efficiently as possible — that's where Google's new collaborative communication tool comes in.
Wave is email and revision-aware word processing combined into a real-time web application that allows more than one person to edit the same document at the same time. So imagine starting a new "wave" (which is Google parlance for a new page or document) and then inviting friends to contribute.
Once your colleagues have accepted your invite, you can see them typing in the new wave. Better yet, as you all make additions and changes to each others' copy, you can scrub the revision time line back to a specific point and start again.
The benefits of working with Google Wave are:
- collaborate live with colleagues / clients from anywhere you have an internet connection;
- a complete revision history of all additions and amends throughout the life time of the wave;
- more than one person can edit a wave at the same time;
- you won't have to worry about having the correct version of the software to edit a wave.
Because Wave is free, the only additional time you'll spend will be learning how to use it. And if you can use Word, you can use Wave, too. With all the time you'll save, you could learn to play tennis!
Marketing Donut's Customer Service Manifesto for small businesses
October 09, 2009
At the start of the week we asked you to put forward your key ideas for a best practice customer service manifesto that small businesses should adopt and you didn’t let us down. Below are the best tips that any small firm should abide by, not on occasion but all the time. Thank you very much to everyone who contributed.
“Great customer service as a standard, not a bonus.”
Our basic core principles are built on:
Listening. By @picseli
Being nice, being helpful and being there. By @RealTrevorLever
Honesty. By @Web_D
Thinking about how we would wish to be treated in the customer’s position. By short couture
Understanding the context of our customers. How does your service affect their life/business? By @tazbride
Good communication and respect for your customers. By @atkirby
In our endeavours to provide a first rate customer service, we will:
Under promise and over deliver. By @busyaccountant
Show that we appreciate their business. Say thank you once in a while. By @SonjaJefferson
Think of our customers' needs. Focus on their problems and make ourselves invaluable. By @SonjaJefferson
Care (and don't just pretend). By Digital Jonathon
Treat our customers as we would like to be treated. Call when we say we will, even if we have nothing new to tell them. By @nigel_dean
Act fast, speak truth, admit mistakes, undertake to fix and follow through fast...do NOT pass the buck! By @DebraTemplar
In improving our existing customer service offering, we will:
Acknowledge it is OK to make mistakes but crucially, to learn from them. Be genuine and humble in our apology. By @jamesainsworth
Communicate in ways they appreciate. Find out how they want to hear from us. Don't spam. By @SonjaJefferson
Be reliable. Do what we say we'll do or be honest when we can't. By @SonjaJefferson
Measure our success - get regular feedback from customers on our service quality. By @benpopps
To ensure that our high standards of customer care are uniform across our business, we will:
Be consistent. By Will Stone
Give authority to ALL staff to fix problems for customers without miles of red tape. By @DebraTemplar
Provide multiple contact channels. Customers are different and have diff contact preferences. By @benpopps
Empower front line team to recover service without having to go to a 'supervisor' - give a budget and ensure they spend it. By @michellecarvill
Incentivise 'extra mile' service from staff. By @benpopps
To keep up with the competition and to go the extra mile in a way a larger business can not, we will:
Always be thinking about what we can do that their larger competitors can't. By Andrew McMillan
Treat every customer as an individual. By Chris W
Adopt proactive communication...at beginning, middle and end of service delivery. By @benpopps
Transparency helps in customer service - if we are open and honest customers often feel they can trust more. By @ronkelawal
Stay in touch. Too many businesses chase new business when existing customers are much more valuable. By @mickdickinson
Have a phone number so a customer can contact a real person directly. By @yBCmels
The quicker a caller speaks to a real person the better, even if they gone on hold/into a queue after that. By @jakepjohnson
Have we missed anything important? Please share your thoughts and comments with us in the box below.
Integrity - the secret of good customer service
October 08, 2009
When the Marketing Donut asked me to make a short contribution to their customer service manifesto for small businesses, I struggled to keep it brief. That’s because I think there are three customer service ingredients that are critical to every business, and they are all connected - leadership, communication and motivation.
The first, leadership, is easy to sum up concisely: it’s about having a vision of where your business is going.
Communication is very strongly linked to leadership, because every piece of communication between your workforce and your customers has to be aligned with your business vision. When I say communication, I don’t just mean what you say and write, but everything you convey to your customers. It’s the impressions and experiences they take away with them.
The third ingredient in good customer service is what I call ‘aligning the motivators’. Let me explain: what I see in most organisations is that they have a great vision of what they want to be and they have lots of communication around that vision. Then they motivate people to do the wrong things.
I’m thinking, for example, about the call centre with a strong customer service promise that gives people bonuses based on the number of calls they make per hour. The result is that if someone gets a difficult call, it’s in their interest to end the call as quickly as possible rather than to deal with the problem properly. So what about the customer service promise? The rewards you offer your team for work well done have to promote your vision, not undermine it.
So we have leadership, communication, motivation – the three ingredients of effective customer service. Then I thought about integrity. Really, what we’re talking about here is integrity - of vision, of communication and of practice.
You can’t be saying how important customers are to you and then slating them behind their backs. Nor can you say that your people are your greatest asset and then call them your ‘staff’ and not your ‘team’. You certainly can’t sell a product that’s not right for your customer. Whatever you do, do it with integrity and strong customer service will follow. Believe me, the customer soon knows if the integrity isn’t there.
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