By adam.hayes@wyzowl.com (Adam Hayes)

Whatever your niche or industry, there’s no debate: Effective communication —both internal and external — is critical to your company’s success. With more technology available than ever before, you’d think it would be easy to master.

But new data published by Project.co reveals that businesses in 2023 are still struggling to effectively communicate — with serious implications for the customer experience.

In this article, we’ll dive into the data.

Current State of Business Communication

While 99% of consumers say it’s important that a business communicates well with them as a customer, a mere 7% of businesses rate their communication as “excellent.”

More than double this number rate themselves as “below average” or “poor.”

And the impact on the customer experience is clear: More than two-thirds of people say poor communication has led them to stop dealing with a company and jump ship to a competitor.

Brands know they need to do better – and customers demand that they do better. But when it comes to brands actually doing better – it seems that’s far easier said than done.

So what’s going on?

What does great communication look like?

Perhaps the best place to start here is to look through the lens of the customer.

What is it that they want from companies? What does great communication actually look like?

For a start, customers want to be informed. In fact, 94% of customers surveyed say it’s important they know (or can find out) updates related to their purchase or project, such as its status and the next deliverable.

Customers also want companies to note and remember details so they don’t have to repeat themselves. 87% of people say they’ve had to repeat themselves to the businesses they buy from, and 79% find this annoying.

Full, thorough communication makes a big difference. We all know, from our own experiences as customers, that errors and delays can often be forgiven as long as they’re clearly communicated and explained.

Beyond this, there’s been plenty of research around response speed, particularly how quickly companies are able to go back to messages and what customers expect.

A SuperOffice study showed that nearly half of all customers (46%) expect companies to respond to their messages in less than four hours.

Yet, the average response time, based on a sample size of 1,000 companies, was more than three times this – and the slowest response time was eight days.

In essence, it seems that great communication boils down to:

• Visibility: A thorough overview of where things are up to.
• Organization: Information stored and distributed in an organized way, available to be called upon when needed, with no need for customer follow-up.
• Attitude: Conscientious, thorough, and honest messaging.
• Efficiency: Fast and timely responses.

…read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog