1. “Communication works for those who work at it” – John Powell
What distinguishes us as a species from all other creatures on the planet? One of the answers is communication.
The fact that we can send complex ideas between us has generated a competitive advantage.
This has progressively allowed us to be the species with the greatest impact on the planet.
Think about what it means for us to have communication on our side! Using only the English language we are able to send between us about 80 thousand ideas represented by words. So, how did communication help us so far and how can it help us from now on?
The answer is coordination – in the past, communication helped us to coordinate in order to survive. Communication helped us pass on our ideas to eachother whenever we made a discovery. Then later generations were able to apply these ideas to solve problems faster.
This aspect is even more important nowadays, especially in the business environment.
So, if there are errors in the communication system of your company; then they will surely expand until all other systems suffer.
But what is the communication system?
To answer this question, we must first understand what communication is.
The simplest definition of communication is: Sending a message generated by one person to another, through a certain communication environment.
A good example is how I am sending the messages from this article to you using text.
Generally, in companies, the communication system is represented by the rules that dictate what kind of messages must reach a certain person and what he or she needs to do next for the proper functioning of work activities.
If you’ve come this far, you’re probably wondering what everything you’ve read has to do with your company’s profits.
The connection occurs when the activities that generate profit depends on how well your office employees communicate with the drivers that travel to the customers’ location to provide services, to deliver goods or simply to hold a business meeting, where your agents sell your products or services.
Here, communication plays a very important role in maintaining customer satisfaction.
Why is this important?
2. 77% of companies still send important information in the office on paper.
This is not good news at all and the consequences of using of old communication systems are vast and mainly affect the satisfaction of customers who bring in your income.
Nobody likes delays, so what can a customer think about your company if the products are not delivered on time because the route of the driver who had to make the delivery was not updated fast enough?
What would happen if someone makes an urgent request to your company that has built a reputation for solving problems with electrical installations in the shortest amount of time; but no electrician goes there all day?
No one could be satisfied with such a situation. This means that if something like this happens would happen in your company, you will most likely create an unpleasant experience for your customer.
From the studies carried out on the market, it is estimated that a single dissatisfied customer will tell about his unpleasant experience, in the best case, to 9 other people; and in the worst case, to other 15 people.
In contrast, when a pleasant experience takes place, the same client would tell about it to only 4-6 other people.
This means that an unhappy customer is almost 3 times more likely to tell others about his experience than a happy customer.
How can such situations be avoided?
3. Effective communication in the company.
In order to figure out the possible solutions which helps us avoid the problems generated by inefficient communication, we must first know what creates this type of problem.
What would be the fastest way to provide our service when a customer calls and asks us to urgently go and help them?
Please note that in order to do this you must:
a) Find out which of your employees is closest to that customer;
b) Determine which of them would have enough time to respond to this request;
c) Contact the employee and give him all of the information he needs to travel to the client and also tell him everything he has to do there.
What would be the best solution?
The Classic Method
Using the classic method, you could start by manually searching through the mountains of documents for your drivers’ schedules in order to compare the customer’s location to your drivers’ location.
While searching you would have to also find out who would have time for this new order.
After this, the fun doesn’t end here.
The next step would be to call each driver separately; which could take up to a few hours if you have a large number of drivers in the company.
Also, when you call them, you need to ask them where they are, because there is a chance that some of them may have finished a job sooner and may not be where you would have expected.
Or, maybe a job took longer and again the worker would not be where you expected him to be…
Finally, after many attempts, you manage to find an employee who can take over the request.
After all of this maddening work, you have reached the easiest part of the whole process: you can send all the necessary information about the new request to your employee by phone.
But the adventure is not over, now your employee must look for the address and find the fastest route to the customer.
Surely there is a much easier or at least simpler way to do all of this…
The Modern Method
Fortunately, the online environment that has developed in the recent decades allows us to communicate more effectively with each other.
Innovations have also appeared on the market; such as the Nexus Driver application, which simplifies the communication system within companies.
For example, using Nexus Driver and Nexus GPS Tracking, the most effective way to resolve the situation mentioned above is to:
1) Start Nexus GPS Tracking and access the Proximity menu.
Here, if the client has used your services before, then you will already have his location set as a point of interest. Choose the customer’s address and look for which of your vehicles is closer to the customer. It only takes a few seconds to find this.
2) Send a message to your driver with information about the customer; especially the address and the task he has to perform.
The agent can easily see the message very in the Nexus Driver application, he can also ask just as easily for additional information if he needs it.
Finally, in Nexus Driver, your employee can tap directly on the location you sent, and the phone will show him on the map where he needs to go.
Thus, a process that would have taken hours to complete can be reduced to less than 10 minutes!
These processes can be improved further with a gps tracking solution. You can read more about this here.
What history has taught us…
Did you know that in England, during the Industrial Revolution, mechanization of bakeries was delayed by several decades?
This happened because investors thought mechanization was worthless investment and because bakers thought they would lose their jobs.
The consequences of this were devastating from several points of view:
Bakers were overworking and their earnings were very low.
Traders were making increasingly inefficient decisions to reduce costs – such adding additives to flour;
Finally, consumers did not receive quality products due to difficult working conditions and additives.
While this was happening, companies that had the intuition to invest in mechanized solutions woke up overnight with a competitive advantage over those who decided to continue using the classic method.
Our suggestion is to try as much as possible to take advantage of the technological advantages you have at your disposal. One of the advantages we can offer to you is Nexus Driver, the application we talked about earlier.