Advancements in communication technologies, including the internet, smartphones, social media, and SaaS usage, have only been around for a relatively short period of time. Yet, they’ve completely revolutionized how businesses communicate. 

These technologies have enabled a higher degree of collaboration between teams across an organization, as well as colleagues and customers around the world. Social media, live chat, and project management channels are just a few examples of how employees, customers, and partners can engage with your brand today.

The ever-increasing pool of potential communication channels presents exciting opportunities to build better connections and new challenges for businesses to overcome. This opportunity makes business communication more critical to the stability and long-term success of your team and company.

Why is business communication important between teams?

Without strong collaboration, companies are unable to function effectively, let alone achieve their goals. Because of this, internal business communication is essential.

Facilitating good internal business communication:

• Promotes productivity. Clear, concise directives help prevent misunderstandings and mistakes while ensuring everyone has the information they need to succeed in their tasks. As many as 86% of workplace failures can be easily avoided with clear communication.
• Fosters a healthy company culture. Open, honest communication policies promote trust and improve professional relationships between coworkers and management.
• Motivates and inspires employees. Team members are more likely to collaborate effectively (and enthusiastically) when they feel empowered to voice their thoughts and ideas. Forging stronger connections with employees can improve engagement and performance by as much as 10%.
• Improves internal brand perception. The stronger the connection between your team members and your brand values and mission statement, the more likely they are to become valuable brand ambassadors even outside of work hours.
• Increases job satisfaction. The more effectively a team member’s duties and role within the company can be communicated to them, the better they will perform. Effective internal communication can improve employee retention by up to 50%.
• Reduces unnecessary costs. Miscommunications can cost small businesses more than $420,000 per year, while large enterprises may lose as much as $62.4 million annually. Effective communication minimizes the chances of costly mistakes and leads to higher employee retention rates, which reduces turnover costs. 

Within your own team, more effective communication means more productive collaboration. And improving communication on a company-wide level promotes better interdepartmental relationships, which in turn can increase overall company health. 

Effective internal communication is especially critical for global companies working across different time zones. Asynchronous communication in particular must be clear and direct without sacrificing professional courtesy. This helps avoid confusion and setbacks that cannot be identified and corrected as quickly as during synchronous communications.

A widely distributed, easily accessible internal brand style guide can help clarify and unify expectations around proper business etiquette and communication styles across channels and departments. This can help improve consistency while minimizing misunderstandings.

Why is business communication important for customers?

Business communication with customers, clients, and the general public plays a critical role in generating sales and revenue. 

Effective external business communication is important because it:

• Promotes a positive brand reputation. Choosing the right messaging and tone has a significant impact on how your brand is perceived externally. As many as 60% of customers cite trust as a major determining factor in their loyalty to a brand. Honest, transparent communication is key to building that trust.
• Prevents costly miscommunications. The quality of your external messaging can make or break a marketing or outreach campaign, and can even affect corporate revenue. An Accenture survey of 7,000 brands, for example, reported $180 billion in losses attributed to a drop in trust.
• Forges stronger customer and client relationships. Effective customer communication promotes long-term loyalty and reduces churn. An increase of just 5% in customer retention can increase profits by up to 25%.
• Inspires external brand ambassadorship. The happier your customers are, the more likely they are to share their affinity with friends, family, and other parties within their social networks. And with 92% of customers believing suggestions made by friends and family more than advertisements, the power of word of mouth is clear. 
• Increases customer and client retention rates. Over 70% of customers report that they would move on from a brand they have been loyal to after just one bad customer service experience. Educating your team members on proper customer communication helps prevent such missteps and keeps customers coming back for more.

Effective external communication is especially critical in building a positive global presence for companies that serve multiple countries worldwide. Choosing your words carefully and avoiding language that is difficult to translate, such as idioms, can help ensure positive experiences regardless of country or region. 

Improving communications across multiple channels

Recognizing why business communication is important naturally leads to two follow-up questions: How do you improve your company’s communications? And how do you do so quickly, across multiple channels?

Hosting a series of training sessions and distributing educational materials are common strategies that typically work well. However, it takes time to see the full benefits of these initiatives.

To accelerate the rate of change within your company, consider looking to technology for solutions. A digital communications assistant like Grammarly Business can be instrumental in rapidly improving the quality of business communications across multiple channels and teams.

Grammarly offers features to help your team instantly check written communications for mistakes in spelling, grammar, and diction. It can also assess and revise tone while checking documents against a customizable style guide to ensure alignment with company guidelines. With the right technology on your side, your brand can increase the quality of your written communications by more than 70% in just six months.

Now that you understand why business communication is so important, why wait to take the steps toward improvement? Contact us to learn more about our cutting-edge digital writing assistant—or get started with Grammarly Business right away.