Communication is an important aspect of various business activities. Without communication, a company cannot achieve its business objectives. A company is required to interact with various parties on a daily basis.
Managers are required to communicate with employees and senior management is required to communicate with external stakeholders like investors, banks, government authorities, etc. Different methods of communication may be used to interact with different parties. Let us discuss some common types of communication used in a business.
Four Common Types of Business Communication
Email And Chat
With the advent of internet, most of the business communication is performed with the use of email facility. This facility can help an organization in communicating important company related issues and updates and can also be used as a marketing tool. It is the fastest form of business communication and can be used to deliver a message to a large number of recipients at the same time.
Email can be used for both internal and external communication. It is important to note that most of the business dealings are finalized with the use of email. Email can be considered as the cheapest method of business communication. However, email can be easily used to share confidential information of the company with outside parties in the absence of proper information technology internal controls.
Tools like skype and other messengers can also be used to communicate across boundaries. Many small scale companies can use chat as an alternative to other expensive means (like international calls) of communication.
Telephone
Telephone can be considered as one of the oldest tools used in business communication. With the advent of mobile phones, business communication has become much easier. It is important to note that mobile phones are generally given to marketing and sales people in order to facilitate quick response to customer queries and orders.
However, use of telephones and mobile phones result in a business cost. Further, telephones and mobile phones can be subject to misuse resulting in unnecessary expenditure for the company.
Meetings
It is very important for a company to ensure regular meetings with its clients. Face to face meetings can be considered as one of most effective means of business communication. Personal interaction results in better flow of information and can also help in building trust and long lasting relationships with the clients.
However, it is important to note that meetings can be time consuming and can sometimes result in wastage of time. However, even with these disadvantages, the benefits associated with face to face interaction cannot be ignored.
Others
Other types of business communication can include transmission of message through the use of fax machines, use of projector for video conferencing, etc. With the use of email and the facility of attaching documents, the need to use fax machine has reduced drastically.
In case of companies having operations across the world, video conferencing can be effectively used by the management to communicate important decisions to employees. Video conferencing can be used as an alternative to face to face communication with the employees.