You talking to me?!

If you’ve attended any of my training courses, you’ll know how frequently I stress the importance of talking to your target audiences (the different groups of people with whom you need to communicate) using language they understand. By this, I mean making it easy for your customers and potential customers, as well as any others important to your business, to ‘get’ what you’re all about, why you do it and how you can be of value to them.

No jargon, no patronising sector speak, just simple, straight talking.

The Chimera Communications strapline of ‘Simply Delivering the Message’ says it all.

I’ve come across several situations recently where organisations and businesses have made the mistake of assuming customers understand their language. With some sectors like finance, there’s no getting away from regulations requiring information to be delivered in certain ways. There are some companies incredibly effective in translating this to customers, but many are not. People get confused, and results can be misunderstandings, wasted energy and resource, and duplicated work as well as products.

Understanding your customers means knowing when you need to go the extra mile to explain things in the right way. It’ll save you more time and effort later on.

With online polls, surveys, questionnaires and emails, as well as the good old-fashioned method of actually talking to someone, there’s no excuse for not qualifying what your customers need.

So here are some tips:

·      * Ask your customers when, how and what information they’d like from you – in other words, what is of value to them

·      * Know your customers so well that you understand the language, tone and messages they need to receive, rather than what you churn out to them

·      * Ensure all your teams (if you have rotas or shifts) know what’s going on so customers don’t have to repeat themselves again and again, which is not only frustrating and irritating, but can lead to negative PR through word of mouth and bad online reviews

·      *Make things simple and easy to understand – that way, you’re far more likely to engage and do more business with them

If you don’t connect and build a relationship with your customers, the risk is they’ll go to someone else who ‘talks their language’.