Improving communications

IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS

I. Listen to the first part of an interview with Alastair Dryburgh, an expert on communication. Does he think technology makes good communication easier?

- No, he doesn’t. He thinks it can make communication both better and worse.

What four key points does Alastair make about communication?

- People have limited attention, so communication as succinctly as possible.

- Recognise that communication is about meaning, so don't dump lots of data on people.

- It's just as much about listening as it is about telling things.

- If a communication is going to be effective, there's got to be some sort of emotional connection in it.

How do you advise companies to cope with modern communication?

- I think the thing to remember is the principles of communication haven't changed and l don't think there's anything inherent in technology that makes good communication easier. It can make it better, but there arc also many ways it can make it worse. So, I think there's four things that

you need to remember. The first thing is that you've got to remember people have limited attention – if you like, limited bandwidth – which puts the onus on you as the communicator to think hard about what it is exactly you're trying to communicate and make sure that you get it down as succinctly as possible.

Um, second point is, recognise that, you know, communication is about meaning. It's not about dumping vast amounts ofdata on people and expecting them to deal with something. Now, I went to a presentation once and someone started off. He said, well, I've got 41 slides here, but 1

think I'll get through them all in 30 minutes. And they were really dense slides - lots and lots of graphs and pictures. Now, I was actually at the back of the room, and these glasses are not quite what they should be. I need new lenses. I couldn't read any of the slides because they were so fine, so that's what you've got to remember: don't dump lots of data on people. You have to distil the meaning into, into a small number of points.

Um, the third point about communication is, it's just as much about listening as it is about telling things, and the biggest communication problems I come across in organisations are actually failures of listening rather than failures of, of outward communication, particularly the inability or unwillingness of senior management to listen to what other people are actually telling them.

And the fourth ques-, point is that, um, you know, if a communication is going to be effective – if you are actually going to get someone to do something orstop doing something or do something differently - there's got to be some sort ofemotional connection in it.

And so, if you think about all those furpoints, there's no obvious reason why technology would make any of those easier. There arc certainly ways you can use it to make it easier; there arc certainly ways you can use it to make it an awful lot worse. So, I think that's what you've got to watch. The principles remain the same. The tools could help or could hinder.

II. Listen to the second part of the interview. Alastair gives an example of a company which has used technology to change the way it communicates with customers.

Give reasons why it communicates well.

- Amazon communicate well because the customers always know where they are – they get confirmation when they order things and further confirmation when item is sent. The company makes suggestions for things customers might like to buy, based on what they’ve bought in the past or on what other people have bought.

Do you think that in general companies are now communicating better with their customers?

In general, l would say no, and I think there arc, there are examples of excellent communication and there arc examples of awful communication.

If you think about two examples, perhaps, ofcompanies who've used technology to change the way they communicate with customers, one is absolutely fantastic, the other is complete abysmal, awful.

The fantastic one 1 would say is Amazon. The thing about Amazon – you always know where you are. You order something, you get a confirmation. Um, as soon as it's been sent, you get another confirmation. So you always feel exactly ... you know exact where you are. You know exactly what's happening, when your thing's going to tur up - which anyone could do, but most people don't. The other thing about Amazon is they are, in a sense, listening to you because they're looking at the things you've bought in the past and suggesting - well, based on that, there are other things you might like. l think that's very effective communication. It certainly resulted in me buying quite a lot more books than otherwise would. Or things like, you know, people who bought, other people who bought this also buy that. That's, that's really good because again they

are using the opportunity of having you on this wonderful technological platform where they don't just know what you buy, they know everything you've ever looked at - to tell you useful things. l think it's great because if I want books on a particular subject, it will suggest books I've never heard of. And I’ll buy them, so it's, it's good for them a well. So that works really well.

III. Listen to the final part, where Alastair is describing a bad customer experience. What mistakes did the company make, and how could they have improved the customer experience?

- They have built amazing computerised voicemail maze that is very frustrating for the user: It’s very difficult to speak to a real person, the options don’t correspond to the callers’ problems and the caller ends up going round in circles or hang up.

- The company should simplify the system and make it easier to get through to a real person.

Because what they've done is they've built this amazing computerized voicemail maze, which seems to be designed to prevent you ever from getting to talk to a real person who could actually answer your question or solve your problem. So you go through - push one for this, dial one for

this, dial two for this, dial three for that. Neither option seems to answer my question, so what do I do? Sometimes l arrived at points where literally my options were to hear the message again, which was no use, or hang up. There are some points where, if you just don't do anything and hang on the line, you will actually get to talk to a human being ... but it takes you a while, you know, many minutes on the phone, repeated attempts to find out where those are. And so, l don't really know what they're trying to do. They've obviously put, I suppose, put an emphasis on efficiency, but, in the process, they've actually made themselves almost impossible to deal with.