Communications Management – a board level issue |
| Governance | |
| Written by Sally Wright at Pitney Bowes | |
| Friday, 21 October 2011 | |
How the company can start to build a co-ordinated communications strategy. Since the Millennium, the multi-channel world has become a reality. Customers, shareholders, staff, stakeholders, supply chain partners and regulators now engage with businesses by post, Web, phone, email, text, broadcast, social networks and more. According to one multi-country research study, around 70% of consumers annually walk away from a commercial relationship because of poor customer experience alone. Those poor customer experiences are costing companies billions across Europe in lost annual sales - €17.5bn in the UK, €9.5bn in France and €12.2bn in Germany. The study specifically defines poor customer experience in terms of communications problems, such as quick response and personalised communications only when a customer threatens to quit; long telephone waiting times; no recognition and no fast-tracking of valuable customers. The task of communicating effectively with customers has been complicated by the use of multiple channels. According to research agency Forrester, the most important theme for 2011 is ‘multi-channel planning’. In order to spend budgets wisely, companies must find synergies between channels, understanding which channel combinations work most powerfully with which customer groups in order to produce sales and profit uplift. Customer communications is not the whole picture. Communications excellence needs to be implemented across the entire enterprise to guard against actual losses. According to a research study conducted in late 2008, in the midst of the financial markets crisis, for 43% of the companies who experienced the biggest share price falls over the previous five years, poor communication was a key trigger for the slump. As a result, effective communications management has become a crucial business goal. Nothing undermines corporate reputation and brand values more than poor communications. Consequently, communications management is an issue that affects all managers and directors within a company. Clearly, for Finance Directors, the main concern is to protect the bottom line and ensure that maximum output is gained from minimum spend. This will require working closely with the Marketing Director, as the company aims to offer customers the choice of channels that works best for them, while at the same time understanding which channel combinations produce revenue, profit and customer satisfaction. The Finance Director will usually also collaborate with the Operations Director to embrace supply chain management within his or her remit. So, how do businesses go about aligning all of these communications and implementing an effective strategy? The first step is to conduct a full audit of communications. This will identify which communications issues affect which functions and benchmark current capabilities against best practice standards. It should also analyse how well communications are integrated and where they conflict, evaluate the costs of managing communications and identify where efficiencies can be made, including opportunities for outsourcing. Using this information the company can then start to build a co-ordinated communications strategy which will aim to understand and implement best practice and eliminate communications conflicts and duplications. This will ultimately improve productivity and efficiency of the communications process and maximise ROI. Clearly, poor communications can have an adverse commercial impact. Yet few businesses have built and implemented an effective communications strategy, with most only just starting to grapple with the issue. Given the many parts of company communications, the strategy and management of those communications is an issue which company board directors need to face together. | |
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