My wife recently had an interesting experience with her cell phone company and this experience reiterated to me the importance of communication. This post is going to cover some high-level issues I encounter regularly.
For a bit of background here is a description of out experience with the cell phone company. First level support was awesome. They were responsive, kind, and mostly knew what they were talking about. Our case ended up getting passes to second level support and this is where things went bad.
Under communication
This company’s second level support was a perfect example of under communication. It was impossible for us to communicate with a second level support person we had to just sit around and wait for them to email us. In fact, even a first level support person could actually talk to a second level support.
The response took days of sitting around and hoping that our issues haven’t fallen through the cracks. The lack of communication ended with use changing cell providers based on the level of under communication. Had we been able to get a status or be told where the issue stood things would have turned out different.
It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with your family, customers or coworkers make sure to communicate what you are doing, what your expectations, what issues you are facing, etc. by providing this information everyone will be on the same page and have good expectations of each other.
Noisy communication
This issue comes up when you are communicating, but the idea being communicated is lost due to an unfocused message. Make sure that each of your points is concise and to the point.
To extend the cell phone example above a noisy version of describing the problem would be describing to the support person how angry the issues is making you, why the weather make you angry, the problem with the cell service, the cool new trick your dog did yesterday.
In the above, the really important bit is the problem with your cell service and the rest of it distracts and obscures what the actual point of the communication.
Dishonest communication
Intentionally providing wrong information for me is the worst communication offense. Missing leading someone either through omission of facts or a full blown lie is a sure way for any process to break down. I feel people try and make the best choices they can, but when making choices based on false or missing information the results aren’t good.
Another big issue with dishonest communication is when someone finds out that you have been dishonest with them if changes all future interactions in a very negative way.
Wrapping up
I have only listed three communication issues here that I seem to deal with for the most, but there are tons of more issues. Take time to evaluate your day to day communication and make sure your communication isn’t unclear for some reason. Don’t let some of this issues cost you customer, employees or friends.