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BUILDING VIRTUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Written by: Gladeana McMahon

Article Overview: A new survey of over 3000 workers, commissioned by BT Business, reveals that poorly managed communication may put customer and client relationships at risk. Better use of technology coupled with a clearer understanding of people’s varying personality types may be the key to winning customers and ensuring clear, effective communications within an organisation.

BUILDING VIRTUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Multiple messages received by email, text and phone message can be frustrating. Others expect you to keep them ‘in the loop’. These variations offer businesses an opportunity to differentiate themselves by the way they communicate and manage customer marketing. In addition, such tools allow individuals within organisations to work remotely. By understanding an individual’s personality type, and how that translates across digital media, time wasted on unproductive communications can be minimised.

This could become even more important because an emerging trend is the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with customers and clients. Such trends are making it more essential than ever that communication is unified and the tools available to manage individual client accounts are used in a more connected way.

According to this latest research, almost a third (30 per cent) of employees in the UK already say that they feel harassed by the number of messages they receive every day, while a similar proportion (29 per cent) of employees are unsure of the best way to contact people.

Simplifying the job by using unified communication technologies so that multiple channels such as email, mobile, SMS and even instant messenger are combined in a single “virtual inbox” could be part of the answer. Nearly half (42 per cent) of the workers believe technology makes it easier to build trust with customers, suggesting there would be a cultural acceptance of new technologies within sales and marketing departments.

There is evidence already that the new generation of social media is already being used to market to customers and clients. In addition, its use is growing within individual organisations as a way of keeping in contact and for allowing greater work flexibility. Younger workers in particular are beginning to use social media, though it is not clear that businesses are prepared for this change. One in six employees (15 per cent) under the age of 25 uses social networking tools, such as Facebook, to manage customer relationships, yet the research found only a negligible number of companies provide any advice to employees on using such channels. Under-25s were also six times more likely than over-44s to use wikis and Twitter to manage customer relationships.

Companies need to provide more information and training about managing communication channels and maximising new technologies. There is no one size fits all approach and Company guidance has to reflect this to maximise effectiveness of communication.

When the marketing department communicates with a customer or a client across multiple communication channels, they build a complex digital brand. Getting this brand right is vital, and identifying each customers’ own personalities can go some way to replacing the clues received in everyday face to face communications through body language and facial expression. This also holds true for individuals within organisations whose 'personal brand' is also impacted.

Several character traits can be identified:

• people with an ‘open’ digital personality are more likely to use communication channels such as
social networking sites; comfortable allowing access to personal information
• ‘conscientious’ people are likely to prefer email, as they can be drafted and checked before sending
• ‘agreeable’ people may have difficulty with prioritising and are likely to want to respond to every
message that arrives – a problem as the volume of such messages increases
• ‘extravert’ people will embrace new technologies with little thought of the consequences; most
likely to be comfortable using services like Twitter or Facebook
• ‘neurotic’ personalities may have a tendency to misinterpret digital communications and respond in
a negative way; likely to be cynical about emerging technologies

The customer management environment is changing fast and organisations need to be aware of how customers are responding to these changes. Technology is enhancing the customer communications experience by offering more solutions, but is also making it potentially more complex. However, the basic principles of human management remain true: everyone is a person first and foremost, and we need to understand them before engaging them in conversation.

Related Articles
  How to Stay Connected in a Virtual Team
  Building and Organizing a Virtual Team - Strategies that Work
  What Is A Virtual Assistant Business
  No Trust, No Team: Building Trust in a Virtual Setting
  The Need for a Virtual Assistant Association

Article Tags: client accounts, communication technologies, customer marketing, facebook, flexibility, inbox, instant messenger, job, marketing departments, mobile sms, new generation, organisations, personality type, phone message, proportion, sales and marketing, six employees, twitter, unified communication, variations



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