‘Ghosting’ (leaving someone’s message as simply delivered or unanswered) isn’t just something we face socially, it gnaws away at business revenue and employee well-being.
The importance and complexity of business communications have been increasing dramatically.
Knowledge workers are now spending 88% of their working week communicating.
No, really. And 84% of business leaders are reporting communicating over more channels than before.
So, it’s really no surprise that some messages slip into and sit neglected in our inboxes, and clients and coworkers alike can face accidental ‘ghosting’. Yet despite the oversight being understandable, missed comms can have a scary impact on businesses.
In one US study, 53% of respondents reported receiving no reply from a business, and 42% felt entirely ‘ghosted’ by a company.
If you find these stats astonishing, you aren’t alone.
Of course, missing client communications can have reputational impacts on a business, but there’s real revenue potential being lost with each missed message and call.
Another frightening figure is that poor enquiry handling can now cost professional services firms more than £1 million per year; potential clients are likely to turn to a competitor when receiving no or poor responses. You have been warned.
Internally, poor communication affects employees substantially and prioritising only external communications doesn’t tackle the entire issue.
At the risk of stats saturation, 51% of surveyed employees reported that poor communication caused increased stress, 41% reported lower productivity and 26% reported missed deadlines. It’s therefore crucial that the ‘ghosting’ epidemic be exorcised and missed comms reduced across enterprises.
So, how do we tackle the ‘Ghost’?
With constant communication from various sources, employees are increasingly likely to experience communication fatigue and lack oversight of incoming messages. It isn’t always as easy as just setting the goal of not letting important messages go unread.
With the constant flow of communications over Teams, WhatsApp, incoming calls and emails, it’s obvious staff are finding it challenging to reply to or address what’s important.
At Insightful, we suggest two ways to reduce poor communication and its negative business impacts.
- Unify your communication sources
With business communications becoming strewn across various channels, the likelihood of missing important messages is heightened.
The 9 o’clock habit of checking Teams, WhatsApp, Slack, email and missed call logs to gather all relevant info and make sure you’re up to speed is ultimately inefficient, but we can’t force potential clients to use only one comms channel. We have to adapt and expect a variety of client-favoured channels while maintaining the ability to reply promptly.
Unifying company-side is a valuable step in reducing the ‘clutter’ of incoming messages and ultimately chasing the ‘ghost’ away.
So simplify your team’s workflows by having one app, one platform, that let’s you see all your communications channels at once.
- Track and maintain your progress!
Like in any area of business, a goal can’t be fully met if it isn’t tracked. At Insightful, we aim to create optimal visibility for you over your business comms to ensure you aren’t only able to have a streamlined view of multiple channels but you can also measure metrics around responsiveness and missed messages.
With targeted analytics and alerting, you don’t just gain a clear view of where messages are being ghosted and what percentage of chats are in the ether (both internally and with customers), you also get to gain valuable business insights into whether a team is likely to be experiencing communications fatigue and address it as it arises.
Ready to face your ghosts?
Whether you want to increase customer or employee satisfaction, Insightful solutions can help you improve the quality and oversight of your communications.
Now how’s that for ghostbusting.
Happy Halloween from the team.
Want to learn more? Request info here.
