XYZ Corp. announces the launch of…
The pressure over Corporate and Marketing Communications professionals to have widely covered news releases and email customers with announcements of launches and awards is intense.
But the job of communication begins not with the communications department. It begins with the product.
If you are limiting yourself to this most visible part of communication, you aren’t doing the real job of communication.
That’s to listen.
Without listening to your customers, announcements are superficial at best. It isn’t about you talking from atop the hill to the multitude saying, “Hey look, this is what I’ve done. It’s good for you. It shows my commitment to you. So stick around.”
1. The first and foremost part of communication is listening.
2. And then of fairness.
3. Then and only then can you do the talking.
What happens in a one way street?
Well, you take the 3rd job first. Let’s say your team has spent innumerable hours on a product and one grand day, you fling aside the curtain and say “Lo and Behold, here’s the product we’ve all been waiting for.”
The implication is, “Tell me it’s good. Now go use it.”
Well, the listener may not always be listening. Second, he or she may not find it interesting – most likely not. Third and most important, it may mean something else entirely to the person. Essentially, you do not know what it means to the listener.
Now take the 2-way street. You make an active effort to listen to your customers. You call them up, you visit them and you listen to them. As an active continuous process, from the top of the company pyramid to the bottom.
Sure, customers can’t always tell you what they want. Conserve your resources to do those radical developments that you conjure up.
But customers can certainly tell you what’s going wrong and how to make it better which adds up to what they really want in an existing product. Rather than hunker down into a defensive position, open up and listen to them.
Now that you’ve listened, go to part 2. Give a fair thought to zero in on the suggestions that really mean something to the customer – despite whatever it takes for you to deliver them. Then and only then, do you match them with your resources and capability. If you are thinking of your resource constraints while listening, you aren’t doing a fair job of hearing the customer.
Listening is an iterative process where you may have to repeatedly go back to the customer to test continuously whether what you think your product delivers is really what it means to them.
Watch them use it if you can. Now, that is quiet listening.
Then and only then can you go to Part 3 of the process. Of speaking to the customer. And making the grand unveiling. It’s the smallest, although the most visible part of communication. It isn’t an easy job. It’s just that it’s the last part.
To the public it looks like a great job done at the heart of your company.
You know the truth.
Your customers feel cared for.
Some times, to the customer just the fact of having been heard serves the purpose of feeling involved since you realistically can’t do all that she asks for. And the customer truly feels the product and the brand belongs to her. That’s the real job of communication.
Poetry in Life 