How great customer experiences begin with strong internal relationships.
It’s safe to say that most businesses prioritise being ‘customer-centred’. That’s to say, seeing things from the customer’s point of view, hearing their voice, understanding their needs and doing what’s best for them.
So far so good, but if you want to get the external customer piece right, you also have to do the same with your internal teams – ensuring you nurture relationships that are sincere and empathetic, where your teams have shared experiences that unite them to create strong, long-lasting bonds.
75% of B2B decision makers believe strong colleague relationships are key to business success.
Poor communication and disconnected internal relationships usually lead to a disjointed and disappointing customer experience. So, if you want to build a positive relationship with customers, you’ve got to start closer to home – with the way teams collaborate and communicate internally. In fact, good relationships and effective communications are at the heart of all things healthy for your employees and you: enhanced job satisfaction, motivation, wellbeing, improved productivity, creative collaboration, innovation and shared expertise, which all translate to better external relationships too. Happy teams means happy customers.
It’s a reality that is widely recognised. In our study of 800 European business decision makers, 75% told us that strong relationships with colleagues are key to business success.
However, the research also tells us that only 31% of those decision makers believe they currently have strong relationships with co-workers. Add to that the evidence of our own experiences as both customers and suppliers, and it’s hard to argue that while most businesses ‘get it’ in theory, they find it harder to build productive internal relationships in reality. So what are we missing here?
The keys to productive internal relationships
What’s clear is that we must understand – and practice – the art of building positive relationships with people. And crucially, we also need the tools and technology to support human relationships in a remote or hybrid world.
There are three fundamental aspects of a positive relationship: authenticity, meaningful interaction, and collaboration.
Authenticity
This is about being your real self, rather than presenting an artificial ‘work-self’ built around other people’s expectations and ideas of how you should act. Because if you’re not showing your true self, it makes it difficult for colleagues to really know you, connect with you or build trust, which can be a blocker for innovation, creativity and change.
But how can internal communication help with this? It’s a matter of approach which will reflect the culture of your business as a whole. For example, easily accessible channels of communication from the top of your business to the bottom, where every voice can be heard and be amplified shows that you value transparency and normalises real, truthful interaction. Our own research highlighted this, with 40% believing open lines communication as important to building healthy internal relationships.
Meaningful Relationships
Sure, there’s a time and place for chatting about last night’s football. But what we’re talking about here is placing a real value on each other’s time, expertise, and point of view: ensuring interactions are purposeful and positive; listening as well as ‘being heard’. And it’s not just about ‘getting things done’, this is actually how we develop a sense of shared purpose, because when we work together we grow together. It can happen at the water-cooler or in Meeting Room A, but how do we take dialogue online or into the remote working space? It’s vitally important that technology empowers us to connect intuitively and naturally – wherever you are, whichever devices you’re using, whatever you need to share, present or talk about. And above all, it must be done without complexity because when something feels simple, it innately feels more human. This was clear in our research study, with 48% of respondents believing easier internal processes to communicate between teams would foster better relationships between colleagues.
Collaboration
These days, everyone talks a good collaboration game. The reality is that departments are still often siloed and not as ‘joined-up’ as they could be. Collaboration is a hot topic for very good reasons. Firstly, it enables businesses to create more, achieve more and grow faster. Secondly (and equally importantly), it’s because we now have the digital technology that makes it possible for us to work remotely as one. We can bring together the best brains and expertise in the business regardless of geography, department, or vertical – with tools that help us to workshop solutions, brainstorm strategies, synchronise activities, plug in tech partners and keep everyone on the same page. It’s internal communication, reimagined as a whole new operating model.
Moving on from Video Conferencing 1.0
The great WFH back-to-the office debate rumbles on. Meanwhile, people are busy working highly effectively and productively in remote or hybrid settings. The technology is there to support rich, seamless communication and collaboration among your teams. But the key to success is adoption. And the key to adoption is humanisation – providing a solution that employees positively embrace, because it’s built around their needs, way of working and how they want to communicate with colleagues in any situation.
Today’s unified communications solutions are much more than a substitute for in-person interaction. Imagine face-to-face conversation unlimited by meeting space or travel requirements, and enhanced by instant access to all the data, documents, workstreams and expertise you want. This can be the reality today with the right communication solutions.
Our research told us that four in five businesses believe that better communication is key to growing a culture of great relationships between colleagues. It’s a belief that we share, and which underpins the Gamma approach. Our UCaaS solutions combine all the communication options – voice, video, mobile, messaging, meetings, all seamlessly integrated and easy to use. Your people can pick up a call, drop in on a chat, join a workshop and more. Plus, wherever their location or their device, the experience is consistent and rewarding.
Of course, no two organisations are the same. Personalisation really matters. A McKinsey report showed that 71% of consumers expect services and products tailored to their needs. So why should your workforce be any different when it comes to the technology they use? It’s very important that the platforms you choose are customisable to the needs of your team – fully remote, highly mobile, ‘in the office’, or all points in between – what works for them, works for you. And of course, you and your team will continually evolve and grow. So, any UCaaS solution you choose has to flex with your ever-changing requirements.
How Gamma can help
Bring your communications together and bring your teams together. For over twenty years, we’ve been in the relationships business, supporting organisations of every size and type, but always with a unifying idea – technology that supports human beings, helping them to communicate more clearly, connect more deeply and operate more effectively.
In our world-view, if you have the right technology solutions to communicate simply, effectively and more authentically, your internal relationships will be the healthier for it, allowing you to succeed in your goals and achieve better business outcomes. In fact, we think you can put an actual value on this – we call it the Return on Relationships. If you want to delve deeper into our thinking and our research, read our ‘Return on Relationships’ whitepaper here.
For more information about our connectivity, voice and collaboration solutions for internal communication, check out our products and solutions. And if you’re ready to talk, get in touch with us here.
