Take the chance to declutter your „Kommunigramm”

Do you also find yourself in the situation that over the years your organisation has accumulated a large number of telephone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses that are communicated to customers/sales partners? Do you and your customers/sales partners have pages and pages of lists with contact details and extension numbers that make the search for the right contact person very complicated and tedious? Your “Kommunigramm” could be structured and decluttered with simple means in order to ensure targeted communication to the right contact person.

Which measures do we recommend?

We recommend cleaning up the “mess” of numbers and addresses and setting it up in a structured way. A “Kommunigramm” is a list of all contact options (telephone, e-mail, fax) for customers and sales partners. This offers a clear opportunity to reconsider and, if necessary, eliminate hardly used or unused contact data.

In a first step, you should collect all contact channels communicated externally, subdivided into numbers and email addresses, and record the place of publication (e.g. catalogues, price lists, business cards). If possible, allocate the corresponding incoming volume per breakdown. In a second step, try to understand which concerns or reasons for contact your customers/sales partners have. Also assign the volume to the respective reasons, so you get a feeling of the relevance of the reasons/contact channels.

Based on steps one and two, a critical examination of the results should be carried out to determine which contact options (telephone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses) should be retained and communicated in the future and which contact options prove not to be purposeful. The maxim should be the following: Communicate as few numbers as possible externally, while at the same time ensuring structured and targeted communication to the relevant contact person.

Check out the following seven opportunities of making communication easier for your organisation in a next step:

1. Does it make sense for your organisation to set up a single service number?
2. Can a targeted address be guaranteed by setting up an IVR menu in the call flow despite the reduction in contact options?
3. Can the targeted addressing of the right contact person be supported by creating a caller identification in the telephone system?
4. What is the relevance of the “fax” contact channel for your organisation?
5. Can you achieve pre-structured communication by introducing/developing the contact form on your website?
6. Can the automated reading of subjects or text passages and the assignment to corresponding teams be integrated into your font editing programme?
7. To what extent can automated font editing (e.g. Auto Responder or ChatBot) be easily implemented in your organisation?

In a follow-up step, decide what should happen to numbers or contact addresses that are not considered relevant. Should they be eliminated or redirected to another/ a new number or mail address. Once you have decided on your organisational “Kommunigramm”, ensure that this communication structure is centrally managed and maintained. Also, initiate the implementation of the opportunities that are essential to you in order to best relieve your service unit.

In a final step, you publish the defined “Kommunigramm”, exchange contact data at the points of publication if necessary and communicate this internally to employees as well as externally to customers/sales partners.

Which advantages do you achieve with a decluttering of your “Kommunigramm”?

By decluttering and structuring your “Kommunigramm”, you can achieve a clear and consistent presentation of how communication channels and numbers/addresses are set up and to whom they are addressed. This brings clarity both internally for employees and for customers/sales partners and creates the basis for a smooth communication process.