Businesses can experience barriers to their communications. They can experience these barriers internally (that is, between their staff and employees) or externally (that is, between it and other businesses including customers).

Knowing fully well that you can experience these barriers in your business communications, you should be well aware of these barriers, how they can present themselves, and the steps you can take to remove these barriers, or at least reduce them to a low level.

What are communication barriers?

Communication barriers can be seen as hindrances and disconnections that prevent a message from being received as intended. Simply put, they are those things that can make the message you are trying to communicate not be received properly by your audience.

What are the barriers to business communication?

These are some general categories of barriers that may likely surface in your business:

1. Language barriers:

Sometimes you might need to communicate with someone in a language that is not their primary language. When you run a global or international business, there is a need for you to ensure that the messages you send across are not lost in translation among the international languages.

You can reduce this barrier by using digital communication platforms like Grammarly Business and look to avoid technical jargons and figures of speech that are easily lost in translation.

2. Cultural barriers:

In communications, you can be hindered by the audience's cultural beliefs and practices. For example, where your audience has significantly different values from that of your brand.

To reduce this barrier, you need to ensure that your brand values are clearly understood. Seek to communicate professionally with a tone of empathy. This would appeal to your audience a bit more.

3. Departmental barriers:

This type of barrier is mostly experienced internally, within the business, especially for large businesses. In some cases, different departments within a business may communicate very differently from each other and this might stir up issues when those departments have to work together.

You can reduce this barrier by increasing contact between teams, training and supporting them to communicate with various other departments and encouraging them to stay consistent with those communication styles.

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4. Information overload:

It would not be wise to pass across voluminous messages when you are communicating with your audience, you will leave your audience confused and they end up not understanding what you have just communicated.

You should leave out any sentences which do not support the main point that you are trying to communicate. In the case of written communication, you can express your points with bullets, so they are easy to skim through and read. You could also employ Grammarly to make your communications more efficient.

5. Wrong use of communication channels:

This describes the incorrect use of laid-out channels for communication. Not all employees/colleagues have the same communication styles. Some may prefer information to be relayed to them formally, and others might prefer it informally. Also, not all customers prefer the same communication channel.

To overcome this barrier, always pay attention to your audience’s communication style and tailor your communication style, tools, and techniques to what you have observed about your audience.

6. Bad timing:

This has to do with the particular time at which you are communicating with your audience. It may be a perfect and convenient time for you, but it may not be so for the audience. You need to tailor your communications to a time when it is favorable; both for you and your audience. This could be the normal business hours and also depends on the time zone of your audience.

There is a need to avoid the high costs your business will incur in communicating poorly. In doing this, you will first need to identify the barriers which you are experiencing in communications and follow the correct steps to remove the barriers.

With SmartSMSSolutions, your business can break many of these barriers with a simple and effective technique, Bulk SMS. Through this Bulk SMS feature, you can communicate directly to people’s mobile phone numbers easily and affordably. This is a good example of using the right communication channels. Get started with SmartSMSSolutions now!