Are you a good listener? Next time you are in a casual conversation with a friend, try something different – repeat what your friend says before you respond. This will feel very awkward, but it will definitely test your listening skills.
In the business context, listening to customers and employees is important because these groups are full of useful information, from innovative product ideas to suggestions for making processes more efficient. It’s difficult to address their needs, wants and ideas without taking the time to capture their thoughts first.
It can be challenging to measure how often a business listens to an audience. Can you list the steps your business takes to obtain feedback from both internal and external audiences? You may find it easier to count the number of times you communicate information to these audiences than to count the number of ways you open the lines of communication.
At Movéo, we recommend listening to different audiences when developing a brand strategy. It is common to overlook the opinions of an important group, employees, during the research phase of brand development. Bringing employees into the process does not mean asking their opinion about a group of logos or taglines. I’m talking about gauging their attitudes and opinions about their company long before any graphic design software is opened or catchy slogans are created.
Listening is not the end-game. The information gathered from an audience needs to be translated into action. Otherwise, listening becomes a waste of the audience’s time and your time. When Movéo conducts an employee study for a company, we often compare their management’s perception of the brand with their employee’s perception of the brand in order to identify any gaps that the business needs to address. If the new brand is misaligned with employee perceptions of the company, it may create confusion for employees and make it difficult for them to deliver the intended brand experience to customers.
If the list of steps your business is currently taking to listen to audiences is minimal or unclear, your next step may be to create a plan to keep a pulse on customer and employee ideas.
