Importance of Communication in Business

Communication forms the backbone of every business. Without effective communication, the business will cease to succeed. Even the minutest operations within a business require communication. This communication helps the business in successfully interacting with all its stakeholders (Ruesch et. al., 2017). External stakeholders of the business include governments, customers, vendors, clients and media personnel. While internal stakeholders include employees and board of directors.

Cogent conversations among these stakeholders helps businesses in understanding customer needs, gain transparent feedback and competently plan a future course of action towards accomplishing business goals. Today, digital communication tools have taken precedence over traditional communication channels that existed before (Rosendale, 2015). The E-mail culture is counting its last days and memos have become history. This is where social media is gaining traction. The preamble to this report is the proposal which highlighted upon the usage of social media for business communication. This report throws light on digital communication strategies and tools adopted by Amazon Inc.

Communication has become digital with the growth of technology and the widespread reach of the internet (Lapidoth, 2017). Traditional forms of communication have taken a back seat and digital strategies are being widely adopted by organizations for effective internal and external communication. Over the recent years, social media is being widely adopted as an effective tool for communication within and outside business. Social media blogs and communities are being created by businesses to enable and foster transparent communication.

Most organizations have their Salesforce and chat bots in place so as to remove discrepancy of any kind and ensure clarity of communication. Customized internal chat messengers are used by employees for internal communication. Digital communication has enabled quick communication and every stakeholder of the business can be reached out to in a proficient manner (Georgakopoulou & Spilioti, 2015).

Digital communication is the presence and future of business communication. The reason behind the growth of digital communication is its effectiveness and efficiency. Digital communication is much faster as compared to traditional forms of communication like phone calls, memos and E-mails (Tagg, 2015). This is predominantly because the communication channel is much faster and transparent. The communication gets stored and can be revived as and when required. Moreover, this transparency is owing to various features of digital communications. For example, digital communication tools can keep record of when a particular message was read by the receiver. Hence, this leaves no room for discrepancy.

Digital Communication as a Form of Communication

The advent of globalization has created multi-cultural and global teams working in businesses. Intercultural communication can often become difficult specifically owing to different time zones that people function in. Digital communication tools allow different stakeholders to communicate as per their convenience (Sisko Maarit Lipiäinen et. al., 2014). This communication can take place from different parts of the world. Another advantage of these tools is the ability to communicate with people from across the globe. Tools like Skype and Viber can be used to conduct video conferencing wherein all the involved stakeholders can effectively feel each other’s presence in the same room. This makes communication more effective and real time.

Gone are the day when people had to send a message and wait for a response. With the growth of digital communication, people can interact in real time irrespective of their physical locations. The entire communication process has become much faster and has improved the operational efficiency of the business. Amazon uses hangouts, GOTOmeeting and Skype in order to facilitate communication among stakeholders which are located in different countries.

The growth of digital media tools has also allowed several stakeholders of the business to communicate together. The number of people involved in a single conversation has drastically increased. The large team sizes within organization often need to communicate among each other. These tools are highly effective in ensuring that they can communicate using a single platform. Even the simplest digital communication platform, Whatsapp, can enable people to create a single group conversation with over 100 people. Amazon is a global company with offices throughout the world. Therefore for the effective internal communication within Amazon, Digital marketing tools come handy and allow concerned parties to efficiently communicate with each other.

A business runs with an aim to deliver value and make profit. In such a scenario, it becomes important to understand customer needs and build sustainable relationship with customers. In order to accomplish the same, social media plays a significant role in ensuring the same. Social media platforms helps businesses in understanding customer needs as well as receive their feedback. Various customers resort to social media in case they have a positive or a negative feedback for a product received via Amazon. This makes it important for Amazon to remain active on social media platforms and consistently strive to address customer grievances in an effective manner. Changing customer needs can also be analyzed with the help of social media by observing customer patterns and preferences.

Digital Communication Tools Used by Amazon for Effective Communication

Digital communication that an organization conducts with its stakeholders also help the firm in building the right positioning for the business in the minds of its consumers. Positioning of a particular product refers to the image of the product in customer’s minds. This is important for increased brand awareness and improved sales. Amazon’s social media pages are highly active and the brand continues to share information regarding the business with its customers. These posts build the brand image and hence allow Amazon to have a positive positioning in the world.

There are several digital communication tools that are used by Amazon to facilitate internal as well as external communication. Different functions of the brand require different tools for effective communication. All these tools are highly effective and allow the business to proficiently communicate with several business stakeholders.  

Facebook is one of the earliest social media tool that was adopted by Amazon in order to communicate with people from across the globe. Amazon’s Facebook page is very active and the brand ensures that it consistently shares all relevant news about the business with its stakeholders through Facebook. Many times customers resort to Facebook in order to provide feedback for a particular product. Amazon responds to these customers in a proactive manner which leads to improved customer satisfaction and better brand identity. The platform of Facebook is also leveraged by Amazon to create social media communities which foster discussions among Amazon employees, customers and other stakeholders. These communities are formed with an intention to increase awareness about the brand.

The latest innovation of Amazon is Chime. Amazon chime is a platform that enables people from across the globe to communicate with each other via chat, video call and audio call both within and outside the business environment. Amazon Chime is definitely an upgrade over various digital communication tools like Skype, Hangouts or WebX. Chime allows different stakeholders to come together and conduct meetings (Shao et. al., 2016). The key features of Amazon Chime include instant file sharing, video calling, video messaging, instant messaging, virtual meetings and VOIP calling. These features are highly relevant in the present day business scenario. The tool helps Amazon in conducting hassle free meetings and quick sharing of important files across stakeholders.

Video conferencing is being conducted by businesses since a long time. Even so, Amazon is a global organization and has employees as well as customers throughout the globe. Therefore, as joint stakeholders of the company, they often need to conduct meetings. Video conferencing is used by Amazon to conduc3t such meetings. Video conferencing along with audio polycom is being actively used by Amazon in order to ensure that its stakeholders have clear and transparent communication.

Facebook

Blogs are increasingly used within organizations to serve several communication purposes. Blogs facilitate learning and development of organizational stakeholders. Amazon relies heavily on internal blogs. All of Amazon’s success and failure stories are recorded in the form of blogs and video logs or V-logs. Blogs are used within Amazon’s entire ecosystem. They are critical in the following ways:

1. Understanding the knowledge of employee in a certain area of discussion.
2. All the published material can be archived with the help of blogs and can be easily accessed by employees within the business (La Caze, 2017).
3. Blogs promote and foster open discussion and lead to enhanced collaboration in the workforce. These discussion take place in a comfortable environment and in a transparent manner.
4. Employees from different time zones, countries, departments and backgrounds can find a single platform to interact with each other.

Twitter and Instagram are leading social media platforms which enable businesses to communicate with its customers. Amazon has an active presence across these two platforms. There are different twitter accounts and Instagram handles for Amazon offices based on different locations. This strategy helps the brand in strategically maintaining and fulfilling the social media presence of their local area (Poell & Van Dijck, 2015).

Several customers resort to social media in case of grievances. Amazon actively responds to these grievances and works towards finding the best solution to the problem presented before them. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and increased social presence of the brand. Amazon effectively responds to all twitter mentions and also leverages the same platform to advertise its brand.

Instagram is increasingly used as a platform to share images. Amazon’s Instagram account has over 1.8 million followers. Amazon posts a picture about the brand’s new introductions on a regular basis. They have also been leveraging Instagram stories in order to throw light at the back office activities of the Ecommerce giant.

Whatsapp in one of the most informal and widely used communication tools used by most business organizations. At the same time, the tool is of great utility and helps people communicate instantly with each other. At Amazon, the management promotes the culture of communicating through Whatsapp. The reason behind using this tool for communication is the speed as well as the versatility of Whatsapp. It can be used to make audio calls, video calls, send instant messages on groups or to individuals as well as share files, documents and recently the tool even allows users to make payments.

The managers at Amazon create different groups for all departments and teams so that employees can communicate within their teams in an efficient manner and under a single platform. The data shared on Whatsapp is also protected by end to end encryption and hence keeps data secured.

Implementing a communication strategy which is already setting up new charts of success is never an easy task, primarily due to the resistance of the employees to undergo change. On the basis of this, some of the risks identified towards implementing the communication strategy in the workplace are:

Chime

This is required to make informed choices, identify the priorities and selecting the best possible option for the organization. Leadership commitment will ensure the process gets implemented within the organization.

This will help in creating the objectives and rationales for the risk and create documents related to support and expertise, the extent and the range of issues, guidance on acceptable risks and many others.

The next logical step in risk analysis is communicating the new proposed change in the organization to the stakeholders. This will help in curtailing their resistance and provide them with a better understanding for the change in communication strategy.

This is the stage where the communication strategy will be reviewed in accordance to the possible risks identified in the process. Based on which the organization has the chance to revisit its risk and communication policy and apply changes wherever required.

This section will provide an estimate of the costs to be incurred towards implementing the new communication strategy in the business organization.

Platform	Estimate	Analysis
Social Media	The bare minimum cost of managing the page on social media. For getting the Facebook for business page and using all the features of its community platform, the company will have to spend an AUD 120,000 for a period of 12 months	Social media is one platform which provides maximum engagement. Thus, traveling of communication on this platform will be the fastest and most effective.
Whatsapp	Free of cost	The service is free of cost and managers can organically share communication akin to projects or specific tasks on the internal groups in the organization
Amazon Chime	The company has already invested thousands of dollars to expand the platform ,and now it is in the comprehensive stage	The collaborative platform will help in better communication services providing seamless audio and video control on all possible devices, irrespective of the location.
Blogs and V-logs	Internal marketing and communication team will create the blogs and Vlogs at absolutely free of cost	Blogs and Vlogs will be used to provide an in depth knowledge of any topic, or can be used as a medium to provide better understanding of the intent of the communication

Conclusion

Digital communication is the present that has completely changed the scene of communication in several industries. Traditional tools of communication have taken a backseat and new tools including Whatsapp, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, internal blogs and V-logs as well as instant messengers are being used by organizations in order to foster a culture of open communication.

Amazon has been leading the ecommerce industry since its inception. One of the major success factors of the brand is its effective communication strategy. Amazon has efficiently managed its internal as well as external communication with all its stakeholders. The brand has specifically been innovative with the introduction of Amazon Chime for its internal communication.

The adoption of digital marketing tools in every day communication of Amazon has helped the brand in enhancing coordination among various departments leading to improved customer service, enhanced brand positioning, and wider reach and enriched customer relationships. Majority of the employees working at Amazon are millennial who are technologically savvy and hence have pushed the digital communication envelope in the most effective manner establishing the brand’s dominance in the Ecommerce industry.

References 

Georgakopoulou, A., & Spilioti, T. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication. Routledge. United Kingdom.

La Caze, S. (2017). Changing classroom practice through blogs and vlogs. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 25(1), 16.

Lapidoth, A. (2017). A foundation in digital communication. Cambridge University Press.

Poell, T., & Van Dijck, J. (2015). Social media and activist communication. SSRN. United Kingdom.

Rosendale, J. A. (2015). New Communication Technologies in Organization Communications and Branding: The Integral Role Social Media Now Play. Florida Communication Journal, 43(2).

Ruesch, J., Bateson, G., Pinsker, E. C., & Combs, G. (2017). Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry. Routledge. United Kingdom.

Shao, Y., Zhu, X., Bao, W., Zhou, W., & Xiao, W. (2016, December). CHIME: A Checkpoint-Based Approach to Improving the Performance of Shared Clusters. In Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS), 2016 IEEE 22nd International Conference on (pp. 1007-1014). IEEE.

Sisko Maarit Lipiäinen, H., Ensio Karjaluoto, H., & Nevalainen, M. (2014). Digital channels in the internal communication of a multinational corporation. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 19(3), 275-286.

Tagg, C. (2015). Exploring digital communication: Language in action. Routledge. United Kingdom.