What does it mean to communicate with B2B or B2C?

maggio 18, 2021

What does it mean to communicate with B2B or B2C? Communicate [intransitive, transitive] to share or exchange information, news, ideas, feelings, etc. (See Oxford Dictionary)

Starting from this definition given by the Oxford dictionary, it is appropriate to reflect on how much and how each of us communicates every day. It often happens to receive monographic emails, but you know, with Italian customers it is easier, if you do not understand something, just pick up the receiver to talk to each other and resolve the issue without linguistic and cultural barriers.

But what if a foreign customer writes us a monographic or unclear email? Here, in this case, misunderstanding can be generated, which can lead to stress and closure on both sides.

So what to do?

Bad communication generates useless work and an endless succession of emails and days to solve, or sometimes never solve a really simple matter. In the era of hyper-connection and lightning-fast communication, being exhaustive is increasingly complex. I often hear the phrase "I don't have time" echoing, but probably by communicating better by 'wasting' those extra 5 minutes to write a clear email, time is also saved.

This reflection stems from a situation in which we recently found ourselves with a new German customer, whose name will not be mentioned for obvious reasons. Here, we are sampling an extremely difficult piece to work, which leads to several quality problems, which we have begun to discuss with the customer. After weeks of monographic emails from the client and conference calls in which a solution was never reached. Then the doubt arose that the problem was the language used: English, foreign for us and for them, but which was more or less the most understood by all the actors in the field. Once we understood that this generated a lot of stress and difficulty for them in communicating their problems, doubts and perplexities with us, we decided to use German. However, a foreign language for us, with all the relative disadvantages of the case, but which has partially resolved their state of stress in using a language in which they could not express themselves 100%.

From this we can understand that English cannot always be used as a vehicular language and that writing monographic emails with Google Translate without understanding what you are communicating cannot be a winning choice. This is why knowing several languages can certainly facilitate the commercial relationship with the customer.

What is the value of explaining the problem?

Often a commercial relationship must be cultivated as much as any other personal relationship, in fact it is now necessary to think about B2B communication as well as B2C ones. I say this, because on the other side of the screen there is a person with his own character and his own working problems. This same person could be one of our customers and in turn someone's supplier, they may have had a difficult day, reminders and emails with bad news, delays or problems motivated in a summary way. You have to put yourself in his/her shoes by explaining in an exhaustive way and giving a possible solution to the inconvenience caused. This predisposes the person differently who could be more compliant and cooperative. As mentioned above, in the case of foreign customers we must not only consider the language barrier but also the cultural one!

In G.S.I. we really trust in clear communication in many different languages to shorten the distances with hour customers, you can contact us in English!

What does it mean to communicate with B2B or B2C?

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