Unit 6: Selecting Appropriate Channels
Learning Objective
1. Distinguish between communication channels to determine which is most appropriate for particular situations.
Throughout this chapter we’ve been considering messages sent via email because it is the most common channel for written business messages. However, many professionals make the mistake of sending an email when another channel (e.g., a verbal rather than a written one) would be more appropriate for the situation and the audience. If you had to deal with inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, for instance, the right thing to do is discuss it in person with all involved because conflict resolution requires social intelligence informed by all the verbal and nonverbal information you can offer to and gather from them. You could follow up with an email summarizing a remedial action plan reached through constructive dialogue, but you would never deal with the situation by email alone.
Addressing sensitive situations exclusively by email (or, even worse, text message) tends only to intensify a conflict. Email or messaging can’t possibly address the emotional complexity of a toxic situation and usually results in costly delays given the time lag between responses. Tensions also tend to escalate when people have the time to read too much into emails and text or instant messages about sensitive topics, misinterpret their tone, and write angry or passive-aggressive ones in return. (Many people tend to lack filters when writing electronically in a state of heightened emotion because they feel relatively free to express the internal monologue that they would otherwise restrain if in the physical company of the person they’re writing to.) Recognizing that email is only one channel on a spectrum of other options, however, and that others would be more efficient in certain situations, can save plenty of hassle from automatic reliance on one favoured or comfortable channel.
Between traditional and rapid electronic media, we have more choice for communication channels than ever in human history. Each has its own unique advantages and disadvantages that make it appropriate or inappropriate for specific situations. Knowing those pros and cons, summarized in Table 6.1 below for a dozen of the most common verbal and written channels available, is necessary for being an effective communicator in the modern workplace. Choosing channels wisely can mean the difference between a message that is received and understood as intended (the goal of communication), and one that is lost in the noise or misunderstood in costly ways.
Table 6.1: The Spectrum of Common Workplace Communication Channels
Channel: In-person conversation and group meeting
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- The most information-rich channel combining words and nonverbal messages
- Dialogue facilitates immediate back-and-forth exchange of ideas
- Maintains the human element
- Additional participants can join for group discussion
|
- Requires that speakers be physically in the same space together
- Some people are poor listeners and some are poor speakers
- Impermanent unless recording equipment is used
|
- Audience must be present and attentive
- Use for genuine dialogue
- A dynamic speaking ability is required to engage audiences
|
- Quickly exchange ideas
- Visually communicate to complement your words
- Add the human element in discussing sensitive or confidential topics
|
Channel: Email
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Delivers messages instantly anywhere in the world to anyone with an internet connection
- Sends to one or many people at once, including secondary audiences
- Allows attachments of up to several megabytes and links to internet webpages
- Allows for a back-and-forth thread on the topic
- Archives written correspondence for review even decades later
- Can be done on any mobile device with an internet connection
- Is free (beyond your subscription fees to an internet or phone provider)
- Is somewhat permanent in that emails exist somewhere on a server even if deleted by both sender and receiver
|
- Gives the illusion of privacy: your messages can be forwarded to anyone, monitored by your company or an outside security agency, retrieved with a warrant, or hacked even if both you and receiver delete them
- Tone may be misread (e.g., jokes misunderstood) due to the absence of nonverbal cues
- May be sent automatically to the recipient’s spam folder or otherwise overlooked or deleted without being read
- Subject to errors such as hitting “send” prematurely or replying to all when only the sender should be replied to
- Subject to limits on document attachment size
- Subject to spam (unsolicited emails)
- Regretted emails can’t be taken back or edited
- Requires a working internet connection on a computing device, which isn’t available everywhere in the world
|
- Reply within 24 hours, or sooner
- Follow conventions for writing
- Polite tone and mindful use
- One topic per message
- Proofread to correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling
- Avoid confusion due to vagueness
|
- Transmit messages efficiently and cost effectively
- Document work
- Use when confidentiality isn’t necessary
- Send electronic documents as attachments
- Send the same message to multiple receivers
|
Channel: Instant/Text message
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Enables the rapid exchange of concise written messages
- Can be done quietly so as to not be overheard
- Inexpensive
- Autocomplete feature helps achieve efficiencies in typing speed and spelling
- Nonverbal characters such as emojis can clarify tone
- Enables team members to stay current on breaking developments
|
- Often used to avoid human contact
- Acronyms and sms abbreviations may not be understood by all recipients
- Encourages informality with lazy abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms
- Even typing with thumbs alone can be slower than using 10 fingers on a desktop or laptop computer
- Concise text alone can be misinterpreted for tone when used to summarize complex ideas
- Other nonverbals such as emojis undermine credibility if used in professional situations
- Give the illusion of privacy: texts exist on servers and can be retrieved even if deleted by both sender and receiver
- Mobility and portability of texting devices tempt users with poor impulse control to text dangerously while walking or driving, or rudely in front of people talking to them
|
- Respond immediately or as soon as possible
- Be patient if the recipient doesn’t respond immediately; they may be busy with real-life tasks
- Proofread when used for professional purposes
- Use only when able; never text when driving
|
- Use for exchanging short messages quickly with someone physically distant
- Get an information exchange (links, photos, videos and documents) in writing for reference later
- Use when confidentiality isn’t important
|
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Able to reach a large audience of social media users for promotion using hashtags and by developing a following
- Able to broadcast real-time updates accessible on smartphones
- Able to send and reply to direct messages rapidly
- The 280-character limit (140 before 2018) on tweets encourages conciseness
- Able to link people to webpages for more information
|
- The 280-character limit forces concision often leading to confusing initialisms, abbreviations, and word omission
|
- Strike a balance in posting frequency—not too seldom, not too often
- Be concise but also clear and grammatically correct
- Maximize potential by using hashtags and links to usher readers towards further information
- Focus on company, product, service when tweeting for work purposes
|
- Broadcast information in real time to a broad range of users
- Use when confidentiality isn’t important
|
Channel: Instagram
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Instagram for Business provides branding visuals for interested customers, especially millennials and GenZs
- Allows customers to respond in real time
|
- The audience is largely limited to a younger demographic with limited spending power
- Means of expression is limited to photos and brief captions
- Can undermine professional credibility if used for selfies
- Inconvenient if posting and managing an account from a laptop or desktop computer rather than a smartphone
- Doesn’t provide an easy way to link to a company website to provide audiences with further information
- Contributes to a platform seen to be the worst for mental health (Royal Society for Public Health, 2017)
|
- Use for providing visuals of company products or services
- Strike a balance in posting frequency—not too seldom, not too often
- Include as part of a marketing mix that includes other social media such as Facebook and Twitter
|
- Post company photos to reach younger demographics
|
Channel: Article, essay, or blog
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Able to write at length about any topic and reach a potentially large online audience as a blog or article published in an online media outlet
- Can allow dialogue if a comments section is enabled
|
- Tend to be monologues without the possibility of feedback
- People with short attention spans tend to avoid large chunks of text
- Some tend to be wary of blogs because they are a genre overpopulated by people’s ill-formed opinions
|
- Organize with a clear topic thesis and support it with a logical flow of convincing arguments built around credible evidence
- Edit and proofread to ensure correctness, conciseness, and reader-friendly flow
- Enable comments for feedback and dialogue
|
- Articulate thoughts on topics that require lengthy development
|
Channel: Letter
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Shows respect through formality and effort
- Ensures confidentiality when sealed in an envelope and delivered to the recipient’s physical address (it is illegal to open someone else’s mail)
- Can introduce other physical documents (enclosures)
- Can be sent as an attachment
|
- Slow to arrive at the recipient’s address depending on how far away they are from the sender
- Can be intercepted or tampered with in transit (albeit illegally)
- Can be overlooked as junk mail
- Time consuming to print, sign, seal, and send for delivery
- Mail postage is costlier than email
|
- Follow formatting conventions (e.g., block for company letters, modified block for personal letters)
- Use company letterhead template when writing on behalf of your organization
|
- For providing a formal, permanent, confidential written message to a single important person or organization
- Ideal for bad-news messages and matters with possible legal implications (e.g., claims), and responses to letters
- For non-urgent matters
|
Channel: Memo
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Provides a written record of group decisions, announcements, policies, and procedures within an organization
- Can also be a format for delivering short/informal reports (e.g., conference report) and recording negotiating terms in agreements between organizations (e.g., memo of understanding)
- Can be posted on a physical bulletin board and/or emailed
|
- Requires a good archiving system to make memos easily accessible for those (especially new employees) needing to review a record of company policies, procedures, etc.
|
- Use template with company letterhead
- Follow the same conventions as email, except omit the opening and closing salutations and e-signature
|
- For a written record for decisions, announcements, policies, procedures, and short reports shared within an organization
- Post a printed version on an office bulletin board and email to all involved
|
Channel: Report / PowerPoint/ Slide Report
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Allows presentation of a high volume of information presenting research and analysis
- Can take various forms such as document booklet or proposal for reading alone or PowerPoint for presenting
|
- Time-consuming to write with proper research documentation and visual content, as well as to prepare for (presentations)
- Time-consuming for the busy professional to read or an audience to take in
- Presentations can bore audiences if not engaging
|
- Follow conventions for organizing information according to the size of the report, audience, and purpose
- Augment with visuals
- Engage audiences with effective oral delivery and visual appeal
|
- For providing thorough business intelligence on topics important to an organization’s operation
- For internal or external audiences
- For persuading audiences with well-developed arguments (e.g., proposal reports)
|
Channel: Fax
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Fast delivery of letters and forms
- Allows the use of company letterhead
|
- Limited to 8.5×11” formats
- Expensive for the purchase of fax machines and paper rolls that need regular replacing
- Possibly expensive if long-distance phone charges apply
- Few people use fax and a dwindling number of businesses still use them
|
- Keep it short
- Use only if required in an industry that still favours fax
|
- For sending forms or work orders in industries that still use fax (e.g., health care)
|
Channel: Phone, VoIP, voicemail, and conference calls
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Enables audio-only dialogue between speakers anywhere in the world
- Quick back-and-forth saves time compared to written dialogue by email or text
- Can send one-way voicemail messages or leave them when the recipient isn’t available
- Can be conducted cheaply over the internet (with Voice over Internet Protocol) and easily on smartphones
- Specialized phone equipment and VoIP enable conference calls among multiple users
|
- Absence of nonverbal visual cues can make dialogue occasionally difficult
- The receiver of a call isn’t always available, so the timing must be right on both ends
- Time zone differences complicate the timing of long-distance calls
- Possibly expensive for long-distance calls over a public switched telephone network (PSTN) if VoIP isn’t available
- Not always clear how long you have to leave a voicemail message, running the risk of being cut off if your message runs too long
- Recording of conversations is typically unavailable unless you have special equipment
|
- Follow conventions for initiating and ending audio-only conversation
- For voicemail, strike a balance between brevity and detail
- Record a professional call-back message for voicemail
- Respond to voicemail as soon as possible
- Be careful with confidential information over the phone and on voicemail
|
- For when quick dialogue is necessary between speakers physically distant from one another
- Conference call when members of a team can’t be physically present for a meeting
- Use VoIP to avoid long-distance charges
- Leave clear voicemail messages when receivers aren’t available
- When a record of the conversation isn’t necessary
- When confidentiality is somewhat important
|
Channel: Video chat and web conference
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Expectations |
Appropriate Use |
- Enables face-to-face one-on-one or group meetings for people physically distant from one another
- Allows participants to see nonverbals that would be unseen in a phone conference meeting
- Can be integrated into a real in-person meeting to include those physically absent
- Inexpensive with common applications such as Skype, FaceTime (for Apple devices), and Google Talk
- Cheaper than flying people to meetings
|
- Connection problems often result in poor audio quality (cutting in and out) and participants talking over one another
- Enterprise applications improve functionality but for a cost
|
- Requires a high-speed internet connection, microphone, and webcam
- Requires that participants be as present and presentable (at least from the waist-up) as they would be for an in-person meeting
- Participants must control their background surroundings, especially when web conferencing from home, to avoid interruptions
|
- For when in-person meetings are necessary but participants are in different physical locations
- Often used for job interviews when participants cannot conveniently attend in person
|
Choosing the correct communication channel on the spectrum of options using the criteria above involves a decision-making process based on the purposes of the communication, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Factors to consider include convenience for both the sender and receiver, timeliness, and cost in terms of both time and money. When choosing to send an email, for instance, you:
- Begin with the thought you need to communicate
- Decide that it must be in writing for future reference rather than spoken
- Consider that it would be more convenient if it arrived cheaply the instant you finished writing it and hit Send
- Want to give the recipient the opportunity to respond quickly or at least within the 24-hour norm
- Decide that it would be better to send your message by email rather than by other electronic channels such as text, instant message (because you have more to say than would fit in either of those formats), or fax because you know the recipient prefers email over fax, as do most people and all but a few professional fields.
All of these decisions may occur to you in the span of a second or so because they are largely habitual. Figure 6.1 charts out that decision-making process for selecting the most appropriate channel among the 12 given in Table 6.1 above.
Figure 6.1: Channel Selection Process Flow Chart
We will examine the uses, misuses, conventions, and implications of these channels in the chapters ahead. For now, however, let’s appreciate that choosing the right channel at the outset of the writing process saves time—the time that you would otherwise spend correcting communication errors and doing damage control for having chosen the wrong one for the situation at hand. If you find yourself forced to meet someone in person to deal with the damage wrought by a toxic email exchange before moving forward, just think how you would be into the next steps if you had skipped the email war and met in person to deal with the situation like adults in the first place.
Key Takeaway
Choose the most appropriate communication channel for the occasion by taking into account the full spectrum of traditional and electronic means, as well as your own and your audience’s needs.
Exercises
Identify the most appropriate communication channel for each situation and explain your reasoning.
1. You come up with a new procedure that makes a routine task in your role in a retail store quicker and easier; the District Manager now wants you to share it with the other employees in your role in the entire district.
2. You are working with two other students on a research report. Both have been bad lately about submitting their work on time, and you’re starting to worry about meeting the next major milestone a few days from now.
3. You are about to close a big sale but need quick authorization from your manager across town about a certain discount you would like to apply. You need it in writing just in case your manager forgets about the authorization.
4. You were under contract for services to develop social media content for a company. Near the end of the job, you discovered that the company was dissolved, but you haven’t yet been paid for services rendered. You want to formally inform the company of the charges and remind them of their contractual obligations; in doing so you want to lay down a paper trail in case you need to take the company to court for breach of contract.
Reference
Royal Society for Public Health. (2017, May 19). Instagram ranked worst for young people’s mental health. Retrieved from https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/instagram-ranked-worst-for-young-people-s-mental-health.html
