Communicate. Communicate Often.

I have to say that in business, there is nothing more frustrating to me than a lack of communication. Sometimes it comes from vendors and sometimes from individuals who are supposed to be professionals. I recently had the unpleasant experience of dealing with an individual that I was giving business to that didn't seem to find my account important at all. As a communications professional, I expect people that I work with to communicate with me at every critical point involving the development of my projects. For example, I have a tendency to communicate with people at a high frequency - especially when I am the one providing the business to the person or the company. I move at a quick pace and will call and email the individual several times solely to offer help to them or to find out if there are any other documents or paperwork that I need to provide. I just like to know that the process is moving along. (Here, I'll give a nod to my previous post about keeping your ducks in a row).

Communication is a two-way street. Here's a tip I know all of you reading this are smart enough to know. If someone in your professional life contacts you requesting an update on the progress of their file, you should provide a timely reply. Especially if they are a customer of yours. If you don't know the answer - tell the customer that although you don't have the answer at this point in time - that you will work on getting them the answer. Here's the second most important step - do it. Follow through with your words. Take action and work to provide them the excellent customer service they deserve. People remember good customer service, but generally - they give repeat business to the places that gave them excellent customer service. This is one of the oldest marketing techniques in the world - word of mouth marketing. We all know that bad news travels fast, but great news can help provide residual income to your business for years to come. Don't make the customer who has already given you their time, money, and trust have to chase you down because you're not doing your job.

Ducks in a row; a good practice to follow.

There is something to be said about having your "ducks in a row" when it comes to paper files and electronic documents. In a world of environmentally-conscience consumers, the practice of an efficient electronic filing system is crucial. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to provide documentation from months or years ago regarding an event that took place in another country. Needless to say, I have an extensive MS Outlook filing system. It's always been a practice of mine to keep things incredibly organized in case something terrible happened and I'm not able to make it to the office. I keep things organized so that anyone - literally could quickly search and find any document related to any specific subject. This way, they would also know where I left off in the project and what my next steps would have been. I can't tell you how many times this has come in handy.

When all your documents and projects are in order, it maximizes the efficiency of your work in general because you can quickly access documents. You don't have to spend excess time hunting for past communications or draft number 3 of 6. If you've found yourself in this situation before, take some time at the end of each week and sort through your inbox. File all documents first according to year and then according to project. From there, keep making sub-folders within each of the project folders according to the main topics of each project. Also, take advantage of the keyword rule within Outlook. You can create a rule which states that any emails that come to your inbox containing certain words go straight to a specified folder. This will certainly cut your manual filing time in half!