In the business world, it is often thought that the enemies of growth are competition, lack of investment, or a bad product. However, there is a silent killer that is much more lethal and rarely receives the attention it deserves: poor communication with users/customers.
Trust is the most valuable currency in the relationship between a brand and its customers. You can attract users with advertising, but trust is earned with every single interaction. When communication fails, that currency is devalued quickly and, very often, irreversibly.
A customer facing a problem with a service sends an email to support and receives a generic automated response that solves nothing, or worse, receives no response at all, feels frustrated, invisible, and undervalued.
The same happens if they call by phone and are put on hold for twenty minutes, only to be transferred to three different departments where they have to repeat their story over and over again.
The conclusion they reach is simple: "This company doesn't care about me."
When this happens, trust is broken. And the customer stops believing in the brand's promises.
If a business website says one thing, but then they fail to deliver or don't notify customers about further delays in services or problems, it creates a dissonance that destroys credibility. And without credibility, no sale is possible.
The damage doesn't end there. In the age of social media and online reviews, a bad communication experience does not remain a secret. An unsatisfied customer will tell dozens of people, whether in person, in a Facebook group, in a Google review, or in a Hive post.
This causes the public perception of the company to shift. They go from being seen as "professionals" to being labeled as "the ones who ghost their customers" or "the ones with terrible customer service."
This reputation acts as an insurmountable wall to growth. Why? Because acquiring a new customer is between 5 and 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. If communication is poor, retention plummets. The company enters a vicious cycle: it spends fortunes on marketing to attract new people, but loses them quickly due to lack of care in communication or exaggeration in their promises.
It's like filling a bucket with water that has a hole in the bottom; no matter how much water you pour in (investment), you will never manage to fill it (grow).
But more than anything, poor external communication is often a reflection of poor internal communication and/or business management.
If teams are not aligned and don't have the information to solve problems, chaos is guaranteed. This creates frustrated employees who transmit that negativity to the customer, deepening the crisis even further.
In summary, failing to notify in time or underestimating the power of a quick, empathetic, and clear response is to condemn the business to stagnation. Communication and support are not an expense; they are part of the infrastructure of growth.
When you speak well to your users, they speak well of you. And in a saturated market, positive word-of-mouth is the only engine capable of driving sustainable and real growth. Take care of your communication today so you don't have to lament an empty business tomorrow.
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