Business Communication
Business Communication tests whether messages are transmitted, understood and acted upon. Questions ask you to label the stages of the communication process, choose an appropriate channel and document, and identify barriers.
Core rules
- The process: sender → encoding → channel → decoding → receiver → feedback, with noise (any interference) possible at each stage.
- Channels include letters, memos, emails, telephone, meetings, notices, reports and social media. Written channels give a record; oral channels give fast feedback.
- Formal communication follows the structure (vertical downwards and upwards, horizontal between departments, diagonal across levels); informal communication is the grapevine, which is fast but unreliable.
- Barriers: language and jargon, poor listening, emotional bias, distance, faulty equipment, information overload, status differences.
- The 7Cs: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete, courteous.
- Standard documents: business letter (external), memo (internal), notice, agenda and minutes, report, curriculum vitae.
Worked example
A customer emails complaining that a confirmed order arrived two weeks late. The correct reply is a formal email or letter, not a phone call alone, because it creates a written record. Reasoning: it should quote the order number and facts, apologise, state the remedy and a firm date, and stay courteous; an internal memo then goes to the warehouse manager asking for the cause. Feedback is complete only when the customer confirms the remedy is acceptable.
Traps that cost marks
- Describing the process without feedback, so the loop is never closed.
- Treating the grapevine as formal communication.
- Confusing a barrier with a channel.
- Using technical jargon with customers or writing an internal matter as an external letter.