7/27/2019 7 Best Tips for Communicating With Your Offshore Team
in India
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Title:7 Best Tips for Communicating with Your Offshore Team in
India
Word Count:1024
Summary:Use these 7 basic tips for successful communication with
your offshore team in India or any offshore team through the
world
Keywords:onKeyDown=textCounter(this.form.f_artkey,this.form.avachars_key,200);
Article Body:Dear Reader,
If you are reading this article, most probably you have faced
some communicationproblem with your offshore team or you are
considering to offshore your projectwork and want to learn
effective ways to communicate to the team which is thousands miles
away.
Being CEO of outsourcing company (Infotrex Se
rvices Pvt. Ltd.), I deal with many clients(based in USA, UK,
Italy, Ireland, France etc.) & our team here in India. I will
share some of my insights and day-to-day observations, so that you
can get benefited.
Lets try to understand the basics of communication and possible
ways to make mistakes when communicating with your offshore team in
India. There are 3 entitiesinvolved in any communication - 1.
Sender, 2. Receiver & 3. Channel between Sender-Receiver.
Now, try to understand Sender (its you yourself!!!). Mostly you
are born & brought up in western country, having some cultural
inclination and English languageknowledge. Receiver is mostly the
person in India, who knows English, but finds
it hard to understand American English accent as well as having
different cultural & geographical understanding. Channels of
Communication can be phone, email &chat most of the time.
Now, lets try to accept the fact that - when
messages(technically communicationsignals) are sent from sender to
receiver through any communication channels, then some sort of
noise or distortion will happen and because of that communication
will be broken. These kind of communication gaps can become
critical for longterm success or failure of the project or
relationship between you and off the shore team.
So, here are best 7 tips:
1. Start initial communication on Phone It is easy to pick up a
phone and starttalking with someone who is ready to listen to your
ideas or project requirements. If you can find someone from
offshore company who can understand your Englishaccent, thats a
very good first start. Nowadays many offshore companies have
USphone numbers or Skype ID, so just find it out if any phone
communication channel is available to offshore team and start using
it first. If any offshore company is not providing phone support,
then either they are not capable to understandwestern English or do
not understand the importance of this communication channel. Beware
of these kind of companies because in long run, you will find it
veryproblematic to communicate because of time difference &
cultural differences.
7/27/2019 7 Best Tips for Communicating With Your Offshore Team
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2. Start Email communication to extend initial Phone
Communication If you have passed the first phase of phone
communication, then next phase is to have some written text via
email. Do not expect that the receiver (offshore team) will
remember & understand 100% whatever you have discussed on
phone. Nobody is 100% perfect, so accept this fact and try to
fill-up the gaps of phone communication by writing email. This 2nd
phase will crystallize your thoughts/ideas or project requirements
and will provide written evidences for future use.
3. Start Chat Communication to extend Phone & Email
CommunicationOnce you have passed first & second phase, then
you should start feeling betterif the offshore team is good at
communication & understanding your project requirements. Now,
you can have some chat communication with CEO or Project manager if
still there are communications gaps exist. Chat communication is
useful for quick confirmation, clarifications and project updates.
Make sure to send all chatcommunication through email to all
concerned people, so that everyone can be ina loop.
4. Have some central Storage of All Communication Once you have
started communicating with offshore team through combination of
channels (phone, email, chat), then it is very easy to get lost in
the pile of digital papers. So, use Google Docs or some central
web-enabled storage systems (Box.net, Microsoft One Note etc.) and
collaborate with team members of offshore team. You may consider
developing your own customized central storage for all
communication.
5. Send same message through Phone/Email/Chat You may experience
that many timesthe messages may get lost on other end. For example,
many people just leave chat message or only voicemail or only send
email and then expect timely response from the offshore team.
Offshore team might be busy and the message can get lost(in bulk
email or voicemail or chat) which exist in only 1 communication
channel. So, make sure to send same message to multiple
communication channels, when something is urgent and important. If
important & urgent messages are passed morethan one time, there
are more chances that it will be received or heard on otherend.
6. Be ready with emergency communication strategies We all live
in the world where anything may happen at any time. Offshore team
may face power outage, interne
t connection outage, social problems, riots, traffic jam,
computer virus, network problem etc. So, you need to have some
emergency communication strategies withoffshore team. You have to
accept the facts that - people live in other globe of the earth are
also humans and nobody anticipate failure of communication channels
in advance. So, be calm and patient when something goes out of
control. Thistip will help a lot once in a blue moon, but very
important for overall successor failure of the project or
relationship.
7. Make sure to close the communication loop this is the last
and essential point for any communication. In very simple words,
sender say something to receiverand then ask for receiver to
re-iterate same thing to sender in their own wordsor own ways. If
both messages from sender to receiver & receiver to sender are
almost same, then it is considered that the communication loop is
closed. For cla
rity of all communication messages, closing the communication
loop is very essential. Sometimes, this seems wastage of time &
efforts, but believe me - in longrun this last tip will make the
big impact.
Use these 7 basic tips for successful communication with your
offshore team in India or any offshore team through the world.
Use all simple 7 tips above and share your stories with us. We
would be happy tolearn further from you. If you are interested
further on this topic, you may read other similar article
at:http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c051201a.asp
