Page 47 - IC38 GENERAL INSURANCE

Communication may take place several forms
 Oral
 Written
 Non-verbal
 Using body language

It may be face to face, over the phone, or by mail or internet. It may be formal
or informal. Whatever the content or form of the message or the media used,
the essence of communication is given by what the recipient has understood as
being communicated.
It is important for a business to choose how and when it will send messages to
intended receivers.
The communication process is illustrated below.
Let us define the terms in the diagram:
Diagram 4: Communication process

Definition

i. Source: As the source of the message, the agent must be clear about why
she is communicating, and what she wants to communicate, and confident
that the information being communicated is useful and accurate.

ii. Message is the information that one wants to communicate.
iii. Encoding is the process of transferring the information one wants to

communicate into a form that can be sent and correctly decoded at the
other end. Success in encoding depends on how well one is able to convey
information and eliminate sources of confusion. For this it is necessary to
know one‟s audience. Failure to do so can result in delivering messages that
are misunderstood.
iv. A Message is conveyed through a channel, which has to be selected for the
purpose. The channel may be verbal including personal face-to-face

41