💬 Communication Statistics 2025
Section 1: How do businesses communicate?
We wanted to find out which communication tools are used by businesses – when working internally, and with clients.
With clients…
Email remains the most widely used tool for client communication. Other methods of communication include project management tools (15%), online chat tools (10%), face-to-face (2%), and phone (9%) – which has had the biggest increase of all tools since last year!
With co-workers…
Email is the most popular tool for internal communication too – and it’s seen an increase on last year’s figures.
Email (36%) is closely followed by online chat tools (26%) and project management tools (17%).
Other methods include face-to-face and phone calls (both 6%).
9% of respondents selected ‘other’ when answering this question, most of those cited Microsoft Teams, video calls and, perhaps more surprisingly, Whatsapp. This might be a business communication tool to watch in 2025!
Section 2: Remote work
The pandemic changed the world of work, perhaps forever. We wanted to understand how, and where, our respondents do their work.
12% of people work from home most of the time, for 19% it’s 50/50 between home and the office, 11% work mostly from the office, and 16% are always on site.
Section 3: An increasing challenge?
In this section we looked to find out how things are changing – and the steps businesses are taking to meet the challenge.
Over half of people think that communication is no more or less challenging than last year.
However, the remaining half are split on the matter. 23% find communication more challenging and 24% find it less challenging.
67% of companies have implemented new communications tools this year.
Section 4: Time wasted in meetings
We wanted to find out how many people felt they wasted time in meetings.
61% of people feel that they waste time in meetings – a very slight reduction on last year.
Section 5: The cost of poor communication
Where communication IS poor – we wanted to understand the ways in which this is felt within businesses.
63% of people say they’ve personally wasted time as a result of communication issues in their business.
59% of people have missed messages as a result of communication issues in their business.
43% of people have suffered from burnout, stress and fatigue as a result of communication issues in their business.
31% of people have experienced lost and missing files as a result of communication issues in their business.
24% of people have had a poor customer experience as a result of communication issues in their business.
14% of people have lost customers to competitors as a result of communication issues in their business.
8% of businesses have lost employees as a result of communication issues in their business.
Section 6: How companies rate their performance
In this section, we wanted to find out how employees and managers rank the businesses they work for in terms of three key qualities: efficiency, communication and organisation.
Efficiency
9% of businesses rate their efficiency as ‘excellent’ – which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a 3% increase from last year.
A significant majority of businesses (51%) believe their efficiency levels are ‘average’. 25% feel that their efficiency levels are above average, 12% below average, and 3% admit to having poor efficiency.
Communication
When it comes to communication, most businesses (44%) rate themselves as average.
A combined 41% believe communication in their business is either above average or excellent.
While 10% rate their communication as below average, and 5% said communication is poor.
Organisation
When asked to evaluate how organised they are, the data follows a familiar pattern.
A healthy majority (43%) describe their organisation levels as ‘average,’ while…
Over a third of businesses (38%) describe their performance as ‘above average’ or ‘excellent.’
Only 19% feel that organisation levels are below average or poor.
Section 7: How customers feel
We looked to find out how communication manifests itself within the customer experience – and how customers feel about the businesses they deal with.
96% of people say it’s important that a business communicates effectively with them as a customer.
95% of people feel the businesses they buy from have room for improvement when it comes to effective communication and project management.
93% of people say it’s important they can find out where things are up to with their purchase or project – e.g. exact status and next deliverable.
68% of people say they’ve stopped dealing with a company and moved to a competitor due to poor business communication skills. A 2% increase from last year.
35% of people feel the businesses they work with have improved their communication in the past 12 months, much more than those who feel the businesses they work with have got worse (21%).
Interestingly, 45% reported no change.
Section 8: The power of project management tools
We looked to understand the impact that the use of a project management tool can have within businesses.
58% of people say they have a good idea of what others in their team are working on at any given time – but this increases dramatically among people who use a project management tool!
While 59% of people generally find it easy and quick to get an exact overview of where projects are up to in their workflow – this rises to 88% when they primarily use a project management tool to communicate with both their co-workers and clients.
76% of people who primarily use a project management tool to communicate with co-workers say it leads to better internal efficiency.
73% say it leads to improved internal communication, 59% say it delivers an increased rate of project success. 51% say it leads to improved client communication. 41% say it leads to a better customer experience, and 27% associate it with better employee wellbeing.
72% of people who primarily use a project management tool to communicate with clients say it improves the customer experience.
60% say it leads to better internal efficiency, 52% say it increases the rate of project success, and 23% say it leads to better employee wellbeing.