With all the texting and tweeting and facebooking, sending an email can feel like an ancient rite. What’s even more archaic, though, is picking up the phone and dialing (remember it used to be a wheel). Who does that anymore? And forget about being in person: gone are the full offices and fights for the conference room. Want to see how someone looks: login to GoToMeeting or Skype.

We are a virtual company with global clients and have adopted many of these technologies. They are rather savvy and seem to work almost as well as in person … sometimes. This hesitation around workability and effectiveness, our very uncertainty, has lead us back to the phone (and in some cases, back to the airplane). Yes, the way of the future, for best in class customer service, for strong client relationships, for building and running a thriving company, may be in the hands of our phones.

On a very basic level this might have something to do with our social nature as humans. I was listening to the radio recently, a favorite song came on, one I have on a CD (now I am dating myself) and on a digital platform, (that by the way I can bluetooth to a stereo, so there), and I had this very visceral sensation, that listening to this song I’ve heard hundreds of times, has a very unique sound when listening to it on the radio. It occurred like a real difference, in sound quality, in my experience. Was it that it was a shared experience, knowing some number of other human ears were listening to it too, traveling to work or from school drop off or in their office? I can’t prove this as a fact, but I know it to be true. There are times when I can’t find anything on the radio I’d like to listen to, but prefer the radio over any of the other sources of music I have at my fingertips. I want that shared experience. To feel connected with others.

On a more strategic level, making a call provides a lot of ju-ju that email simply can’t provide. We think email is instant because it’s faster than traditional mail, but a phone call is instant-instant; it’s live contact, baby. Want an answer to a question, now? Make the call. Haven’t heard back from someone about something important and want to make sure they know you are tracking them? Make the call. Breakdown with a client and need to clean it up? Make the call. It’s not just instant, it’s intimate. It’s life-giving. It’s relationship-building. Even leaving a voice message. Voice is personal, it has tone, it has cadence and rhythm. Hearing a voice mail can make someone’s day, heal something broken or solve a problem.

Now email is not dead and can certainly solve a problem. We can even personalize our emails with color and font and funny faces and those silly acronyms, that some of use in regular communication, btw. But it’s just not the same, it’s not part of the dance. It’s a throw back to the Industrial Revolution when automatization took over the crafting of products. To build a business, especially one around professional services to humans, we must get on the phone and participate in the craft of human conversation. Try it.

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