We list five key reasons why you should pick up the phone at work and let people hear your voice.
We previously discussed why you should incorporate telemarketing into your marketing strategies in one of our May blogs, ‘Telemarketing: Why You Should Start Using the Telephone’, and it’s something we also discuss in our Small Business Management Course. But there are other reasons why you should use the telephone in business — five, to be exact.
It’s kind of ironic that the more Apple and Samsung and whomever else, funnel time, money and energy into creating the best and most intuitive smart phones, the less we actually use the phone for its original purpose: to speak to people.
In business, emails have greatly taken over as our primary mode of communication. Perhaps you’ve experienced working in an office where people sit less than five feet away from each other yet email things to their colleagues like, “Do you know where the laminator is?”
Using the Phone as It was Originally Intended
Indeed using the phone as a phone (gasp!) has many great benefits, so we’re here to remind you of them!
- You need an immediate response: The problem with email is you never know when people will get back to you — it’s the modern day equivalent of waiting by the telephone (a somewhat sly twist of fate, no?) Because emails are sent so freely they no longer carry the weight they once did, so they’re also freely ignored. When you’re speaking to someone on the phone, it forces action and you’re more likely to get the immediate response you’re after.
- Emails can be emotionally ambiguous: In emails, particularly ones that are punched out quickly on your iPhone between meetings, nuance and tone is lost. When you speak to people on the phone, they can tell by the cadence and inflections in your voice whether you’re joking and using humour or taking a firm tone. In emails that is quite often lost — with or without the smiley face emoticon.
- Sheduling is difficult: Perhaps it sounds easy to schedule a meeting with someone over email — it’s not. Back-and-forthing over email, suggesting and nixing suitable times and dates to arrange a meeting with someone can be tiresome. You’ll find that phoning to make all of your appointments rather than to-ing and fro-ing over several emails can be sorted in less than 30 seconds.
- There’s consistent confusion: This can be irritating! Most people don’t like to read long emails — they’re overwhelming — so don’t write them. If an issue is particularly complex, a phone call works to bring clarity (which can be summarised in an email afterwards, if necessary). It also allows questions to be answered in context to avoid an endless trail of emails. Plus, people can speak a 150 words per minute — can you type that fast?
- A phone call is personal: People like to do business with people they like. It’s hard to build that rapport with someone, particularly in a business setting, if your communications are confined to emails — again, this goes back to emails being emotionally ambiguous because people can’t hear the cadence and inflections in your voice. Pick up the phone and let them hear your voice!
