Zulu’s campaign to promote voice to voice and face to face

July 2, 2008

I used to get a little annoyed at being interupted during my working day by telemarketers and follow up customer service calls. Now I’m not so bugged.

Here’s why.

Businesses that STILL employ and invest in human beings to make contact with other human beings via the telephone deserve a TICK and not us getting CROSS at maintaining this very important marketing and public relations activity.

There STILL is a place for the human touch.  These days the art of voice to voice and face to face communications has been sacrificed to email and on-line marketing and technology -  to the extent that I believe, is detrimental to building real relationships and understanding amongst people.

Some of the great advantages of on-line communications and technology tools is that it’s instant, can be done en-mass, is a efficient and effective way of doing business and staying in touch with many at all times and is a cheap way to communicate and track communications.

High use of technology can also create distance between human beings. What’s lost is the ability to engage, dialogue, express ourselves, gauge mood, tone, inflection and the opportunity to have the social and human aspects of interaction.

Voice to voice and face to face is a lost art.

  • Can you evaluate how much of your communication with others - business or social, travels across the internet instead of the airwaves or face to face?
  • Are we not picking up the phone because we are trying to save on phone call charges?
  • Is it easier not to "deal" with people (especially with emotional or difficult issues) by firing off an email?
  • Does picking up the phone or making time to meet feel like an inconvienience to you?
  • How much of your social time involves not seeing your friends or socialising face to face?
  • Do you find that people require your immediate response to emails and get offended more if you don’t - than if you take a little bit more time to return a voice mail message?
  • Does seeing your friends on Skype or Facebook constitute an acceptable level of "contact" with people that goes toward building and maintaining a relationship?

Don’t sacrifice the HUMAN touch to technology too much!

Businesses who continue to invest in opportunities to interact face to face and voice to voice - I believe, will survive better than those who don’t - WHEN the technology backlash hits. You’ll be relying on the relationships that you have established and the rapport that you’ve built - and the best way to promote that is by investing in the human touch.

Filed Under Business Advice, Marketing tips, Power Plug-in Network, Uncategorized, Zulu's view

Comments

One Response to “Zulu’s campaign to promote voice to voice and face to face”

  1. Allen Taylor on July 2nd, 2008 9:34 am

    Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.

    Allen Taylor

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