Last month there was this interesting article in the New York Times about how we are using the telephone differently now. For those of us in the business to business marketing industry there are several choice one liners in the article including "The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people." and “I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”
This is particularly interesting to us at CSG because a very big part of what we do is talk to our client's channel partners: on the phone. As the article points out, people are more sensitive to the interrupting nature of the phone call, so we do this with ever increasing number of our calls scheduled in advance through other means.
Now in our 14th year of doing a majority of our business over the telephone, we have seen the predictions of the end of the telephone before. Here are a few of them:
- The email killed the phone
- The web killed the phone
- Cell Phones killed the phone (AT&T’s service is so bad that people just stopped calling)
- Skype killed the phone (Skype is pretty cool and will continue to take over)
- Social Media killed the phone (Really? I don't buy it)
The way we use the phone is indeed changing. However, I spend more time on the phone now than ever before. Just about all of the calls are scheduled on my calendar as meetings for a specific time and duration. In many cases the phone calls include more than one other party, and often are aided by shared online workspaces or presentations. These calls are much more productive than the old calls, and even when all of the participants live in my city they consume much less time than in person meetings.
There are many reasons this is happening. Here are a few examples:
- People are more sensitive to interruptions
- People seem less likely to meet face to face
- The conference bridge brings in multiple people
- Desktop sharing creates a rich experience
In the middle of all of this is the phone. I guess the reports of the phone's death have been somewhat exaggerated.
I recently downgraded my cellular plan to less minutes per month. This is the first time I have done this since I got my first mobile phone in 1989. I suspect I am not alone. After all why would Verizon be playing those silly "this message has not been heard; first unheard message..." games with voicemail -- just to boost minutes. It is only a matter of time before we get the "Telephone is Dead" stories in the press.
Amazingly, I am spending more time on my office phone. Not only that but the time I am spending on the office phone is of higher value than ever before. Here is a list of the moving parts impacting all of this.
The Law: Now that it is illegal to talk on the phone in the car without hands free -- and the quality of the hands free systems still do not make the grade -- I rarely talk on the phone in my car. I don't have a Bentley and I have never found a hands free system that cancels out road noise.
Email: Email is that other thing that the press likes to declare dead. Email has been with us for long enough on smartphones -- that my team get's all of the short answers they need from me by email. I don't email while driving, but in between meetings I check my email (never voicemail), so if something needs my attention it can usually find me within an hour or two.
Conference Calls: Most of my phone time is spent on conference calls, and a good deal of those are augmented with shared desktops. These calls are scheduled in advance by email, and prepared for. They are much higher value than just plain phone calls. Even before it was against the law, attending conference calls from the car was bad form. The background noise, lost connections, and other distractions take away from the value everyone gets from the meeting. Unless you are sitting in your hotel room with a great signal, attending conference calls on a mobile phone should not be done.
Voicemail: We have a new system that delivers my voicemails to my email inbox with a .wav file attached. I get the caller ID info, so I can tell who called. Most of the voicemails never get listened to. The ones from people I know usually say: "I will send you an email about this".
The net for me:
- Mobile data up
- Mobile voice minutes down
- Office voice minutes up
- Voicemail minutes down
