Keeping the Lines Open

Although it seems that the telephone isn't generally the optimal communication medium to use, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that most people aren't yet aware of that fact. As a result, many, if not most, businesses still need to make themselves available to clients over the phone.

In medium-sized businesses where most workers are equipped with a telephone on their desk, the temptation is to use that phone not only for dealing with customers, but for internal communications as well. That's probably fine, from a cost point of view, as calling from one desk to another behind the same exchange usually doesn't cost anything.

The problem lies in the fact that, in most cases, that phone can only handle one call at a time. If one of your sales people happens to be calling a helpdesk agent to arrange a meeting, for the duration of that call, any customer calling in will be unable to reach either one of them, which defeats the purpose of having the phone to begin with.

The same is true of companies that have field agents who traditionally use their cellphones to communicate with each other and the head office. The more they need to do that, the less reachable they are to customers and prospective customers.

In a previous post, I've covered the fact that sometimes a phone call is necessary. But what about when it isn't? What tool should be used for intra-office communication that leaves the phone lines open?

Email is an option, but it's often too slow and cumbersome for a quick message exchange. SMS costs too much. The logical alternative is Instant Messaging.

For the uninitiated, Instant Messaging (IM) is a tool that allows users to communicate directly with each other via a text-based interface through a computer or smartphone. The IM application will usually be able to broadcast the user's availability (as in: Logged In, Away or Busy) which can indicate whether it would be best to use IM or some other means of reaching the person.

Odds are, many of your staff are probably already using IM between themselves, but in order to ensure a certain level of standardisation, you may want to consider formalising a policy around it, and declaring an official IM tool for everyone to use.

As with most things in technology, there are a variety of IM tools to choose from, each with its own strengths and limitations. I'll look at a few of the more popular ones.

Skype

You've probably heard of Skype as the tool used by families and friends to stay in touch over long distances via video chat. But Skype is more than just a video chat application, it's also a voice and text chat tool supporting some interesting extras like ad-hoc online meeting rooms and calling out to ordinary phones.

Wikimedia

Skype is probably the best known of the IM clients, and as a result is already pretty ubiquitous. There are Skype applications that run on all popular desktop computer operating systems, as well as most of the more popular smartphones.

The basic service is free, and the software is relatively easy to install across all your company's computers.

Google Talk

If your company runs its email hosting through Google Apps, you already have a Google Talk feature available to you (although it may need to be activated by your Domain Administrator).

Wikimedia

Google Talk has all the same features as Skype with one important exception: it's not strictly necessary to install a Google Talk application on a computer in order to use it. Google Talk can work inside your Internet browser window when you log into your Google Mail page. It also interfaces with your existing Google Contacts and allows you to launch chat conversations with those contacts even from inside an email.

Like Skype, there are Google Talk applications available for most platforms (if you feel it necessary to install one), but unlike Skype, Google Talk is built on an "open" standard called Jabber/XMPP. This means that any third-party application developer may create an application that will allow you to use Google Talk through it. So for those platforms that don't already have a native application available (such as Nokia Symbian phones), there are third-party ones that work just as well (such as Fring).

Microsoft Lync

If your company uses Microsoft Exchange for email, you should already have access to Microsoft Lync (or its predecessor, Microsoft Windows Messenger). It may need to be installed by your Domain Administrator.

Lync is the corporate version of the popular Windows Live Messenger (sometimes still referred to as "MSN Messenger").

Wikemedia

Lync supports most of the same features included in Skype and Google Talk, but with one important difference. Lync can be set up to run on your own internal server. Where Skype and Google Talk both require access to the Internet to work, Lync doesn't need it. If Internet access is limited or otherwise restricted for your company, you may prefer to go with a locally hosted alternative.

The down-side of this, of course, is that your remote workers and field agents would find it more difficult to log into Lync from their smartphones or home offices.

IBM Lotus SameTime

SameTime is IBM's answer to Microsoft Lync, and works in a very similar way. If your company uses Lotus Notes for email, you probably already have access to SameTime.

Ed Brill

Of the services listed, SameTime is probably the least supported IM service by software platform providers. Although SameTime comes built into Lotus Notes for Windows, Mac or Linux, connecting to SameTime from a smartphone can be very difficult or even impossible.

These are merely the tip of the iceberg. Other popular IM tools include AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and Facebook Chat as well as a plethora of less popular services geared at a variety of different uses. If one of the big names mentioned above don't suit your purposes, there are plenty more to choose from.

Having tried all the ones I've listed here, my personal recommendation goes to Google Talk. I find it to have the most pleasant and consistently good user experience, and it's integration into all my other Google services makes it a pleasure to use. If I were to offer one criticism of Google Talk, it would be that there is currently no one Google Talk application that supports all the features. The desktop client supports a different array of features to the Gmail client, which is different to the web gadget and so on. Hopefully Google will release a new, comprehensive version in the near future.

Put Down the Phone: 4 Steps to Choosing a Better Communication Medium

By Takkk [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

For decades now, arguably the single most valuable and powerful business tool has been the telephone. Thanks to the telephone's speed, high fidelity and relatively low cost it has become virtually indispensable as a communication medium.

But in the 21st century, is the telephone still as relevant as it once was? Should it still be the default communication tool for business, to the exclusion of all else?

I argue that it isn't, and it shouldn't.

That's not to say the telephone doesn't still have it's place, but it seems that that place is no longer at the top of the podium. Other tools like email, Instant Messaging and SMS are often a superior choice.

But how do we determine which medium we should use for the given message?

There are four factors to take into account:


1. Speed: 

How fast do you need to get your message across? How soon do you need an answer? It may be quick and easy to pick up a phone and call someone for a quick answer, but is it really necessary? Do you really need an answer so urgently that you risk intruding on the time of the person you're calling? Is it worth interrupting a meeting or disturbing a concentrating worker?

If you can wait a few minutes for an answer, perhaps a better option would be an SMS or an Instant Message. If you don't need an answer for a few hours, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message might be more suitable.

Especially given the ubiquity of cellphones, the telephone call remains unrivaled when it comes to speed. The ability to exchange ideas in a quick-fire exchange has tremendous value under the right circumstances. But faster isn't always better.

2. Fidelity:

Does it matter how much of the message makes it through? Is it short and easy or long and detailed?

Communicating by voice (be it on the phone or in a meeting) is most efficient when the message itself is concise and clear. A brief discussion providing updates on a topic both participants already understand well would be a good example of this. In this case, if portions of the message are lost due to poor audio quality or loss of signal, the impact is low as the receiver already understands the context of the message, and likely only needs to hear a few key words in order to make sense of it.

However, when conveying messages that need to be delivered in full, voice communication is seldom the best choice. This could be things like long numbers, detailed descriptions, unfamiliar terminology or proper names - things that the receiver would need to understand completely, and may even need to refer back to later.

In this sort of situation, text-based communication would be the logical choice. Providing the information in text form allows the receiver to interact with it as needed, which may include being able to copy and paste it into another system.

When it comes to fidelity, the telephone comes out at the bottom of the pile.

3. Cost

It's a valuable exercise in and of itself to try and save on costs, but is it worth it to invest a little more to get an urgent message out?

Most of the alternative communication media I've mentioned above have a cost of zero or near zero: email, Insant Messaging, Facebook messaging, Twitter... these are all Internet-based technologies that cost only as much as it takes to send the actual bits and bytes via the Internet... in other words, effectively zero.

Contrast this with a telephone call which is often billed by the second. A cost comparison between an Instant Message conversation and a telephone call used to convey the same information will often reveal that the phone call cost several orders of magnitude more.

Now, as mentioned above, the telephone call is the fastest tool available. That being the case, there may well be occasions when the extra expense is justified in order to get the quick response. But how often is that really the case?

4. Persistence

Arguably the biggest failing of the telephone conversation is that, under normal circumstances, once the call has ended, there is no record of the content of that call other than in the respective brains of the participants. Human memory as a storage medium may be adequate under certain circumstances, but when it comes to detailed knowledge or sensitive information, it's simply not good enough.

One solution is to record telephone conversations for later reference, but this often has legal implications, and probably shouldn't be entered into lightly. Another popular solution is "following up" the phone call with an email containing the details of what was discussed.

Here's the question I've yet to hear a good answer to: if you're going to send an email after the phone call anyway, why not just save everybody the time and money, skip the phone call and just send the email? Is it really necessary to have a voice conversation first? Really?

Written communication media are generally easy to refer back to, easy to back-up and easy to redistribute. No need to remember what the conversation entailed if it's possible to refer back to the original text, and no need for "broken telephone" when passing it on to others.

In short, the telephone still has value, but that value is limited only to certain circumstances. Before making that call, think through the four criteria listed above, and ask yourself if the phone really is the best option. You'll probably find that it isn't.