Can You Hear Me Now?

Today is my best friend’s birthday. Being a good friend, I wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday. I went on to Facebook to post a nice Happy Birthday wish on his wall. I logged in and did a quick search to find him amongst my friend list. I searched, but to my shock, he is not on Facebook!!! I began to panic and did not know what to do. I quickly logged into AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to wish him a happy birthday, but he was not online. Oh no! This was not going well. So, I sent him an email to his work address. I was all set, until I received the dreaded Out-of-Office bounce back. How dare he take his birthday off. Again, panic set in. He will think I am a bad friend.

How am I going to solve this?

Now, I have spent my whole career on the services side of business. From waiting tables to human resources to client services, I have always been focused on customer service. So how is it possible that things have become so impersonal in our daily interactions that the last form of communication I considered was picking up the phone and calling my friend? What a revelation, actually make a phone call? It seems so foreign, so strange, so 2004. It is now 1:00pm, and I have yet to call him, but I will. Let me check AIM one more time. Nope, still not online.

I have been thinking about this more and more lately. As a culture, we are moving farther and farther away from personal two-way communication. Everything is technical, everything is one way, everything is communicating when it is convenient for us, never even thinking about the other party. I think we are going down a slippery slope here and the more we move away from phone calls, face-to-face meetings, and a good old handshake, the more we will miscommunicate in our business and personal lives. We will miss the body language, the tone, and ultimately, relationships will suffer. Social cues and body language are an important part of business and we take a big risk in missing the opportunity to see these gestures for ourselves. For me, this has become a big problem in relationship building and basic customer service principals.

As Director of Client Services for Thrive Networks, I am committing to changing my ways. I am going to shift my communication back to basics, real personal communication. I am going to pick up the phone and call people, I am going to go visit people, and I am going to get back to building relationships the old fashioned way, with a hand shake and a smile. I think we all need to take a look at shifting our communication back to the old ways and not rely solely on messaging, email, and social networking. Sure it has its place, but not all the time. Not when it matters, and certainly not when it comes to providing top notch customer service.

Well, I finally called my friend and wished him a happy birthday. Apparently I am the only one who has called so far. In our conversation I learned he was free Saturday night and we made dinner plans. He also told me has an extra ticket to a concert I want to go see, and now I get to go because nobody else called him. Imagine what we will learn from calling our clients?

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