“Ping me.”

That’s what we all keep saying, right? This directive for making personal or business contact is de rigueur. I say it, myself. Often.

Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but lately, I’ve been feeling reminiscent about the good old days, when we used to say, “call me.” (You know, on the telephone.)

These days, we use our “mobile devices” to text each other; some of us have abandoned our landlines altogether. Now we post our status, twitter, microshare and RSS-feed our friends and colleagues.

It’s a brave new world.

In a business transaction with a 25-year old programmer a few months back, I was told via IM (Instant Message) that I was “out of touch with his generation” because I asked him if we could speak over the phone. (This, in lieu of conducting our entire business discussion via IM, which is, in fact, what he insisted we do.) I had a stack of subsequent projects for which I had hoped to engage his services, but my fingers ached at the prospect of all that typing.

Is there an anti-telephone trend or am I peculiarly phone-dependent?

Am I a lone holdout in my preference for a phone call at some point during any given business transaction? I mean, of course I recognize that not every online transaction requires a phone call. I certainly don’t feel any need to call Amazon.com when I order a book. But when you’re dealing with a business that is providing you with a service (not a retail transaction), I suppose I still consider email a prelude to (and a bridge between) a phone call or meeting.

Are phone calls an unnecessary disruption of our workflow?

Sometimes. But so is email unless you set parameters around reading and/or responding to it. Is a text message an interruption? Or does it feel less intrusive because it doesn’t take up as much of your time. (Funny how things on this blog always seem to be a consideration of time!)☺

Speaking of time, I’ve been told that Tim Ferriss’ talks about how you can save tons of time in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, by never picking up your phone, managing when you call people back and pushing them to email, which you can outsource for even greater efficiency. Hmmm…I like saving time as much as the next gal and I realize phone calls can interrupt my work, but if it’s the people I work for who are calling, then I hope the phone doesn’t stop ringing! In fact, I still make it a practice to call clients (yes, on the telephone) to review the files I send them via email—but I’m starting to wonder if this is a service or an interference!? Is this proclivity of mine passé in light of the more popular ping?

Who are the peeps pushing for the ping?

In the spirit of due diligence, I connected with one of my online business contacts to get another POV on this topic. Here’s a blip of what the more ping-prone are saying:

“It’s not that people don’t want to be helpful. They may be shy, communicate better when not bothered or interrupted, or they might need more time to think. Maybe they stutter. Who knows? People just want to get more done, and the phone is an old-school way of connecting.”

This is not an unpopular position to take. And I’m not here to knock it. Consider the following “contact policy” posted on the website of a technology services business. You can click through for the full policy, but this snippet delivers the gist:

Sooo, they want my business, but would prefer not to talk to me? Or is it that I just need to get with the times and adapt to their style of business and communication preferences? Maybe they’re forcing me to be more efficient. I’m not picking on this company or their protocol, I’m trying to understand if there’s a trend happening in which some businesses are fine with weeding out the “phone-talkers?” I’m really trying not to take this trend personally. Different strokes for different folks. Whatever works for you. I think I just get hung up when the hypothetical “you” is working for “me.” What about my communication preferences as the customer?

Does social media promote the ping?

And what of the role that social media plays in all of this? Yes, I twitter, email, post and link like it’s my job, but, when the conversation calls for it, (pun intended), I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. Makes no matter to me if you’re around the corner or on another continent…it’s the sound of your voice that makes our social connection even more sociable.

Chris Brogan posted recently about being on the hook for unreasonable turnaround times with all of this pinging going on, which is surely amplified and unrelenting when you scale it to his 17,000-plus readership. I’m absolutely in favor of his call for boundaries and I’m very interested in reading more about successful bloggers’ social media management systems. I think, however, this particular trend I’m trying to figure out here raises some very traditional questions for businesses:

• Should we all be posting “communication policies” like the company did in the above example to let people know how and when we can and should be pinged or called?
• Is it okay if we sound a bit…unsociable?
• Would such a policy improve business operations by maximizing technology’s time efficiencies or does it restrict relationship-building efforts?
• Where is the line between setting expecatations and meeting them? If a company sets their communication boundaries and they don’t align with my expectations, technically that’s “my” problem. Not theirs. Right?
• What does setting boundaries mean for a service business? You’ll listen to the customer, but only on the channels of your choosing? Is that bad business or good policy-making?
• Is it any different from posting your business “hours of operation” or is this just a backlash from 24/7 web-access overload?
• If you’re building a tribe à la Seth Godin, perhaps you’re leading a cultural shift in communications protocol. Maybe you’re the forward-thinking “heretic” and I’m “resisting change,” hanging on to my telephone for dear life. Is this the future? Am I living in the past?

Is the ping the new king?

To be clear on this point, I have no problem with a well-appointed ping. It can be very time-efficient. Nor do I take issue with email or texting. I love them both. Honest. What I’m doing here is simply taking a look at the business community’s ping-to-ring ratio and wondering if I should be trying to uh, cut the cord, on my telephone dependency. That’s not what my instincts are telling me, but is that what the trend is telling me?

Though I mean no offense in this petite ping protest, someone is sure be affronted by this post.

In fact, I fully expect to get pinged to a pulp on this one, drawing the ire of blackberry addicts, serial texters, email enthusiasts, instant message loyalists, generations X, Y and Z, in addition to anyone who may have an aversion to the telephone or an affinity for the post-modernization of telecommunications. The irony is that I generally don’t really even like to talk on the phone and, yet, here I am suddenly ready to defend it to the death. (?)

I’m not saying all of the “new” ways of communicating aren’t valuable; I’m just saying that listening to the rhythms, tones and subtleties in someone else’s voice still…um, rings my bell.

Go ahead. It’s your turn to be heard (though, clearly, not in the literal sense). Ping me. I know I’ve got it coming.

(Please be advised, if you’re going to call me “old” or “out of touch” I must warn you that I’m not nearly as old as I may sound. But, then, you’d have to call me so I could prove it…)

Tags: customer service, ping, telephone, time management

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Small Business, Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.