The lost art of communication
Posted December 8th, 2006For the next couple weeks, I’m going to explore a lost art. It’s the art of communication. The real kind. The engaging kind. The kind many marketers don’t make the time for. Have you noticed that we’ve become addicted to our technology? We e-mail co-workers who are 10 steps away from us. We know exactly the right time to make a call, so we can leave a voicemail rather than speak to a live human. Our customer. The person we spend thousands of dollars trying to attract! We step further and further back from the world we say we’re trying to connect with.
I think one of the reasons technology has seeped into our very depths of being is we’re on constant overload. There’s too much information all the time. 24/7. We’re literally bombarded by it. Ironically, the very technology we turn to as a solution for getting more done faster is what’s putting us in the bind in the first place!
We convince ourselves we don’t have time to visit customers. Or even talk to them on the phone. We can also slash expenses by only sending out e-mail communications or condensing everything we do to what I call the USA Today mentality of a few bullet points and a chart. You cannot touch someone’s emotions with a bullet point. You cannot help them visualize their own situation in a graph.
Are e-mails, voicemails, bullet points and graphics evil? Of course not. They are very effective tools. I’m not advocating we stop using them. But I am advocating that we stop depending on them as our sole vehicles of communication.
If you keep your customers at arm’s length and don’t engage them, someone else will. Next week, we’ll begin to explore how to right the balance.
