Humans have a built in ability to read the emotions of others. When we speak to another person face to face, we observe their body language, facial expressions and size up the “emotional “state of the other person. Thus we can differentiate sarcasm, humor, annoyance from our conversations with others. But what happens when we attempt to convey our thoughts through text only? Because we are all basically egocentric, we tend to read e-mail from the emotional state we are in, rather than the sender. We have no visual or audio clues as to what the sender is trying to convey. Because email is a rapid form of communication, we tend to read it, and respond to it at times too quickly. It is so easy to fire off a short email, which may not convey your full message or meaning. A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor covers two researchers Michael Morris, and Jeff Lowenstein, who were performing a study of this very subject. A humorous side note to their research is the two had had never actually met, collaborated on the project via e-mail, had a falling out based on miscommunication from one of their emails. The study concludes that 56% of email is interpreted correctly by the receiver, yet nearly 90% believe they interpreted the message correctly. Those who use a phone call to communicate find a much larger degree of success in relaying their message to others, and the receiver correctly interprets the message 76% of the time. The study concludes, that though highly effective for multiple offer negotiations, email should be supplemented by phone calls so a rapport maybe constructed. Our business is built around providing Network Security and Email Protection products via direct sales. Each lead we receive gets a phone call, that’s right, a good old fashioned phone call; because that’s how we build trust with our clients. In my opinion too many companies and even their sales staff are attempting to avoid the personal approach to sales and customer service. They are committing great folly in the belief that email and self help systems are an effective replacement for good old fashioned relationships. One of my vendors recently replaced my account manager with a new person. Now this person seems to be a decent individual on the phone, but prefers to handle communications almost entirely via email. This practice makes it nearly impossible to discuss complex issues with this account manager. The relationship built with this vendor is starting to suffer because of this. All in all the company offers great products, so this practice is tolerated. However their products are becoming less and less important to us for one simple reason; there is no rapport. Email is a great way to send documents back and forth and communicate details of certain scenarios; but it can become poor and ineffective communication. |
