What happens when you make a business call? You have to choose the right time. There is a great possibility that the person on the other side isn’t eager to receive your call or doesn’t have time. Maybe there is lots of action going on on your side or on the other side? You have to make sure that you don’t forget the important facts. The information that is sought by the other person should be immediately at hand. If there is additional information required you have to verbally communicate it. If there is some diagram or an image you have to explain it to the person on the other side.
This Marketing Think blog post has an interesting take on why publishing content on your website or blog is far better than making business phone calls. These are the 5 reasons the author has cited:
- The content that you have written is available 24 x 7. The time constraint is not there and your content can be accessed from any time zone from anywhere.
- You can decide how much you want to say. You can decide whether you want to be brief or you want to expand your point of view.
- In case you need to share an infographic or a Slideshare or a video it is not possible to do it over telephone.
- In case extra research is needed it cannot be done over the phone.
- Your written content connects to your customers and clients on their own terms rather than you deciding when they should have the conversation with you and what sort of conversation they should have.
My personal take is, there is a positive and a negative side to every communication channel. The telephonic conversation is instant and the emotion that you can convey through a telephone call is difficult to convey through text that is mostly one-sided. But then, being a content writer, I have more faith in written word than spoken word.