I briefly debated internally before writing this piece - do we the campaigners of the communication age actually need to discuss something as mundane as a phone call and an email. I mean standing at the footsteps of a virtual revolution that will potentially change our business interactions (as it already has our personal ones), do we still need to discuss if we have got the basics right?

My instinctive sense from observing the everyday use of these basic tools is – YES. We often see people around complain about the ‘delay’ caused in taking action due to email ping pong. And there are those who spend hours over phone trying to persuade and “explain” but the party on the other end, “just doesn’t understand”! (It would be worth sharing similar experiences that any readers of this post may have had and actually help explore this theme better)

Most of us haven’t read text books on email and phone etiquette and manage reasonably well, following invisible guidelines based on our judgment and convention around. It however is interesting to reflect upon the cohesively derived, commonsensical “purpose” of each tool.

So we mostly use an email -

• To document any important conversation
• For proof
• For reference
• To bring the different parties on the same page
• Minimise the presumptions and assumptions
• Maximise clarity on the subject
• To manage expectations
• To ‘detail’ out the thoughts/ideas/action-points
• To keep everyone in the ‘loop’ (Cc and Bcc)
• To record our identity in the recipient’s system

Similarly we use a phone call –

• To reach out in case of urgency
• To make a conversation .i.e. debate, discuss, clarify, bounce off fresh ideas
• To bring a human touch, to lend a voice, a personality to the text
• To undertake quick action

While we broadly use these tools for one of the above reasons, sometimes we bring more obstruction to communication and action through our usage. Therefore when an email is used to just “push matters onto the other party” and as a delay tactic, it is not the optimal use of the tool. When an email is sent to avoid a telephone exchange or perhaps avoid an impending conflict situation, it isn’t in the best interest of that relationship. Similarly, when a phone call is made at an unearthly hour and breaches the privacy of an individual it is literally a “wrong call”. When the urgency of the matter is only one-sided (e.g. pitching a story to a journalist when he is filing his story) or when a person is subjected to a string of calls with scant regard to his priorities or to protocol, then the call ceases to be an effective (and at times even acceptable) means of communication.

So, the next time you find yourself in the middle of email warfare, take a moment to reflect on your choice of weapon. Maybe a good thing to do is to think of the sender as the girl in the Close-up commercial who used to croon – “Talk to me” (since real life is more interactive than a commercial, go ahead and oblige the sender with a plain telephone conversation :))

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india