Is it broken??? Or are we just communicating digitally?

I remember the good old days, phone ringing off the hook, no chance to action the last call because you have just picked up another. It was mad and challenging but it was great fun!

Fax was the state-of-the-art communication tool for documents but that has pretty much disappeared from our lives as well.

The business world usually leads the way embracing new technology to improve efficiency and cut cost. Although when dial up internet appeared I did wonder how the heck it was going to improve our lot while I watched the egg timer painfully rotate!

Jump forward to reliable broadband, fibre, leased lines and Office 365, you realise how longwinded and time-consuming the old systems were.

Then along came a global pandemic which accelerated a new technology adoption.

Virtual meetings on Zoom and Teams, certainly in my circle, were non-existent until we were all told to stay at home. Then it was a scramble to initially get the cameras and headsets organised while switching on the software and learning how to use it.

Now it’s a simple muscle memory arranging and having meetings virtually.

The by-result of this forced adoption is the realisation that typically where a sales person may have spent the day on the road visiting 2 customers, unless there is an overriding reason to visit in person, it’s more efficient, effective and productive to have the meeting on-line. Not to mention the positive impact it has on the environment.

Hybrid working is still a big factor with many companies adopting this as another efficient means of operation whilst giving employees a flexibility and better balance to their working week.

So, it seems we are getting smarter about how we work, conscious of how precious our time is, improving efficiency and doing a little bit more to save the planet.

In our business at Display Technology we have seen a steady decline in use of the office landline phone. Where historically we could be getting calls daily with enquiries, questions and cold calling, ?it seems that the only ones that actually ring now are trying to sell us advertising space!

E-mails seem to be the strongest means of interaction for us whether that be with customers or suppliers and with 90% of our supply chain being overseas it makes the process extremely easy to manage, especially with the LCD display and power supply technology we deal with. Specifications are great but pictures can speak a thousand words.

However, in my opinion, e-mail is very impersonal. There is no human element to any of the interactions, you are just an e-mail address, not a real person.

In todays’ age where on-line shopping is the norm and your world revolves around a handheld device, the desktop telephone almost feels like a redundant tool in the modern business world.

You just need to watch the latest TV advert for a mobile handset to see that not once do they focus on someone using the call function of the latest Smartphone device. It’s all about the camera and accessibility to the network, 5G ready and superb sound/microphone quality for the Instagramers and TikTok’ers

Tomorrows’ decision makers and ultimate business leaders are the young people just starting out on their careers who have grown up with a smartphone or tablet in their hands, they have been weaned on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp

Having just accepted video conferencing in our daily business lives, do we now need to start thinking about the next iteration of communication with our prospects already?

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I am still a great believer in the sayings that “people sell to people” and “relationships are key”.

Pictures, videos, news about our lives are all mainstream on social channels, surely that can only be beneficial when it comes to making a decision about whether we want to interact with a potential customer or supplier.

You can decide before even making that first contact whether this individual is the type of person you would want to work with, surely that also helps with efficiency and moving the project forward at pace?

Is it time to embrace DMs in LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram to communicate with our potential customers, or is there going to be a technology skip straight to business meetings being done in the Metaverse?

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Whatever happens, there’s one thing for sure, no matter which platforms or technology become the next big thing, the business world will always be looking for the next technology allowing a closer relationship to the customer.