I seem to hear all the time that we are the wired generation where everyone is isolated, do not interact the way they used to, communicate by texting, email, youtube, facebook, twitter, IM, etc. and no longer pick up the phone and call one another. I hear that we are no longer feeling the need to talk on the phone as other form of communications surfaced and took the place of the phone.

Is this true? You might think it is, but it could not be farther from the truth. Are you surprised? So am I. I am surprised because I love using other form of communications in business and feel the old fashioned techniques slow me down.

Think about it, for example with email I can respond to everyone within a reasonable amount of time, even many people at once, it is instant, non intrusive, it is traceable, re-visitable, etc. I communicate with at least 20-30 people daily. If I would take care of these communications by phone I would not get to even half of them. This is because with the phone you can’t just call and say “can you send me the logo” and hang up the phone. You would first have to look for the number, dial, do some chit chatting, then discuss the real issue you called about, then somehow close the conversation so it would not seem abrupt, and then finally hang up. Depending on the issue you are calling about you may also take notes during the call, and send the follow up email to make sure everyone is on the same page. You just wasted tons of time on something a half minute email could have taken care of.

Yet, more and more people seem to complain about the lack of “telephone usage”, which puzzles me, since according to everyone, we are in the era of the new form of communications where most do not use the phone anymore. Why is it that the phone is still so dominant and required when logically thinking email for example has many more upside?

I am told that the problem with email is that people do not read or do not want to read. The reason they want to talk or webex or conference call is because they are verbally told what is needed so they do not have to read it, which is more convenient for them.

That is maybe so, however, the problem with that is that people recall only 10% of a conversation and half the time they do not even pay attention, especially when it is a conference call and they are not “personally” responsible for the conversation. Thus, even if you explain and tell people something you could have emailed, chances are, you will have to re-explain and tell the same things to them over and over again. So in addition the time you wasted on the conference call, you waste some more time re-explaining.

What else is so mesmerizing about the phone that although we have tons of other form of communications, people still WANT to talk on the phone? The truth is that this is because there is no alternative to speaking person to person. Ask any sales people and they will tell you that there is no substitute for personal interactions. An email can only take a deal so far.
I was looking for the “why”. I did not see that a conference call achieved any more or was more productive than an email, the matter of fact I experienced the opposite. After thinking some more about it, I finally figured out that business “communication” is not about the outstanding things to be done, projects to be completed, or the content of the communication in general. Amongst other things, it is about human psychological needs, the need to create a rapport, a like each other feel, being comfortable, establishing sense of knowing one another.

So although we are in the era of various form of communications that would allow people to work faster and more efficiently, people still want to chit chat on the phone because of personal interactions and relationship building, and maybe a bit also because they are too lazy to read. Although this sense of “knowing one another” is false and slows all business processes down, the human need is too powerful because of which the “phone” as the main form of communication, is here to stay. What do you think?