How Do You Like to Communicate with a Business?

Do you have a preference on how you like to communicate with a business?

Do You Like Email or Prefer to Talk?

We do most of our communication via email. You may have come to this blog post through our weekly email if you’re on our email list. We keep in touch with our members via email and predominantly arrange our calls with potential members, collaborators and business contacts via email. But we have realised that maybe not everyone is as keen on email as we are.

We very rarely pick up the phone to speak to someone although a lot of our emails do lead onto a Zoom call with people because there are some things that are much easier just to chat through and actually having the face to face element of a Zoom call feels easier to us than just speaking on the phone. Not to mention how useful it is to have the option to screen share in our line of business. But we know that some people really aren’t that comfortable on Zoom.

Do You Avoid Communication?

We know some people don’t really like to communicate at all. They’ll go to a business owners’ website, find what they want on there, buy or sign up directly through the website and just happily get on with things. Which is why your website has to be so good! Because if it’s not those people won’t enquire another way, they’ll just find another business that does what you do and allows them to do everything they want to on the website.

I think many of us have those times where we don’t want to have to have any contact with someone, which is why online shopping has become so prolific and why more and more self-service tills are appearing in supermarkets.

Do You Want that Human Connection?

But there are definitely still people who want to pick up the phone and talk to someone as a first point of contact. There are people who would rather go into a shop and get someone’s advice before they buy something rather than research it online.

Probably the most successful businesses are catering for all of those people but it can feel hard to offer all of that. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable talking on the phone or maybe if you put your phone number out there you’d be answering calls all the time and wouldn’t get the work done. We can come up with excuses but really as business owners we should be offering a choice about how people can get in contact with us.

Giving People the Choice of How to Communicate with You

We give people the chance to email or chat by online message but we also offer the chance to have a quick Zoom call and they can keep their camera off if that’s what they prefer. We don’t offer the option of a phone call unless we have built a relationship with the client and we trust they aren’t going to be phoning all the time. Boundaries are important in business and especially in channels of communication.

There’s also the option to use social media and messaging services which are great for building networking relationships but we find they are harder to keep track off so we don’t use them for client support or discussing a potential project once it gets to a certain stage because we don’t want to drop the ball and miss a message.

We would really love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if you use Ready Steady Websites® or are considering it so we can make sure we are communicating with you in the best way possible.

Support to Work on Your Website

If you’ve read this and you’re now thinking maybe your website isn’t as good as it could be for those people who just want to get on and take action without initially getting in touch with you, then check out our free resources to help you improve your website or our website templates if you’re thinking of starting again.

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash