Contacting clients

What’s the new typical SOP? Phone? Email? Google chat? Do you have your own business line or just give out your cell # at random?

I had a client recently ask me to have a conversation with him on IM. That was very interesting. Not very productive, because the sentences kept spilling over into one another (unlike phone where you wait until the other person is done talking and then you say something). But, he seemed fairly satisfied. I guess he did it because he’s swamped but I think having a phone convo would take just as much time (although if you’re chatting you can do other things, I guess, if you’re a multitasker).

I’ve been considering getting my own business number, but if everything is going the way of IM anyway…

no thoughts? I guess maybe most don’t need these kinds of solutions…to follow-up, I’m now considering maybe a combination of Voip and advanced voicemail, if I can swing it.

Phone and email only for me.

I answer email and talk on the phone as infrequently as possible. If I can, I provide all feedback and critical communication by email.

This does 2 things:

  1. Allows me to control the conversation as much as possible…especially the WHEN I answer. Jumping to my inbox with every ding sucked SO much of my time it wasn’t funny. Way more effective checking email 2 maybe 3 times a day. Would like to get it so I only have to once a day…but I don’t see that happening.
  2. Keeps a “papertrail” of everything.

Agreed, email is a huge time suck. I was actually just reading a business blog that discussed how counter-productive compulsive email checking is, although that doesn’t make me any more reluctant to succumb to said compulsion :slight_smile:. That having been said, I find sometimes it’s necessary to talk by phone, but email is much better for future reference, etc

As I see it that’s also part of the benefit of having some advanced voicemail type service like gotvmail offers, because you can more or less let the voicemail do its thing and retrieve the messages at your leisure (it keeps you in control). I’d also like to stop giving out my personal number, which would necessitate a secondary line or vmail account.

I’m still going back and forth on IM conversation, though. I actually have had a few client-based convos on google chat and they weren’t as horrible as I imagined, although the fact of the matter is that most people can speak more efficiently than they can type. At least, that’s true of the folks I work with…