Is that title attention-grabbing enough for you? Yeah okay, it’s a bit dramatic, I get it. But doesn’t it feel as humans in the 21st century that we’re constantly inundated by things wanting our attention – social media messages, WhatsApp, texts, emails, phone calls. If you’re not careful you can spend your entire time responding to new messages.
We’re very serious about running our business here at Webfooted Designs and a big part of our job is communicating with our clients, prospective clients, team members and service providers. We know we don’t always get it right, but we are constantly working on how we can keep up a good level of communication, whilst still finding time to focus on completing our client work.
So, I’d like to take a moment to go through how we handle communication.
1. We love emails
We’re doing a “pick our lane and stick to it” thing here. Email is by far the best way to get hold of us. We check our emails at regular intervals throughout the day and have access to them if we’re working away from the office for any reason.
You might not get an instant response from us, but we will always aim to get back to you within one working day (unless we’re away for a few days, in which case you will get an automatic message letting you know when to expect to hear from us).
If in doubt, email us – you’ll get a response much more quickly than any other means of communication. And you’ll get a considered response because we will have had a chance to think through your question before replying.
2. We don’t love phone calls
Sorry, but it’s true, we don’t love phone calls. The phone is difficult for various reasons:
- We’re not always available – one or other of us is quite often in a meeting, which means we can’t answer the phone.
- When we’re not in meetings, we’re focusing on getting work done, which needs concentration.
- There are things that we can’t answer effectively over the phone.
I know that for some of you it’s natural to pick up the phone when you have a question. But we generally need time to think the question through and there are some things we can’t do over the phone – particularly when it comes to troubleshooting email problems. We ask for your understanding when it comes to that – if you phone with a question about emails, the answer will always be “we don’t offer support for email addresses over the phone”.
So again, sorry if you’re a “just a quick phone call” person. The truth is, we have our phone permanently on do not disturb, so you will always get the answerphone not a human. Leave a message if you wish, but the chances are you will receive a reply by email. That’s our way.
3. Booking a meeting is a good solution
If you do want to talk some work through with us, then a meeting will work 100% better than a phone call. You can book a time with me and either meet in person or on Zoom. Send me an email to say you’d like to arrange a meeting and I’ll reply with my booking calendar.
4. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn Messages, Texts
I’m grouping these together in a “other means of communication” category. I (Emily that is) do use them but keep notifications switched off because the constant alerts would drive me bananas.
There are some occasions where it might work to communicate over one of these messaging options, but please always use email first unless you’ve lost access to your one and only email address.
What I would like to get across with this post is that we do care very much about keeping up a good level of communication with everyone we deal with. But in order to function well we do have to put boundaries on how we communicate. It boils down to:
- Emails are good
- Phone calls are bad
- If you do want to talk to us then booking a meeting works well
- Other forms of messaging are available in certain circumstances
I’d love to hear from other business owners. How do you handle communication in your business? Do you handle being available for communication throughout the day or do you have your favoured means of contact?
