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Business social networking

twitter vs phone response times

Back in action proper today after the holidays with lots to sort out.  First day in the new office – Sparkhouse business innovation centre at Lincoln University’s Enterprise@Lincoln building. Day one jobs include opening a bank account and stepping up the staff search activity. Christmas got in the way to a large degree. In fact most of December did:)

Over the Christmas break I had occasion to order a takeaway from The Castlegate Indian Restaurant. You know the one. It’s by Lincoln Castle’s Westgate next to the Victoria pub. It was Boxing Day and our son Tom’s birthday. A curry is traditional on this occasion so I rang them at around 10.30 to check that they were open. Nobody answered! Huh!

I checked their website and saw that they didn’t normally open until 4.30pm. Fair enough I thought. I was six hours too early. As an afterthought I dropped them a line on Twitter @CastlegateLincs. We follow each other. Within five minutes I had a response telling me that yes they were indeed open that day.

This for me is a prime example of how communications are going to change, already changing in fact. I can see the day where @CastlegateLincs will hardly ever use the phone. Why should we bother with a phone? It clearly didn’t do the job for me on that occasion. I realise that calls can be forwarded but that didn’t happen.

The phone is also a medium where mistakes can be made, misunderstandings, not hearing someone correctly when they speak their meal requirements. It’s the reason why businesses automate processes, or they should do. Moreover paying someone to answer the phone adds to the overhead of your business. Automation is going to permeate our lives to the extent that we won’t bother dealing with businesses who don’t make themselves easy to interact with. Check out this oldish post re trying to book a dental appointment. Every business, no matter what type, needs to move online.

This blog is an online entity. We haven’t even got a printer. Will have to see how we get on with that one:) There will always be occasions where you need to speak to someone but that doesn’t have to be done using a telephone.

@CastlegateLincoln is a prime example of the trend. Using the telephone I got no response but Twitter worked in very short order. Now they just need an online booking system.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com