Communications Central
Posted on | August 9, 2009 | No Comments
One of the toughest decisions an aspiring entrepreneur must face is whether he will be available 24x7x365 to clients and prospects.
On one hand, unlimited availability sounds great — you are sending the message that you will stop at nothing to satisfy your client, right?
Wrong. Unlimited availability sends the message that not only are you unable to prioritize effectively, but you don’t value yourself enough to draw the line between work and non-work hours.
To be sure, some clients might benefit (after contract negotiation) to special consideration. But in general, hours of availability should be fixed and limited.
For this reason, a robust infrastructure for telecom is vital. Voice, text, email, Tweets — all of these need to be accommodated 24×7, even when the phone is off.
Here are some suggestions for effectively centralizing communications:
- Sign up for Google Voice. Google Voice is a new beta service that allows a subscriber to select a phone number that’s not attached to a specific device. This number is then forwarded to as many phones as you wish, and each phone can ring on a special pre-defined schedule, with overrides for certain people in your address book. Using your Voice number as a business number makes sense; just set the schedule, and then forget about it. And Voice has nifty features like call blocking, call recording, and voice-mail transcripts by email, that make it a good solution.
- Consider signing up for a centralized telecom service. Companies like Onebox will assign a phone number that accepts voice mail and faxing. Voice mails are stored and emailed, and faxes are emailed as TIF files. Plus, these services often allow you to select a toll-free number at low cost.
- Get control of your email inbox. Keep personal and business email separate, and don’t check the business stuff off-hours.
- Check social-networking sites after time away. Don’t fall behind on Tweets or Facebook status updates; their value is in their use.
- Consider using an all-in-one IM program. Digsby, for example, allows you to track muliple instant-message and social-networking accounts, and it provides an email notifier for many different addresses. Unifying everything with one tool makes a lot of sense and can cut down on time spent checking things.
- Be careful with Blackberry or iPhone. Yes, you can be connected by phone, text, Twitter, IM, Facebook, whatever, all 24×7 by means of your smartphone. Yes, this is a good thing. But when you get woken up at 3 a.m. becuase you have a night-owl client, is it worth it? After a while, your smart phone will feel less like a communication tool and more like a tether unless you figure out when to shut the device, or some of its applications, off every now and then.
The only thing that unlimited availability brings to a business professional is early burnout. So take your time away — and make sure you invest in the right tools to help you manage your communication needs as efficiently as possible.
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