von Yet again finding myself in a situation where my phone and internet provider has managed to kill my landline phone connection, I began to think about how important the latter really is for my day-to-day business dealings.
On the go: Calling and being called
Of course it is annoying not being able to pick up the phone, call another landline number and – thanks to our flatrate – talk for ages. However, since the people of our industry are often on the go, they are not able to access this connection anyway. For this reasons, more and more people seem to be shifting towards mobile flatrate plans so that they are able to make unlimited mobile calls without spending a fortune.
Similarly, getting phone calls to the landline number is problematic when one is miles away from his phone. Of course there is call forwarding, but in most cases, one is being charged for each call being directed to one’s mobile phone. Personally, I more and more tend to give out my mobile number so that callers do not have to take a detour via the landline.
Why making a call anyway?
Surely there are phone-calls that are really worthwhile: in order to clarifly a complex problem or ask a lot of questions, it’s so much easier being able to speak to one or more people involved. But in many cases, phone-calls are just useless and plain annoying. Here is my personal TOP3 list of grievances:
Getting calls by anonymous callers:
Communication usually isn’t a oneway-road. If you’d like to chat, please let me know who you are!
Getting “Call me back” voicemail messages:
It doesn’t hurt summarising the reason of your call in one or two sentences. If you’d like me to give you a call back, please give me at least a small chance to prepare!
Making me write down long texts during the call:
Why try dictating long sentences or URLs on the phone when sticking them into an email would be so much easier?
