How to communicate now

One summer vacation in Brittany, the family decided to eat at a crêperie. My sister gave me the name and the time, and we met there at 8.30pm, but there was no one there. After 20 minutes of waiting, I decided to start trying to call the other participants, and ended up learning that the plans had changed as there was no more room. Finally arriving at the right crêperie 30 minutes late, I’m told “But we warned you at 2.30pm, aren’t you taking your messages? I then ask where I should check my messages “on your Messenger”. Bad luck, I was kayaking in the afternoon and I’m not on Messenger all the time, even on vacation.

Another time, a cousin complains: “You could at least answer your phone messages. But where? “On your Orange mailbox”. Problem: the messages are only available on the Orange site, you need your login and password, I’m in France during the vacations, I don’t know them by heart. Ah, and then I’d rather be on the beach and taking daily than interrogating the messages on the Orange page. And then, after all, it’s the vacations.

Several family members have made another complaint. “You haven’t told us about the estate”. Where? “On the What’s App family group. Oh, yes, I forgot, Europeans are all on What’s App, whereas in North America it’s Messenger.

I also discovered, several days late, that CIBC had sent me a text message to inform me that they had changed their policy. Honestly, I don’t give a shit.

On Outlook, my accountant asks me why I haven’t replied to his message about the importance of registering on the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) site. Well, he can wait, and so can the ARC, almost all of whose pages contain errors. Parenthetically, I have to admit that I laughed out loud to see such an incoherent site. The government must have paid a few billion to CGI or IBM to come up with such a wobbly site, with French mistakes and 505 error codes on every page.

In short, I’m not going to become a slave to all means of communication, especially on vacation, if it’s important they’ll manage to find the right way to contact me, and too bad for the unhappy ones, that’s their problem.

Too much communication kills communication

All this to say that we used to have a telephone to talk on, it wasn’t difficult and it was efficient.

Learn to communicate, now the number of means of communication would like to make us slaves to following them, I have other things to do than spend my time following every possible channel to give an immediate response.

A non-exhaustive list of current means of communication

• Face to face
  • Direct face-to-face contact with the person is ideal
  • Face to face with an intermediary who conveys the message
• Phones
• Home landline: this is the old way of communicating. Landlines are almost completely disappearing from the home, and I’ve had them removed, but many people still use them. After selling my kayak on Marketplace, my contact asked me why I hadn’t received his text messages and then said, “Do landlines still exist? He was a retired engineer from Hydro Québec.

• Messagerie téléphone fixe à domicile qui nécessite encore de connaître la procédure de récupération des messages et le mot de passe.
  • Téléphone fixe du travail : bien que négligé par les jeunes il est toujours nécessaire pour la prospection commerciale grâce à la qualité supérieure de communication. Après avoir vendu en kayak sur Marketplace mon interlocuteur m’a demandé pourquoi je n’avais pas reçu ses messages texte puis m’a dit : « Cela existe encore les téléphones fixes? ». C’était pourtant un ancien ingénieur à la retraite d’Hydro Québec.
  • Work phone messaging that requires another password to remember
  • Téléphone portable travail : un incontournable, payé par l’employeur pour certains postes, la contrepartie étant de répondre rapidement pendant les heures de travail.
  • Cell phone text messages work
  • Téléphone portable personnel. Les banques et administrations en font un instrument nécessaire pour gérer leurs comptes. On se demande comment font les personnes âgées qui ne le maîtrisent pas bien. Pour moi ce qui est inquiétant est de voir comment on ferait si on le perdait et l’outil extraordinaire de flicage pour tout état, même « démocratique ». La déclaration des biens immobiliers par l’état français macroniste est un déjà un outil de contrôle, le fait d’être obligé d’utiliser son téléphone portable pour s’identifier n’est pas rassurant. Les personnes âgées n’ont eu d’autres choix que d’attendre en file pendant des heures dans les bureaux.
  • Text messages from personal cell phones
  • Vacation Orange landline
  • Orange landline messaging on their site
• Electronic mail
  • Work e-mail
  • Personal e-mail
  • Complementary personal Gmail messaging, it’s common
• Réseaux sociaux
  • Messagerie LinkedIn, parfois relayée par le courrier électronique. C’est le moyen d’échange privilégié dans le milieu des affaires.Messenger : personnel ou de groupes. Il y a aussi les invitations et les « brouteurs » qui tentent de vous hameçonner.What’ App : ici les choses se compliquent : appels, message, visio, individuelle ou de groupe. En France tout le monde l’utilise et s’attend à une réponse immédiate. Et bien tant pis ! Les groupes sont nombreux :
    • Family groupClose family or beach groupGroup of friends
    Instagram : c’est le moyen d’échange privilégié des plus jeunes qui n’ont même plus de comptes FacebookTelegram : le moyen alternatif privilégié dans les pays d’Europe de l’Est, mais qui gagne en popularité. Il est d’une esthétique rustique, mais facile à utiliser, léger, crypté.X (Anciennement Twitter) qui reste le meilleur moyen de s’informer à la source et qui dispose d’une messagerie.
  • Threads, the Meta competitor praised by the media, but currently at least Instagram’s appendage.

In all, more than 25 communication channels, and I haven’t even counted the other social media that also offer messaging.

Preferences

• Businessmen prefer
  • Landline telephones in their offices
  • Their cell phone
  • Outlook
  • Lindedin’s messaging system
• The French
  • What’s app
• North Americans
  • Text messages
  • Messenger
• Les jeunes en Amérique du Nord, ils n’utilisent par leur courrier électronique, mais :
  • Text messages
  • Instagram
  • Messenger
• Young people in Europe
  • What’s app
  • Text messages
  • Instagram

How to communicate now

Of course, the choice is yours, but in life you have to know how to sort and prioritize what’s important to you.

So you need to know:

1. Who you want to communicate with and their preferences
2. Prioritize the means of communication you like and let others know about them.
3. It’s not up to you to carry the other person’s monkey on your shoulders, it’s up to the other person to know how to contact you.

The perfect business application

The conclusion is clear: marketing, business development and sales are all about reaching target audiences through the communication channels they use.

The best tool for developing and managing your business relationship is the CRM, and it’s the one you need to rely on to manage your communication. But it has to be simple and effective, to save you time.

In conclusion

It’s up to you to respect your priorities and not become a slave to tools and others.

Jean-Pierre Mercier