been thinking of late about all these smart phones around and how everyone has one. seems to me that in the not to distant future we will spend more time on the phone checkign emails that doing the job and customers will email randomly during the day about where they want this and that forcing us to constantly be checking the phone and emailing them for clarification on poorly worded emails.
sort of like has happened in the average office now to the extent that some companies are trying to work out how to limit email (and internet) usage.
i politely tell my customers that if something is urgent they need to call me on the phone and talk about it. email is not checked every day so emailed instructions are very likely to only be seem long after they are relevant and will incure extra cost to redo something.
I think smart phones good but only if used wisely and our tool not the customers tool. what do you guys think?
To be sure, they need to be justified - and used with discipline.
For myself, my business wouldn't function without one (this from a guy who didn't even have a radio pager in the day, and had to phone into the office every job to find out what was doing!).....but then I am as much sales and admin as I am on the tools - just the joys of being at a point where we cannot quite justify the extra staff needed to get me off the tools totally, to concentrate on the business, so I have to multi-task, and so does everything I use.
Phone doubles as "laptop"
Laptop doubles as evening entertainment
Car doubles as, no triples, no, quadruple - well, is office, home, tool store, stock room, etc., etc.,
Inverter charges everything from laptop to Bosch Hammer, and boils a travel kettle (oh damn yes).
Now, the killer thing for me is the advancement of voice control in the car to the point it can properly take an email dictation.
All that said, sometimes, I just wish these people would PHONE! I still remember how to control my vocal cords, and I don't need an operating manual for them.
FWIW, our guys are not limited on their internet/email use, but most of them are very good - and use them as we intended, pdfs for tech support, PHONE for talking to customers, tech support, and help, email for parts needed, job instructions - work specific tasks that need writing down.
Text messages, in my very humble opinion, are the tool of the (illiterate) devil. You text me, I phone you back and tell you what I think of your inability to type one word in English, use punctuation, or grammar, or vowels. Unless you're texting to say I just won the lottery.
Its a thing, I guess, you pays your money, and the phone companies spend it....seriously - you go with what works. For us, all the paper that would be running around, cost of post, and all that, makes it worth it to us to invest in digital - though we still do all callout sheets, maintenance sheets, certification recording and so forth manually on paper......to scan on arrival at the office!
We ran a question thing a while back and found that over 90% of our customers actually prefer stuff emailed to them than sent in the post. For us, the advantage is it is there now, not in three days, which means faster completion.....yet realistically, it hasn't decreased the time to payment for us by much...
As I say, on balance, its what works for you, not the crowd.
