The Wall Street Journal recently published an article that examined why people always seem to have this misconception that online conference calls are inferior to meeting in person. To a certain extent this is true; however, there is also a certain level of falsehood there as well. Yes, one is a personal method of meeting a person and the other is more impersonal; however, one is more convenient and the other far more difficult to achieve. You can guess which one is which (hint: online conversations are easier), but at the end of the day you are till meeting them. You have to ask yourself whether, when it comes to business arrangements, meeting someone online or meeting them in person is just the same since the point is not to just be there but communicate an idea.
What is Important is what is Being Said
What some people neglect to take into consideration is that what is important is not the physical presence of the person; rather, it is what they are talking about that. People communicate important details impersonally all the time, as evidenced by the sheer amount of business deals and arrangements that have been finalized via email, phone or fax. The physical presence of a person is not as integral in business as it used to be in the past and, in fact, a lot of businesses do better when the presence of a physical person is not there. For example, did you know that the call center industry is a $400 billion a year business that involves millions of customer service representatives all around the world? Whether you’re complaining about your cable bill or need to have some parts replaced from a large retailer, you are likely to contact a company’s customer service number before anything else. The lack of a physical presence does not concern the customer; all they want is for their problem to be resolved as quick as possible. Now, imagine a situation where you would need to line up and talk to a physical customer service representative in order to have your problem fixed. Add to that the dozens of others who are ahead of you that have their own problems, the limited amount of space most buildings have and the fact that having to go to a physical location in order to get your problems fixed is a major hassle on your part. Based on this, you can see that the physical presence of a person is not as integral to the process of business; rather, what is said and what gets done is what is the most important.
Modern Day Technology is Brilliant
It used to be the case that conference calls involved a person calling a particular number and the person would turn on the speaker option on the phone in order to start the meeting. However, the situation these days is significantly different with online conference calls via service providers like Blue Jeans utterly replacing the old speaker phone standby. Conference calls now have webcams, microphones and allow more than a dozen people at a time to connect to a particular call. With webcams, people can see each other on the screen, talk to each other as if each person was right beside them and have a seamless conversation due to the vast improvement in internet speeds that has occurred. Yes, you can’t shake the hand of someone that is hundreds of miles away who is talking to you over the internet; however, as explained in the example in the previous section, what is important is the ideas and solutions that are being conveyed. Whether a person is a hundred miles away or seated right beside you, it still doesn’t change what they are saying, what solutions they are presenting and what recommended strategies they may implement in order to solve a problem. Thus, with technology as it is in the present and the fact that companies have expanded to into multiple locations in various international markets, the concept of having a physical meeting in order to deliver a monthly report seems less justifiable given the distances and costs involved in such an endeavor.
It used to be the case that expansion into locations such as China, Japan and the Philippines used to be thought of as unprofitable endeavors due to the lack of sufficient consumers and capable personnel. That is no longer the case with China becoming the second largest economy in the world, Japan being the source for some of the best electronic technologies and Rappler stating that the Philippines is the source of some of the best nurses, sea men and BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) personnel. What these examples show is that perspectives change and, as such, the idea of the superiority of physical meetings over impersonal conference calls will most likely change in the future.
