Comment by SoftTalker
6 days ago
I'm not really surprised. The people who grew up with phone calls and who like to "hop on a call" to work out issues are all aging out. They are in their fifties at the youngest, if not already retired. It's my experience that far fewer younger people reach for the phone as a first means of contact. It's not preferred, and they try to avoid it.
And by "call" I mean direct, synchronous, real-time conversation. Whether literally a phone call, or an online voice or video call.
The nice thing about real time calls is they help avoid confusion, convey more emotion and information than most messages can.
There is less ambiguity usually during a real conversation.
Conversations tend to resolve very quickly because in the span of five minutes we can go back and forth on multiple questions, get clarity and finalize how we want continue. Some things require this but not everything. There is a balance as with everything.
I recognize your position is appropriately nuanced, so this isn't directed at you, but I hear this sort of thing almost daily and I think it's usually an incredibly lazy take.
Often we end up convinced we are on the same page when we aren't just because our communication is constrained (and accelerated) by social protocol. At least when it is written out you can go back and re-read or directly quote someone. In meetings I find myself constantly pointing out when someone has been fundamentally misunderstood in a way that aligns with the listener's existing beliefs/preferences, "oh, I think what Frank is saying might actually be the opposite of [your interpretation]?".
There are pros and cons to different forms of communication. Sometimes a call can help cut through layers of misunderstanding, but for more complex topics, often it's difficult to get a group of people to all be present enough to share genuine understanding. School is a great example of how ineffective this can be.
Of course all points are correct - and yet
> nearly half [of gen z] admit that speaking on the phone makes them feel anxious (49 per cent)
> an awkward phone call is one of the top three things they would most want to avoid (42 per cent)
That being said I'm quite confident there is enough of a market that doesn't dread talking on the phone that this company could do very well for itself and its founders financial goals.
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https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2023/06/CBA-Mo...
For me, my reluctance to use the phone is that 90% of the phone calls I get are spams/scams or to put it most kindly, unsolicited. I have just developed a visceral dislike for answering phone calls. My phone is set only to ring if you're in my contacts list. Everone else goes to voicemail (I guess -- I never set it up and I never check it).
When I was young we had a landline at home and yes there were some telemarketing calls but they were not the majority. Most calls were from friends or family or legitimate other purposes. That's not how it is today, at least in my experience.
Part of it is that anything other than a local call used to cost money. So there was a financial disincentive to robo-call thousands of people hoping that you'd find one rube.
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I wonder how this will change as it becomes more and more normal for companies to shunt you to horrible chatbots. Maybe we'll shift back to needing a real human.
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Synchronous communication is sometimes effective, but when its the default it is plodding, wasteful, and an absolute minefield of anxieties and banalities for some people, myself included.
Strangely, it seems like the world is becoming more like me over time. I tend to think of my preferred communication style as strange and awkward because that's what a lifetime of experience has taught me but the new generation seems to also prefer it.
Laughing at this because last time I tried to arrange a call to get my detailed questions answered it was immediately obvious that the person I worked with had NONE of the answers and I was wasting my time.
I wasn’t even convinced there was a working product after that.
So it goes both ways.
That's not a problem of the channel(call) right? That's a problem of personnel.
Many of the SaaS/PaaS Show HN's here fail to get our business because they have team or business plans behind a Call Us (especially silly for metered usage). We want our team to use SaaS/PaaS before tackling it themselves, and the team will if the barrier to "already using it" goes down.
Talking to B2B SaaS here:
If your service adds value to small to midsize firms, and we can sign up without calling and still get (a) team features, and (b) sign-in with Apple/Microsoft with a domain match (and/or SAML SSO, but that's hassle), you almost automatically have us as a paying client. (Sign in with GitHub and Google don't count if you are trying to get IdP using clients outside the tech bubble.)
We do not want to "Call Us". Likely those who could talk with you and make the decision cost more per hour than your service costs per year per user. Costs you money too, and the friction costs you more in missed opportunities.
We don't want to book meetings. We are building, not sitting on Zoom calls to hear "sales engineers" unable to answer basic tech or security questions we can answer ourselves once we have access to docs or better just use it.
You let individuals sign up. Firms are just individuals roaming in packs.
Let individuals sign up their packs too.
> The people who grew up with phone calls and who like to "hop on a call" to work out issues are all aging out. They are in their fifties at the youngest, if not already retired. It's my experience that far fewer younger people reach for the phone as a first means of contact. It's not preferred, and they try to avoid it.
That is not at all my experience, and I'd correlate it more to junior/seniority than age directly. I think perhaps more junior there's a temptation to screen-share (screenshots over pasted code/errors too) to show how confusing something is, where with experience you're more comfortable asking a question(s) in text and understanding & applying the answer(s).
I am in my mid-30s and am definitely a “let’s just hop on a call” guy.
So much quicker, easier, and less chance for miscommunication IME.
If you're a business, nothing beats "let's just hop on a call".
For me at least, the first one that picks up my call is the one who gets my money. "Send us an email, here's our WhatsApp, ..." kind of thing, I don't even try.
I think more generally nothing beats being able to communicate with a customer in the way the customer prefers. If that's email, that's what you do. If it's a phone call, that's what you do. But I think as time goes on the number of people preferring a phone call will continue to decline. Time will tell I guess.
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The one that doesn't need a call gets our money.
You're right, we struggle with this at our company, getting CS to just pick up the phone and call the customer. Sales, no problem, but any other function of the business they dont prefer phone.
Hmm, I’m not sure about this. I’m in my 30s. Use lots of Slack huddles at work, with colleagues of all ages, and I caught up with a couple of friends this week on regular phone calls.