Small Office, Home Office Information

Wow, a couple of days ago I was looking forward to a few quiet days where I might be able to catch up with my work but it never seems to work out that way. Just as things began to settle down more work came in and I’m back knocking out a bunch of articles and reviews.

In fact I’ve been doing it for over 12 hours so far today (and it’s only 4pm as I write this) so I thought I should semi-escape for a few minutes just to try and regain my sanity. I say semi-escape because all I’ve done is take the laptop out onto the back patio to write this. At least I’ve escaped from the office for a short while.

Yesterday I posted a comment in a thread over on Home Office Voice about using Instant Messaging for business purposes – silly me because Martin immediately asked me to recount our experiences and so here I am.

Martin’s thread was commenting on the growing trend among businesses to conduct important business via one of the various types of Instant Messaging but to us it’s really nothing new.

Most of our clients are online and are a segment of the online industry that has almost always used ICQ to conduct business. We have been using it ever since we started in business and these days nearly every major order we get comes to us via ICQ.

We find that it is invaluable because anyone who relies on email will know just how easy it is for important emails to get culled by the various spam filters that most of us employ these days.

Now that is not to say that there isn’t plenty of ICQ spam because there certainly is but it’s not hard to tell the difference between someone who wants to talk to you about business and a dopey Russian Cam Girl who has been given a bunch of ICQ numbers to cycle through every day of the week.

There is also the problem of friends, and sometimes business associates who just want to chat and Toni frequently has her ICQ turned off for that reason. I’m a little less polite than she is and if someone just wants to chat a terse “Bugger off I’m busy” usually does the trick.

You may wonder about things like record keeping with business done via Instant Messaging but most have a history function and all you have to do is make sure that it’s turned on and then every word that’s exchanged is recorded and stored on your computer.

Of course, if you are worried about the informality of Instant Messaging you can always close the business transaction with a phone call or with an email but once you start using and Instant Messaging system you will soon find that even those final closing formalities are usually not required.

I’ve left the most important benefit of using something like ICQ till last and that is the fact that is usually occurs in real time. When you are discussing business via email there is always a gap on the proceedings while people are reading those emails but with something like ICQ you talk to the person and they respond almost immediately.

If you are a writer or a designer you get to pick your client’s brain in real time, you can ask relevant questions to clarify important points that might be missed via email and it’s easier for you both to understand each other.

Very few of our orders these days come to us by any other form of communication and we would be lost without it. Don’t be afraid of using Instant Messaging in your business transactions. Once you’ve have tried it you will wonder how you ever managed without it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Small Business Communications, Small Business Computers, Small Business Messages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.