Interactions with customers or peers frequently need a more personal contact than a phone call. A face-to-face meeting carries more impact than a plain telephone call. Facial expressions and body language are also absent from a telephone call.
Videoconferencing is no longer the province of Fortune 500 companies. Anybody can set up videoconferencing (on individual PCs and/or in small conference rooms). You can set up the hardware for a system very inexpensively and download the software for free.
If an issue can be taken care of with a videoconference, you can see and hear your customer or peer without having to spend the time, money and expenses to travel to and from their location. With the cost of business travel these days, this can save a business thousands of dollars a year even when used infrequently.
In future posts, I’ll talk about how to inexpensively set up you own videoconference hardware and software.
