Team Partners Telecommunications

Whatever Happened to…Conversation?

Posted on Apr 05, 2017  | Tags: calls

It’s only a few years since it was the province of those over about 50 years’ old to complain that everyone nowadays seems to spend their lives with their noses buried in a smartphone. Now a visit to most restaurants will see folk of every age engaged in silent admiration of their small screen…attended by a deathly hush as not a word is said…the truth is, we’re all at it…

Whatever happened to conversation?

It’s interesting, because what we’re all doing as we consult our smartphones is constantly load up with information. We’re usually not reading a book or watching a programme, we’re checking Twitter or Facebook, we’re catching up, we’re collecting. Whereas the very nature of conversation is that it doesn’t really need to contain any information at all, as such. In fact it could be said that exactly the opposite is true, that a great conversationalist is someone who can hold your complete attention without any information passing their lips - stories perhaps, but information, no, not necessarily. If we’re to get really sticky, it could be said that information, the sort you need to remember, ruins a good conversation…

Why would that be? Could it be that Facebook and Twitter demand no imagination, and that conversation does? That the advent of radio, then TV, got us used to being entertained without any investment on our part, and that social media has just taken this to a new level? In fact, can you remember the last time you had a really good conversation with someone, except, perhaps, in that last bastion of talking, the pub?

Over the last couple of months we’ve been suggesting in these blogs that the future of communications could be speech. We’ve even suggested that it’s those businesses that really want to make a difference to their customers that will pick up the phone and speak to them. Our challenge to you this month is a little different, why not pick up the phone to someone you’ve not actually spoken to for some time, even though you’ve read their posts, and have a conversation. You’ll feel so much better….