Last Updated on February 9, 2021 by Filip Poutintsev
Picture this: You just met someone online and are about to talk about business. Then the other person suddenly says: “Let’s jump on a call”.
What! Why on Earth would you want to do that?
First of all; I don’t “jump” on calls.
Second; I hate calls, and here is why.
The call always comes in a bad time
In 99% of the time, you are either working, eating, having a break, doing sports, taking a loo or doing something else important, only to be disturbed by unwanted call, which forces to stop everything you are doing to answer it. There’s never a good time for a call (unless of course, you scheduled it before), since I don’t remember ever sitting and thinking: “hmm, now it would be a good time for someone to call me”.
The call takes all your attention
Whenever someone calls you, you have to stop whatever you are doing and focus 100% on the call. You can’t do many things that require your attention at the same time. But when you are using written communication, you can very well continue working and check messages every minute.
You can only talk to one person at a time
This may not often happen to you, but occasionally in the busiest time of the day, you find yourself having a chat with several different people at the same time. Now imagine how you would do that on the phone? This is also the reason why in customer service, chat support if much more effective than phone support; as the customer support agent serve more clients at the same time.
On the phone, you have to react instantly
Normally you would need on average 10-20 seconds to listen, understand, analyze and reply. But on the phone, you don’t have time to think, because fast-paced discussion requires you to answer right away, even if you don’t know what to say. Our brain cannot generate answer immediately out of the blue; you need some time to analyze information. When writing, you can easily take a 1-minute pause to think, but on the phone, 1 minute of silence would be very awkward and odd on the phone.
There’s no time to check facts
The phone conversation is often very fast-paced. You simply don’t have a chance to valid information on the Internet and have to rely only on the knowledge you already possess. This creates problems when the other person is lying to you or is simply wrong. On a business call, you will often discuss matters that need preparing or information gathering, and when on the phone, you will not have time to do that.
Over half of what you said or heard on the phone will be instantly forgotten
Human memory is not perfect, we forget a lot of things, and we forget them fast. In fact, we forget 95% of what we do. If the phone call was important, we might remember half of it for a day, but after a month, it will be good if we can even recall having that conversation at all. However, when we use written communication, 100% of what we say is recorded forever. This may become very vital in case of disputes when we can’t remember what was agreed on. Just remember, how often you had an argument with a friend, simply because one of you forgot what you agreed on in the first place.
Other reasons
The reasons mentioned above are so common that everybody would agree with them. But in addition to that, I have personal preferences and reason why I don’t like phone calls, some of which may be relevant to some people.
I just don’t like phone calls
I don’t understand how it can be a good idea in someone’s head to jump on a call right after you said “hello” to a total stranger on Linkedin. You have no idea what he’s gonna say to you if he’s gonna offer you anything good, or just waste your time, yet still, you want to become emotionally involved with him by starting a conversation on the phone.
Writing is easier than talking
For me, writing is a much easier, faster and convenient way of communicating with other people. It would never come to my mind, to call someone, because I’m perfectly happy with using written communication. There’s absolutely no reason for a phone call, so why do something that I don’t need nor want?
You have to prepare for the call
When writing, due to the possibility of taking a short pause whenever needed, you have time to plan your next sentence. On the phone, however, what you say has to be planned in advance and maybe even written down. Such preparation makes phone conversation harder and more stressful than messaging in writing.
The 9th Circle of Hell: Video Calls
The only thing I hate more than standard phone calls are video calls. It’s a combination of everything that is bad in regular calls with new additional discomforts:
- You have to dress up for a video call, especially if it’s with someone important. Most often, you cannot just sit in your dirty T-shirt.
- You have to clean up your surroundings. Depending on the angle of your web-camera, some private items may show up in the video stream. Therefore you need to remove them and clean all the mess you may have in your room.
- You have to behave like you are listening. On a standard phone call, you can as well continue surfing the web or doing whatever you were doing, and not pay attention to what the other person tells you. But on video, he will see you, so if you are doing something else than listening with full concentration, it will be noticed.
Don’t ever make me a cold call to me!
If you think you are smart and somehow managed to dig up my phone number and call me, you made a big mistake. You blew off your chance. The deal is off. I’m not going to conduct any business with you.
Most likely, you are trying to obtrude yourself into my free time and force me to buy some garbage your company is selling. The reason you are calling is to catch me off guard so that you will have a better chance of convincing me.
Well, that is both rude and disrespectful, and I don’t want to do business with a person who does not respect me, nor anyone else for that matter.
How to contact me?
I mostly use email, Skype and Telegram. It’s very easy to find my contact details, as I display them openly. They are certainly easier to find than my phone number, which I try to hide as well as possible. Therefore if I hear someone calling me and saying me that he “only found my phone number”, I will instantly know that he is coming up with a stupid lie.
I usually answer to every written contact request unless it’s spam or otherwise nonsense; therefore, there’s no reason to harass me over the phone.
When do I use the phone for communication?
Don’t get me wrong, I use phone sometimes, but rarely. I talk on the phone only with the people I already know. I’m not going to ever jump on a call with someone I don’t know, because in the past when I did that, 100% of the cases my time was wasted and it didn’t lead to anything worthwhile. The other person was just trying to convince me to do something I didn’t want to do, and the only reason he wanted to have a call in the first place, is because he’s a skilled salesman and thought that he would have a better chance of convincing me over the phone with his slick speech.
