What do you do when you get phone anxiety?

@SW-User 😯 How do you make things work? Do you communicate through emails only or do you go to a place in person? Many people totally ignore emails and if you want any response you have to either visit them or call them.

@CrazyMusicLover I'm lucky that businesses here i deal with all seem to use texting, not just for bookings but also for reminders and appointment confirmations and changes. Few will ever try and make a voice call unless it's something unusual. If they want to, they'll usually text you first and ask me to call them. I think the random voice call expecting you to drop everything to take it is not as common as it used to be. Then with friends, nobody ever wants voice calls, they all use texts, so i'm safe there too.

@SW-User I know people who always call everywhere. xD I will never understand it. It's interesting that even people in companies are often reluctant to deal with customers through a phone call.

I called to one company today because they didn't reply to my email that I posted on Thursday. The women seemed to be even more confused than I was and her phone was obviously broken because I could hardly hear what she was saying.
Pretty weird, to be honest.

@CrazyMusicLover Yes you are right, there are a lot of people who still want to use voice calls for everything but companies... like mine for instance prefer texts.

There are a lot of advantages. One is that you aren't interrupting someone who maybe driving or in the middle of something important who may take the call expecting it to be something urgent.

Also the text doen't have the issues of an accent or volume that could cause the person to not understand you.

Then there's also a record of the conversation with a text.

Also responding can be really fast. So if you just want a yes or no answer, if you call there's erroneous pleasantries that often take place and waste time. Where as in a text you can say, just confirming your appointment with us tomorrow at 11:30am. Please respond Y to accept or N to decline and we will contact you to reschedule. The customer can even do that in the middle of a meeting or while waiting at traffic lights etc.

@SW-User Yep, we are still 20 years behind. Companies, schools and doctors use mostly fixed lines. On the other hand, you don't need to worry that you catch them out of their office. I feel more content calling a fixed line because I know that is only work-related and the other side will always answer in a professional way. (Or at least tries to 😜)

I wish emails would become the most required in the working sphere.

@CrazyMusicLover my work doesn’t accept emails for anything other than general enquiriries because they aren’t secure and can be easily spammed. They do have their uses such as fur confirmations and resetting passwords etc. but I’d never send personal info through them.

@SW-User Oh you mean that kind of text? That's something completely new to me. I've never written an official text through my mobile phone. Just personal messages.

@CrazyMusicLover Yeah, just sms texts. I thought everyone used them all the time? Here they've totally taken over from voice calls except for the older gen.

@SW-User They are used but I remember I used them much more when I had an old phone and I used to get more spam as well. Now there are sms tickets for public transportation, announcements from banks and mobile operators but voice calls are largely prevalent if you want to contact someone in an official way. I always thought that texts and emails were rather frowned upon because it's impersonal. As if you wanted to deliberately avoid personal contact.
It's good to know that it's not true everywhere.

Damn, there are even phone job interviews, skype interviews...It gives me goosebumps, to be honest.

@CrazyMusicLover Yes, that's true here too, lots of SMS's from banks, airlines and also your internet service provider uses it to communicate usage and billing etc. And you are right, texts and emails have always been frowned upon as being less personal but the problem we're experiencing now is that cutting costs and offering the lowest price has taken precedent over customer service. This can be particularly noticed with most computer and internet tech support as it's all located overseas now and there's long wait times and a huge reduction in service. My work is moving us away from voice calls and going towards SMS and emails and also if someone calls, we aren't allowed to give out our individual phone numbers, so any customer who calls has to phone the standard main number only with the multitude of call options, ie press 1 for billing enquires, press 2 to make a payment etc and can end up speaking to a different person each time. Customer service isn't what it used to be.

Yes that's the irony, job interviews are being done over the phone and through video skyping etc rather than in person which i really dislike.