Trapped In A Meeting: Connectivity

Guest Commentary: Trapped In A Meeting

In a connected economy, you want to connect with your customers at all times. Speed-to-respond time is but one more essential requirement of doing business today.

Photo credit: iStock.com/StockRocket
Photo credit: iStock.com/StockRocket

It’s 8 a.m. and I’m trapped — again. It’s going to be a long day. It’s a bunker meeting with all hands on deck; a deep-dive into performance reviews and plans for the upcoming months. No laptops allowed and cell phones on mute. Lunch will be provided for us so that no one can get out. Don’t you love these kinds of meetings? I know who hates them more than we do: our customers! It’s going to be very hard for all of them to reach us today.

In a connected economy, you want to connect with your customers at all times. That’s great, except when you are “disconnected” for a day. The pile of messages and emails that accumulate in just eight work hours could be gargantuan. Time is of the essence and customers expect immediate responses or they will find someone quicker. Speed-to-respond is but one more essential requirement of doing business today.

I clearly remember back in the 70s, my dad and my uncle used to travel back to Turin, Italy, for nearly a month of meetings at Fiat headquarters. They were the distributors for the Italian carmaker in a couple of markets and once a year, in the summer, they made the pilgrimage to Italy to hammer out the deals for the next year. As a kid, I remember thinking how much they had to travel for work; but, later in life, I discovered that the actual meetings lasted about a week, and the European cross-country trip lasted twice …thrice that — they were damn good executives.

The only way to reach them that whole time was via telex, and you had to guess where to send the telex to as they traveled across the continent. No cells, no long-distance calls, no faxes, no emails. For weeks before the trip, they worked to make sure they left everything “ready” for the one-month absence. I’ve always been baffled by their availability to take off for a month; times were different, for sure. I have never been away for a month since I started working and nowadays even if I am on the other side of the planet, I’m entirely reachable by email, text or phone.

Back to my meeting. It’s been 4.5 hours, and the messages are continually streaming into my phone, tablet and smartwatch (as if I did not have enough devices already, my brethren at work figured I deserved an Apple Watch for my 25th anniversary with the company — they were right, this thing rocks!). A text message came in from one of our guys in Miami: “Urgent, customer screw up.” Oops, what did we do now? I texted back and discovered that a part that we had special ordered from his location into Puerto Rico had arrived days earlier; but, it stayed in our warehouse instead of rushing it to the waiting customer. The customer had emailed our guy, and now he texted me, except I was in Jacksonville — nowhere near our warehouse in Puerto Rico to get the part and ship it.

I switched from text to Whatsapp and fired a group message to my warehouse crew in Puerto Rico. These guys love Whatsapp because it works across platforms and now it’s free after the company announced it will no longer charge the 99-cents-a-year fee for it. Indeed, for group messages, it beats everything else out there. For us, this platform allows us to alert a whole team at once. That’s exactly what happened that day. Within, seconds I knew that my request was read and within minutes the response came in: “Yes, the part is here.”

I switched to my Google Hangouts app to reach my customer service department in Puerto Rico. This crew is sitting down at a desk or standing by our counter next to their PCs all day. They have developed a culture of always-on chat using Google Hangouts. The app works great on smartphones as well, and it is my go-to app to get a hold of this group. Our head rep responded and assured me the part was to be invoiced, and shipment will be expedited to get the part out to the customer on the other side of the island that same day. She texted the delivery company to alert them of an urgent delivery and within minutes, I was cc’d via email with a copy of the bill of lading for the delivery. Our customer service representative also called the customer; but, regrettably he was out for lunch.

This whole thing is happening while our meeting continues; no one was none the wiser that I was engaging multiple teams across different companies, thousand of miles away using my phone and my watch. But, one thing is missing: calling the customer to alert him and apologize for our delay.

Finally; a bathroom break! Smokers ran outside and guys who love their bladders more went the other way. I took advantage of the extra time to reach out to the customer via Facetime on my phone. The customer was surprised to see me clad in winter clothing and soon figured I was not in Puerto Rico. I explained to him that I was at a meeting in Jacksonville and wanted to apologize for our mistake. He was happy to see how we were reacting and soon gave me a thumbs up via FaceTime to let us now all was well.

So there you have it: tragedy averted, without uttering a word. From text to Whatsapp, to Google Hangouts, to email, to video calling. All in under 20 minutes while trapped in a meeting. Can you afford to not be connected?  

Mandy Aguilar’s column “CounterTech” can be seen each month in Counterman magazine and on Counterman.com.

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