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Promotion & Sales
Communication
Communicating with
Customers
By The
Transparency Center
Telephone
Mail
Fax
E-mail
How
are you going to exchange information and conduct business with
customers hundreds or thousands of miles away? There are four main
options: telephone, mail, fax, and e-mail. Western customers expect
rapid responses to questions or demands. An immediate answer to an
inquiry is preferred, but responding within 24 hours to 48 hours is
usually acceptable. If you wait even a few days to respond, you risk
losing important contacts and business.
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Telephone
The cost of
international telephone calls has dramatically decreased over the
past two decades, but they are still prohibitively expensive. Most
information can be communicated in writing via fax or e-mail.
However, if delicate points must be negotiated or a relationship
secured, a telephone call may be the most effective means of
communication. If you will be placing the telephone call, make sure
you have calculated the time difference so you call the customer
during business hours, typically between 8 AM and 6 PM. Check with
your local telephone company to investigate whether or not it is
cheaper to place the call during certain hours.
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Mail
In today’s
fast-paced world mail is very slow and should be used only to send
samples of products or legal documents that need to be notarized.
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Fax
The fax
machine can transmit pages of information in a quick, inexpensive,
and fairly reliable manner. Fax machines are prevalent around the
world, and they are relatively inexpensive to purchase and maintain.
However, there are a few drawbacks to the fax machine, including
time differences. If a telephone and fax machine share a line, there
may not be anyone available to turn the fax machine on to receive a
transmission. Also, it is sometimes difficult to transmit a fax to
some countries. The phone lines are often overcrowded and
unreliable. Even if a connection is established there is a high
probability that it will be interrupted and part of the transmission
will be lost. This means that lines or even whole pages of text will
be deleted, leading to confusion and misunderstanding, which could
prove detrimental to the business relationship.
If you rely
on faxes to conduct business, take some precautionary measures to
minimize the chance of miscommunication. Attach a cover page to the
material you are transmitting, and include your customer’s name and
fax number, your name and fax number, and the total number of pages
you are sending. In addition, number each of the pages, and if the
material includes a list, number each of the lines. When taking a
purchase order, make sure the totals add up to ensure a line has not
been omitted.
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E-Mail
If you
have access to a computer with a modem, e-mail is the easiest, most
reliable means of communication. An e-mail message can be sent at
all hours, the computer will push it through once there is a
connection established, and the receiver can read the message at
their convenience. This eliminates the need for the sender to ensure
the transmission was received and to make repeated attempts to send
a message. Numerous pages can be transmitted at once and either
stored electronically or printed.
There are a number of free
e-mail providers. A few of the most popular providers in the US are
listed below. In addition, Internet cafes, at which you can often
access your account for a reasonable fee, are proliferating
worldwide. If you use an e-mail account for business, it is
important that you check it for incoming messages at least twice a
week. If you cannot access the account this frequently, make it
clear to your customers which days you will check the account, for
example, on the 1st and 15th of every month, and then do
so.
Links to Free E-Mail Providers
The above e-mail
providers are in English, however there are also websites that offer
free e-mail in Spanish, French and almost any other language. Local
internet providers in your home country may also offer free
e-mail.
In addition, a free web-based e-mail service is now
available at http://www.gofairtrade.net/
which offers susbscribers very short first names in the form
yourname@gofairtrade.net. Users help spread the good “fair trade”
word with every e-mail. For more information, please contact:
Bill Harris
Cafe Campesino
302 W Lamar Streeet,
Americus, GA 31709 USA
bill@gofairtrade.com
http://www.cafecampesino.com/
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