Communications personalities: Vive la difference!

One of my favorite advertising campaigns is the one from HSBC that spotlights how differently people can view the same things. You've probably seen it: Two photos side by side, each with a comment — then the same two photos, comments reversed.

Some of the examples are so good they're uncanny: a photo of a tent in the wilderness labeled "Hell," and a cluster of swimsuit-wearing, cocktail-drinking partiers on the deck of a cruise ship labeled "Holiday." My perspective is exactly the opposite -- it's the tent that's the holiday. But then my vacations tend to involve cold, wet and strenuous physical exercise. (Hey, it makes the beer taste better.)

Anyway, the point's a good one — people aren’t all alike. That’s something to keep in mind as you’re fleshing out your unified communications roadmap — because accurately matching functionality to personality types is critical to the success of your UC strategy. . As HSBC might put it: e-mail: love it/voicemail: hate it — and vice versa. Some things to think about:

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One of my favorite advertising campaigns is the one from HSBC that spotlights how differently people can view the same things. You've probably seen it: Two photos side by side, each with a comment — then the same two photos, comments reversed.

Some of the examples are so good they're uncanny: a photo of a tent in the wilderness labeled "Hell," and a cluster of swimsuit-wearing, cocktail-drinking partiers on the deck of a cruise ship labeled "Holiday." My perspective is exactly the opposite -- it's the tent that's the holiday. But then my vacations tend to involve cold, wet and strenuous physical exercise. (Hey, it makes the beer taste better.)

Anyway, the point's a good one — people aren’t all alike. That’s something to keep in mind as you’re fleshing out your unified communications roadmap — because accurately matching functionality to personality types is critical to the success of your UC strategy. . As HSBC might put it: e-mail: love it/voicemail: hate it — and vice versa. Some things to think about:

•  Immediacy. Texting (IM, SMS), phoning, and e-mail all feature different levels of immediacy, meaning how quickly (and informally) you can connect to the other person, and how fast you expect a response. Texting is the most immediate — people can interrupt each other during phone calls — but for some people, that's too intrusive. Phoning is next-most immediate, and e-mail is least immediate.

•  Intimacy. Generally, anything written is far less intimate than anything spoken or visual — texting and e-mail are much less intimate than phone calls or videoconferences. The reason? Text lets you edit yourself, revealing only what you want to have the other party see. With phone calls and videoconferences (not to mention face-to-face meetings), your tone of voice, expression and body language convey 75% of the information, or so the sociologists tell us. And it's easy to delete a potentially offensive sentence from a text message or e-mail before hitting the send key — as most of us have discovered, it's not so easy to "unsay" an inadvertent comment.

•  Detail. People don't usually pick up or remember the information of most communications transactions right away. For people who prefer a lot of detailed communication, e-mail is best — it can be reread and pondered at length.

•  Interactivity. Texting, phone and videoconferencing are highly interactive — meaning that you're constantly responding to (and often interrupting) the other person. E-mail is more half-duplex — you make a statement, the other party listens, then responds.

The bottom line? Take the time to assess your users' communications personalities before you craft your unified communications strategy. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do some strenuous exercise in the cold and damp…..

Read more about voip & convergence in Network World's VoIP & Convergence section.