It is ten or eleven years since the real value of a personal meeting was highlighted. At the time, we worked in an Export sales capacity in which we were supported by a first rate Customer Services team. It was policy always to introduce our overseas visitors throughout the company, but specifically to those who were most likely to interact regularly with customers.
We were visited by two guys from Malaysia who were well-known to our Customer Services team, but mainly because of the difficulty in communicating with them over the telephone. The Malaysian guys’ English was excellent, but the metering of their speech was unfamiliar to our team. So during their short visit we went out for a meal together with the Customer Services team, and from that day onwards there was no further communication problem. It appears that being able to visualise a face as you speak is essential in understanding the nuances of expression in speech.
