Personal and Immediate
Short of talking with someone face-to-face, a phone call is the best way to get a personal response. If the person you called is available, you can take care of business on the spot. With other forms of communication, such as texting or email, you leave a message and hope for a quick response. Phone calls have a vocal backup in the form of voice mail. The caller can leave a detailed voice message, without the restriction of a certain number of characters or typing a text message on a tiny cell-phone keypad.
Effective
Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s 1967 study, “Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels,” named three components of effective communications: body language accounts for 55 percent, voice tone for 38 percent and spoken words for 7 percent. On the telephone, voice tone give dimension and emotion to words, increasing the effectiveness of the communication. Certain body language, such as smiling and standing while talking, may come through in the conversation. Texting and emails are simply words open to interpretation by the receiver, without the benefit of voice tone or body language.