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Every business relies on effective communication with its customers. Communication doesn’t just convey information, it inspires trust, builds credibility, stimulates involvement and generates loyalty. But in today’s global, hi-tech, rapidly changing business environment, how do you ensure you’re communicating effectively?

THE BENCHMARK - FACE-TO-FACE

There’s no doubt that face-to-face communication is the most effective method for most people. Why? Because of its two-way nature. It’s about dialogue. Listeners are not passive participants. When someone talks to us, we send a continuous stream of responses back to them. Some are verbal, but many/most are not. These responses have the power to actually change the message being disseminated by the talker. What’s more, they have the power to change how other listeners’ interpret that message. (Similarly, other listeners have the power to change your interpretation.)

Unfortunately, however, the global nature of business makes it impossible to conduct face-to-face meetings for every communication. So what are the alternatives? Specifically, what are the alternatives offered by technology?

EMAIL - THE STARTING POINT

The benefits of email are numerous and well known, and include (but are not limited to):

•Email is an excellent mechanism for distributing information to people. It is fast and cost effective.

•It is incredibly convenient - you can readily communicate across time zones.

•It provides a useful electronic paper trail.

•It can save a great deal of time because most of the fluff surrounding a phone call (the social niceties) are seen as unnecessary in email.

•It allows recipients to read and respond to messages in their own time.

•The wording, grammar and punctuation in an email can be considered and edited before finally sending.

But email does have its limitations:

•Its lack of social niceties is a double-edged sword. Without the benefit of other communication cues, it’s sometimes hard to interpret the tone of an email, and this can make some messages ambiguous.

•It isn’t ideal for critical communication. For many people, emails are not ‘real-time’ communication. We all have that unaddressed email sitting at the bottom of the list. Because emails are so easy to ignore, they’re also easy to forget.

•Ironically, email’s dissemination effectiveness has been one of the major impediments to its communication effectiveness. It’s so easy to send emails - and they’re so anonymous - that our inboxes are now flooded with SPAM. Consequently, emails are viewed with some suspicion. It’s sometimes hard to identify legitimate emails, but it’s very easy to just hit Delete.

•Because email senders are typically geographically (and often culturally) distant from their recipients, they have no immediate visual and aural cues to help them tailor the message as they type.

But there’s no need to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’. Email is an excellent solution to many communication needs. And for those it is ill-equipped to handle, there are newer, more appropriate technologies that are built for the job…

WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES - THE PERFECT SUPPLEMENT

Web 2.0, a term coined by O’Reilly Media (an American media company) in 2004 refers, to a second-generation of internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in new ways.

Web 2.0 technologies are well defined in www.wikipaedia.org, which suggests that these sites allow the users of the sites (members) to create and share content, including exploring and discussing ideas, opinions, initiatives and issues. Web 2.0 is all about communication. It is the evolution of the internet from an endless library of static pages to an endless world of conversations. These pages can be restricted to particular individuals (eg the executive), or open to all members. The only difference is that the interaction takes place in cyberspace, and those taking part can be sitting behind a keyboard just about anywhere on the planet.
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Most small companies and home users don’t need to buy an expensive solution for data backup. They can simply copy important files to a CD or DVD, and if an information loss occurs, they can get it back easily.
If it is simply to copy documents, photos and other files, not the same is for emails, attachments, address book, stationery and other related information from your Outlook Express email client.
This article will explain how everybody can create a manual Outlook Express backup copy (because Outlook Express don’t offer a built in backup function) This email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system and is probably among the most commonly used email programs today.

1. Backup email messages
In Outlook Express, emails are stored in files with DBX extension. The easiest way to find these files is to open Outlook Express and from menu select Tools | Options | Maintenance and click the Store Folder button. Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails.
This procedure works for all kind of email: SMTP / POP3, IMAP, MAPI, or even the Hotmail Account (some messages might be stored only at the Hotmail server).
To save all your emails and attachments you should copy all the DBX files from the folder.

2. Account settings:
Details about your mail and news accounts are stored in the registry. To find them, start RegEdit and select the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager” key from the left panel. To save this data, from menu select: Registry | Export Registry File. Save the file to a name like “accounts.reg”.

3. Mail Rules
The Outlook Express mail rules are stored in the registry, in the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities” key. To save this data, from menu select: Registry | Export Registry File. Save the file to a name like “rules.reg”.
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