ITC SIG of STC Article
Making contact in an online age

By Kirk St. Amant

In this age of e-mail and corporate intranets, international and cross-cultural differences can still have a great effect on how easily one can "contact" an international counterpart, client, or co-worker.

Cultural attitudes toward media vary. For example, while many Americans feel the compulsion to reply promptly to e-mail, in cultures where face-to-face interaction is favored over other forms of communication, e-mails sometimes are not answered for days or even weeks. The notion is that the medium signifies lesser importance.

In other cases, technology can limit contact. In many developing nations, telephone lines are old, unreliable, and prone to breakdown. These older telephone lines can greatly limit the speed of access to online accounts. In some countries, such as Ukraine, unannounced roving blackouts can leave one without e-mail for days.

The time at which one attempts to contact overseas individuals can cause problems. Many Americans are accustomed to contacting a business at any time during the workday. However, in some parts of France, it is not uncommon for an office to shut down for two hours in the middle of the day for lunch, generally from noon to two o'clock, or from one o'clock to three o'clock in the afternoon.

Many Americans think of vacations in term of two or three weeks, and even during the height of the summer vacation season, someone is often in the office to answer the phone. The Dutch, however, take their summer vacations more seriously, and it is not uncommon for offices to close for the summer while the employees go away. In addition, different national holidays  mean different vacation days.

To avoid problems, technical communicators can:

• Schedule times to transfer important information well in advance.
• Agree ahead of time on the best means of contacting others when a quick response is essential, and then determine a necessary backup plan if this option fails, for example due to a failure in technology.
• Alter schedules to accommodate various lunch hours, holidays, and vacation periods.

By learning about the expectations, technology limitations, and work schedules of international colleagues, technical communicators can use the above-mentioned strategies to improve contact with international counterparts.

Kirk St. Amant received an M.A. in Technical and Scientific Communication from James Madison University, and at the time of writing was working on his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication at the University of Minnesota and a student member of the Twin Cities chapter of STC. He has conducted seminars on distance learning and online education for the USAID-sponsored Consortium for Enhancement of Ukrainian Management Education.