Since COVID, I’ve been using Zoom for editing consultations with clients

I’m a Gippsland-based editing business, but I have clients all over Australia as well as in Gippsland.

Therefore, I was already using online methods for consulting with clients prior to COVID-19: email, telephone, teleconference and, occasionally, Zoom. I also met local clients face to face whenever we needed to.

Since COVID, however, I’ve been using Zoom as my main communication tool for consulting with my clients, whether local or interstate. The reasons I now use Zoom instead of face to face meetings with local clients  are:

1. Obviously, with COVID-19 still a risk everywhere in Australia, it is safer,
2. Face to face, you have to wear a mask. Using Zoom, you can virtually, actually meet and see people ‘face to face’,
3. I have discovered that a Zoom consultation is actually a more efficient and effective method than a face to face consultation, and
4. Since last March, almost everybody has learned to use the internet and platforms such as Zoom. In fact, nowadays, most of my clients – regardless of their age – expect me to be able to communicate with them via Zoom.

Sometimes a client – whether local or not – can’t or doesn’t want to use Zoom and that’s okay. I’ve been consulting with clients via phone to edit their books for 20 years, and will continue to do so.

In our future ‘COVID-normal’ world, will my clients and I go back to face to face consultations and meetings? Or continue to meet only online? This will depend upon what my clients want and need.

Image: Pixabay Creative Commons Licence.