Working Remotely

A family crisis pushed me into moving to fully remote work for the first time in 2014. After some initial planning I’ve realized that I could actually pull it off without significant impact on my current customers and contracts.

I bounced the idea off a smaller client, but her level of alarm was enough to make me decide not to cause any customers undue panic. Interestingly I was able to turn this around and the customer never left. So I set off and moved 1000km away from most customers I worked with.

Initially it was hard work to keep up communications in ways that compensated for my lack of presence. Lots of phone calls and emails followed to keep project communications going. It became clear that the traditional tooling used when you have Face to Face contact is not really sufficient in remote interactions.

Strong trust relationships built with customers prior to the move made this a lot easier. I scheduled visits once in 6months to larger projects to just re-enforce the human connection. But as time moved on I was able to move to yearly visits.

Oddly looking back after two years most customers never knew that I left.

The only piece of the puzzle I have yet to solve at this time has been how to convey the same warmth in the sales phase as an in person connection. On-boarding new remote customers has been a bit more tricky in practice.

We live and learn, I think there’s room for improving our processes. But it’s clear that many parts of work are ready to go remote.