Failure to Communicate?

[Techboy]

Hi All,
I'm on US East Coast, how does one communicate with printers that are half way across the world like in HK? There's a difference in time and language as well as we really dunno what any of the printers we used in HK are running.

[mattbeals]

Well, stay up late and call or email them. That's what we did with our printers. It's not a failure to communicate, it's that communication hasn't fully been developed.

[rtwdwk]

We have a night shift that covers all our international publications.
We also do email 24/7 and conference calls at 10 PM at night our time.

you should be able to work something out, I am guessing you not yet dealing with outsourced locations in India. Wait till you try to deal with that...

[The_Stevinator]

the best advice i can give is read up on their culture, and offer some sort of 50/50 deal. choose your words and phrases carefully, there is a lot of room for things getting lost in translation.


like you stay up at night for a period of time to talk to them via internet/chat/email whatever, and then they stay up one night to.

[Coalcracker]

Originally Posted by Techboy

Hi All,
I'm on US East Coast, how does one communicate with printers that are half way across the world like in HK? There's a difference in time and language as well as we really dunno what any of the printers we used in HK are running.

I would suggest that you hire a translator. There are many bilingual Chinese in the United States and Canada. Actually, the same goes for Hong Kong, once a British colony. Many people there speak English and Chinese.

[Techboy]

So I did a bit of digging, we sent out a questionnaire to printers' reps and learned that I might as well forget about time and language difference... because these printers have their "service/customer representatives" that I must fight through first. Some did provide email contacts, but so far none are giving out "direct" phone numbers.