Do you prefer high tech or high touch?

In the Coen brothers' film, "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?," set in the 1930s, Charles Durning's character, Gov. Pappy O'Daniel, was running for re-election. As he entered a radio station to cut a commercial, one of his aides asked him about campaigning face-to-face, "pressin' the flesh." The governor rebuked the man with, "We're not one-at-a-timin' here - we're mass communicatin'!"

As Gov. Pappy discovered, fancy innovations have created great leverage and efficiencies. But today, ironically, there is management pain arising from an embarrassment of innovation riches, especially when connecting online with customers: Should you e-mail or text? How about IM? And, of course, there are the social media options.

One thing small business owners have learned, perhaps surprisingly, is that it is possible to create and maintain close relationships online. But don't rebuke the messenger for suggesting that sometimes there is no substitute for "one-at-a-timin' " it. Indeed, as we leverage newfangled connection tools to our advantage, let's remember the still-valid John Naisbitt prophesy from his 1981 book, Megatrends: "The more high tech we have the more high touch we will want."

There is a solution that can take away most, if not all, of the which-tool-should-I-use pain. In fact, it's available right under your nose, completely intuitive, wonderfully effective - and free. Consider this true story:

There was a salesperson - a man who was pushing the upper limits of the Baby Boomer envelope - who couldn't understand why one of his business customers - a woman squarely in the middle of Generation Y - wasn't returning his calls or e-mails about a proposal he had mailed to her. One day, a colleague suggested he send a text to her mobile and showed him how. Within five minutes he was stunned to discover the customer responded to his text.

What this salesperson overlooked was the magic remedy that would have alleviated his pain. It was right in front of him - and it is right in front of us: Ask customers how they prefer to receive information.

So instead of obsessing over which option - high tech or high touch - you should use when connecting with customers, try this two-step approach:

1. Determine which option best suits the circumstance: One time a proposal can be delivered by high tech e-mail, next time it might be more effective to deliver it with high touch - in person.

2. Ask your customer how they want you to connect with them.

Write this on a rock: Life is so much easier when we just ask customers what they want.

Jim Blasingame is host of The Small Business Advocate Show. He can be reached at SmallBusinessAdvocate.com.