There's a frightening number of companies on the Internet with no clue about how they should treat their customers. Before I tell you about two such outfits, let me explain a bit about communications and the concept of 'handshaking' as it applies to non-modem communications. With modems, we know that 'handshaking' allows modems to establish their parameters for exchanging data. They adjust to the parameters that they both can use to most efficiently exchange data.
People do the same thing.
They're simply 'handshaking' to establish the easiest linguistic common ground. Were I to speak fluent French, they would continue the conversation in that language because it would be the easiest one for both parties to use. The concept of 'handshaking' is important here because people will naturally gravitate to companies with whom they can most easily communicate. That means companies selling to people who have Internet access better learn quickly how to deal with them through the Net. Our story starts with the arrival of an e-mail from one of the salespeople.