What texting does to your business

As you should already know by now, looking at your phone screen all day is not good for your neck. And you might have also noticed what phones are doing to your attention, chopping it up and leaving you burnout. But what you might not have realized already is how phones, specifically texting all day with clients, is hurting your business.

If your clients text you frequently when nothing is actually time-sensitive, that is likely hurting your business, and you can do better.

How texting hurts your business

The medium shapes the message, and texting shapes communications. If you give your clients your personal phone number, expect a less professional and more casual tone when they text you. This is because, on your client’s chat application (SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, or any other), your messages will be on the same context as messages from your client’s friends and family. In theory, this shouldn’t affect your conversation, but humans are not as rational as we think.

Also, they will expect a quick response. If you are a millennial or younger, it’s practically assumed that you have your phone in your hand and text all day. If you go a day or two without replying to texts, people will start calling the police.

So, let’s say you like having your phone in your hand all day and using a more casual tone when engaging your clients. What’s the problem with texting, then?

The first big problem is that, as it’s so easy to text you, your clients will tend to do it more, generating over-communication. For example, they may request updates on the project status, or request files or pieces of information that could probably wait. This kind of communication is a symptom that you are not setting the right communication cadence.

When important information is sent via chat, it can get lost in a sea of irrelevance. On the average text conversation, there’s little signal and a lot of noise. To make matters worse, short text messages are too casual and imprecise to share important information. Put these two together, and you reach the conclusion that texting is not the right medium to share important information.

There’s a reason why legal contracts tend to be so verbose. When information is important, you have to be specific, complete, and minimize confusion as much as possible. You cannot be too casual. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should talk to your clients in legalese, but you do have to use and demand precise words. For example, if something needs to happen ‘by the end of the week’, is it fine is it’s delivered on Friday at 7 PM? These are the kind of things that you have to clarify and ask your clients to do the same.

Remember that your phone works 24/7 (unless you run out of battery, of course). If clients text you to your personal phone at 9 PM, maybe they won’t expect a response right away, but they will surely expect one first-time on the next day. It’s hard to set boundaries when phones have become omnipresent, and your conversation is next to some of your client’s closest friends, who are eager to talk to them at any time. Conversations in short text form have also become everlasting. It’s like all your conversations go on forever with everyone all at once, so you never get to close issues and move on.

But it’s not just communication that suffers. Client information within your company becomes an unmanageable mess. It’s hard to keep track of information shared in personal phone conversations, emails, and other applications. Files get lost and clients relationships suffer. Using a chat application as main way of sharing information and files with clients can (and likely will) lead to costly errors.

Your brand also suffers when you communicate via texting with your clients. Having clients texting you does not make you look casual and friendly, it makes you look unprofessional, since it shows you do not have dedicated systems in place for client communications. Sure, depending on your line or business, and the number of clients you handle, it can be acceptable to use texting, but a dedicated solution will cast you in a better light. For this, you can use specialized software (such as MakeWay, ejem) or have a professional phone and set a communication cadence that your clients agree with.

Some of these effects are caused by the staccato nature of texting (its shortness), but text itself has its problems. The lack of voice tone and other non-verbal queues can lead to confusion, as the feelings of the sender are harder to tell. Note how email mitigates this issue by being longer and non-real-time (asynchronous). Since email is expected to be longer, you can be more precise. Plus, since it’s not real-time, your writing is more thoughtful, as to minimize lengthy back-and-worth.

Lastly, having to switch context between many projects, conversations, and clients causes you to lose focus and could lead to burnout. In any case, your output decreases, and your work might become less enjoyable. Multitasking makes you less productive and you owe it to your clients (and yourself) to do your best work. I know you care because otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article about client communications.

What you can do about it

1. Know that your clients don’t want to text you all day

First, realize that your clients usually don’t want to text you. They do it because they need to reach you and texting is the most convenient communication channel that you have provided. If they don’t know how long it will take you to answer emails, you never return phone calls, and you don’t have any kind of software set up (client portal, project management), how do you expect for them to get the information they need from you. If a client actually demands your attention all day for other reasons, consider that maybe he shouldn’t be your client.

Consider this: what do you want from a professional? Constant irrelevant project updates or knowing that your work is taken care of by someone you trust? By providing relevant updates in a well-designed communication cadence, your clients are more likely to trust you.

2. Use dedicated channels for client communication

Don’t use your personal phone for your client communications. It casts you as an amateur and leads to all sorts of problems down the line (burnout, blurred boundaries, loss of information). If you give out your personal phone number as a gesture to your best clients, make it extra clear that it’s only for emergencies. If your clients like to call you on a regular phone line, get a second physical phone and phone line for your business.

Use specialized communications software. Search online for ‘client portal software’, or ‘crm with client portal’. A client portal is a digital space where you can communicate and share files and information with your clients. Some PMS (project management system) software includes features to message and share files with your clients, so you can also search for those.

If you are old-fashioned and relying on software is not for you, that can be OK depending on company size and how you run your business. Email and phone calls go a long way if you have set the proper expectations with your clients regarding client communications.

3. Choose ‘asynchronous’ (non-real-time) communication

When possible, prefer asynchronous communication such as emails and documents, so both you and your clients can get and send information as they need, without the other party needing to reply right away. Longer text also leads to more precise wording, minimizing confusion.

4. Use phone calls for urgent communications

But what if the issue is actually urgent? First, it’s not, unless you are doctor. And then again, we get so many irrelevant notifications nowadays that doctors still use pagers. If the matter is time-sensitive, a call is usually the fastest way to handle it. It also has the advantage that the sense of urgency is heard in the tone of voice and a more direct language can be used without appearing blunt. A client may sound imposing if they say ‘do this by tomorrow’ but, in the phone, it’s easier for you to understand that it’s not lack of empathy, but urgency, influencing the choice of words.

‘We are losing her! We need to stop the bleeding now! Brian, how are you feeling today? I would like to know, if you would you be so gentle, to please pass me the knife?’

5. Change your texting habits

When you get a message from a client, make an effort not to reply right away. This will tell your clients that you are busy doing professional work instead of being on the phone all day, ready to be interrupted. Even better if you set office hours for texting. That is, you schedule time within your day to reply to text messages, and do not reply outside that time window, so your clients know when to reach you.

Tell your clients your working hours and do not reply to texts outside that time window. If you work 9 to 6, reply from 9 to 6. If something is time-sensitive, tell your clients that they can call you, and reply ASAP if you miss the call.

6. Set a sensible Communication Cadence

Depending on your industry, your company size, and your clients, your client communication needs will vary. You should set the Communication Cadence accordingly.

7. Get in touch with me

I would love to hear about your business and how you handle client communications, and see if I can provide some tips. I am a software engineer researching ways to improve interactions between small companies and clients. You can email me at james@makewaynow.com.

And remember, never let a 5’ call get in the way of 3 days of texting.