Why is it a bad idea to use cell phone for business texting?

We all have cell phones and we love texting.

Because of this, business owners have figured out that texting is the way to go.

However, many businesses are using cell phones to send text messages.

This is not a good idea.

Here are 7 reasons why you should not use a cell phone for business text:

1. Your business messages can only be seen by the cell phone.

When a text is received by a cell phone, the message stays in the phone. You are unable to see the messages and have to live in the dark until you take physical possession of the cell phone.

Typically you want the whole team to be aware of customer communication, and cell phones do not solve this.

2. Your employee can take the customers data away.

Employees can leave the company. If communication with clients are in a cell phone, employees can leave and take valuable customers' data with them. There is no recovery of important customer relationships and business insights.

3. Message is from personal employee, not from company.

When a message is sent from a cell phone, the FROM number is an individual, not a company. This can leave confusion from the customer's perspective.

4. It will be hard for the contact to reach your company in the future without going through a prior employee first.

When an employee leaves your company, a previous client can contact that employee cell phone in an attempt to reach the company. However, it is unlikely that the client will get their message through to the company.

5. Security and compliance issue.

Cell phones can get lost, and when that happens the text messages will disappear along with the phone. Cell phones can also get stolen. This raises serious security issues with a physical cell phone.

Further, TCPA has regulation on how businesses can send out text messages. It is hard to enforce the regulation at a company level for cell phone. You do not want to get penalized by employee cell phone usage as they are not compliant.

6. Lack of oversight, tracking, consistency.

When communication is conducted with cell phone, there is no oversight and data analysis on the conversation. It is also difficult to enforce a company customer service policy.

7. Personal cell phone is personal.

You can’t distinguish the difference between personal and business calls. If your employees use their cell phone to send out texts, the recipient will be able to reply to a text related to your business.

You don’t have control over when the clients to send a text, meaning your personal privacy and personal life are compromised.

Personal cell phones have the above 7 shortcomings.

An obvious solution is to buy a business cell phone for all of employees.

However, it's expensive to buy a cell phone for each employee and pay the monthly data fee. Additionally, it has the same issues of all the reasons above except for #7.

If a business cell won't work, what's the correct way to handle business text?

You need a Saas based business text such as WikiPro. You and your employee can log into a web browser and use the iOS/Android App to send text messages to your customers. It addresses all of the concerns listed above. Further, WikiPro has message template, personal sms footer, scheduled messages etc. to make it super easy to send customize and personal business text messages.