"Quit Calling My Cell Phone"

By Matt Richart

I wish I could actually say this to my existing clients and especially potential new clients. I know this may be an unpopular opinion and the last thing I want to do is lose a client or upset any new clients that could help our company grow. I think we all need to be available to our clients when they need us. Some of our businesses are remote and we count on our cell phone as our mobile office. With that said the past few years have been tough dealing with company growth, organization, and clients reaching out via text or phone calls on my cell phone.

As our company has grown and evolved, we have become even more professional. Our team has created procedures, rules, new software, and a road map on how we communicate and navigate existing clients along with new customers. I have noticed in the past few years that clients want to text me random questions or text me a photo of a project asking for a price or information in regard to what they are after. I also have clients texting me links to files, artwork, and random photos of examples they are after. The issue that I have is that all this gets lost in the shuffle. When I don’t have emails sent to me that describe what the client or a new client wants it is very difficult for me to manage and stay on top of. I guess common sense would tell me that I might need another company cell phone to accommodate these requests and communication.

Maybe I’m being stubborn by not wanting to carry around two cell phones to live my life. I have a hard enough time dealing with what’s on my plate now. We all have busy lives outside of our work life. Our life outside of work is just as important as our daily routine. I have three boys that keep us very busy with school, sports, and other activities. It also doesn’t help that my three boys still don’t drive. On top of that, I coach AAU basketball and that requires a lot of planning, scheduling, practices, travel, and games. I would say on average I receive 40 -50 calls per day that pertain to my personal life and my business. This doesn’t include any communication that comes my way to my office as well. This is very hard for me to manage and maintain a professional line of communication with everyone involved. Especially when I must sift through a text from friends, family, and clients.

I have been discussing this topic lately with industry friends and current customers of ours as well who deal with these same issues daily. Maybe I should just suck it up and deal with how the world is now. I truly believe that I just need to change my dialogue with my clients and let them know the best way to communicate with me. The one main topic that came up repeatedly was we now live in an on-demand world. People want instant access to people immediately. I think we have all played a part in creating that world. We can shop online and receive our purchases sometime that very same day. I ordered a nice bottle of tequila a few weeks ago from a local store that was delivered to my house within 24 minutes. I don’t even get pizza delivered that quickly to the house. Every online store usually has a bot that you can use to communicate with any questions or concerns. When we don’t get a quick response, it can be frustrating at times. I think most of us just want an instant response and feel that’s an honest request. With that said it still becomes a problem when your clients want to deal strictly through cell phone communication at all times of the day. A perfect example was a few months ago when a client texted me a picture of the work truck they may be purchasing soon. This message was sent to me at 10 pm on a Saturday evening. I was sitting by my fire pit enjoying the evening and sipping on the tequila that was delivered in 24 minutes. I received the message but didn’t respond back because it was late Saturday evening, and my brain was shut off from work life. We all need to decompress. When I woke up Sunday morning that same client had sent me another message with just a question mark. To me, this sends some red flags up. This may come across as being lazy or not caring about our clients, but I find this kind of disrespectful. I’m more than happy to accommodate any of our clients or new customers. When the communication consists of one sentence with an attachment via text followed by a question mark 12 hours later, I find it somewhat disrespectful.

I sat on the edge of my bed wondering if I even wanted to do business with this person. In my opinion, the correct way would be to email me pictures of what job you were requesting so that I could put them into our sales software and begin our company procedures on how to communicate and respond back to that client on Monday. I also wanted to show this client some behavioral grace. This particular customer might just be used to utilizing their cell phone or operating that way even if it was late Saturday evening. The client also might have been trying to plan on the purchase of this new vehicle. I could also convey how we like to communicate and correspond with sales in previous conversations that we have had. I do take the blame if that was the issue or problem.

I’m all on board with our clients having easy accessibility to myself of members of our team. A major part of our marketing is the experience that our customers have with Digital EFX. We want our clients to feel wanted, welcomed, respected, and part of our special family. I do feel that easy accessibility can create problems. These problems are gaps in communication, not being able to sift through your family’s correspondence shuffled in with your work messages on your personal cell phone, and being able to recognize the seriousness of what they are requesting. I realize that this is all part of running a business and usually, we must go that extra mile. I thrive off being busy and staying on task when deadlines are close along with having to meet our sales goals weekly. We all wear many hats throughout our workday to make sure the business is running smoothly and set up for success.

After reading through some articles online in regard to this subject I have come up with two solutions to combating this issue. The first is what I have been doing for the past six months. I have let my clients know that if they can’t get ahold of me via email or my office phone call me on my personal cell phone. Especially if it’s an emergency or urgent. I don’t want to lose that personal touch.

I have also let them know that any correspondence with images, examples, artwork, links to media, or estimates needed to email everything to me or my sales staff. Most have understood and also had a few apologies for sending all correspondence through cell phones. I have also let them know that on the weekends we are usually unplugged so that we can recharge our batteries, decompress, and get ready for battle again on Monday.

The second solution is to get a company cell phone that is only utilized for business. My biggest concern with this is as stated before that

I don’t want to carry two phones. A big part of my concern is that this might make it even more unmanageable for me to keep organized. I am continuing to communicate with my clients to let them know that our office phone and email are the best ways to communicate with me.

It also might help to remove my cell phone from my email signature. My issue with that is I still want to make sure that I don’t miss out on anything. My biggest fear is that I don’t drop the ball on any of our clients.

This is why I wanted to write this article on this topic. It might be a simple solution for some people but for me and my organization, it has become an issue. I believe precise communication and transparency can combat this issue and start to alleviate some of our communication problems moving forward. As I sit here typing out this article I have received two text messages on possible jobs that I’m blessed to have.

I just need to be clear with my clients in a respectful way to let them know how we operate and why. I need to work more on communicating with our clients on how we communicate.

I would love to hear back from you the reader if you have any insight, advice, or other solutions that you have implemented that work. We are all in this together and I love our industry. Feedback on your experience with this is welcome.

Matt Richart Matt@digitalefxwraps.com Co-Owner/CFO, Digital EFX Wraps LLC. Instructor, Inside The Wrap Shop