3 Reasons to Stop Texting Drivers From Your Cell Phone

Texting can be a great way to communicate with family and friends. After all, Americans send over 26 billion text messages each day! But when it comes to official company business, using your personal cell phone for text messaging can lead to issues if you’re not careful. These issues could cost you time, money and ultimately qualified candidates over time. If you’re texting drivers from your cell phone, here are 3 reasons to stop.

The average American checks their phone about 50 times each day. 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. – techjury.net

1. Consistency

Using personal phones to send business texts can create branding issues for a company. Setting clear rules as to who can send texts, and the content they should contain should be a priority for any company using text messaging as an official communication practice. Much like having standard email templates in place for business communications, having text message templates for texting drivers is a good idea.

2. Timing

Using a messaging app from your personal phone could make you seem available 24/7. Though you might curb your overall business communications with candidates to your normal business hours, drivers might not be able to check their phones until you’ve gone home for the day. Once they’ve responded, you might not respond until the next morning. This type of time delay devalues the benefit of text messaging in general. Having an SMS system in place that’s truly a 24/7 solution, will allow for the best execution of this type of communication with your drivers.

3. Tracking Old Messages

If you and your team are all using your personal phones to connect with candidates, there’s plenty of room to lose track of what’s been sent. You could be sending duplicate messages, or worse, conflicting messages and confusing your potential drivers. Without a dedicated system to track all texts from one source, you could be inadvertently sending negative messages to candidates. This might make them decide to look for work somewhere else. And with no tracking system in place, there’s no way to get any usable metrics to find out how well texting drivers is actually working for your company.

As part of your overall communication strategy with your drivers, text messaging can play an important role. But in the recruitment process, texting from your personal cell phone is not always going to be the best idea. Hopefully the 3 things to consider when using text messaging from a hiring perspective will help your team recruit well.

Lastly, if you’re going to use text messaging in any capacity to connect with potential drivers, you need to let them know about it. This will reduce any confusion that might arise when a candidate gets a text message from an unknown number. Additionally, you should have your candidates opt-in to the text messaging system as part of the application process. This way they will know that the texts are coming, and who they’re coming from.