Text messages are not often associated with the business of government, where large paper trails and documentation are the norm; but if research by The Independent is anything to go by, text messages are now a normal part of business operations between Whitehall staff and external companies.
The newspaper claims that SMS messages are increasingly being used to bypass more official channels – such as letters and email – by government lobbyists and ministers looking to avoid falling under analysis of the Freedom of Information Act.
“It’s just an expected practice between people who work in government departments and people who work for companies,” a former PR consultant at a major transport company that dealt with the Department for Transport told the newspaper.
“They’re not dropping someone an email because they know that they could be done for inclusion [within the Freedom of Information Act]. It’s just how things work.”
Text messages are technically covered under the Freedom of Information Act, but rarely fall under scrutiny as they are typically of a very temporary nature.
SMS messaging is often perceived as playing second fiddle to email and phone calls when it comes to business communication, often seen as a personal, rather than a business, communication medium.
However, as more and more people have become comfortable with SMS technology in recent years and business Smartphones groan under the weight of the vast number of emails they receive each day, more and more companies are realising that the best way to guarantee an important business communication is read is to send it via a text message.
A busy business person can easily receive 100+ emails each working day, but they are likely to receive far fewer text messages. For this reason SMS messages have a far higher open rate than texts: 95 per cent of all text messages are read, millions of emails go unread each day.
When you need to talk to your staff urgently, a business SMS solution is ideal. Not only does a business SMS solution mean that you can send SMS from PC, you can also choose which staff members to send an SMS out to – such as an individual team or department – or you can choose to send a text to your entire workforce in a matter of minutes.
