For the younger crowd, texting is as natural as breathing. Children in junior high school and high school over the past few years have tended to send more texts than they have made phone calls. Some of those children are now entering the real world of business. If you’ve got some of them on your staff, it may be time to consider using texting to keep in touch with them. Not to mention that it’s a great way to be in touch with your customers as well.
Texting to Customers
The most common use most restaurants make of texting is to send out notes to their regular customers informing them of the day’s specials or offering them some kind of a special discount in order to entice them to come by and have a meal. If you aren’t doing this yet, there are several websites available that will let you sent text bursts to multiple numbers all at one time, thus allowing you to have a valuable and low cost method of advertising.
Texting to Staff
The newest thing with texting is to send out mass notices to your staff. If most of your wait staff is of the 20 something crowd, then your best bet for making sure they’re all aware of the day’s specials and when there are staff meetings and the like is to simply send them all a text. The same services that you can use to send texts to your customers can just as easily be used to send texts to your staff.
Should You Allow Texting at Work?
The question of course is whether or not it’s a smart idea to allow your staff to use cell phones on the job at all. After all, if they’re getting texts from the boss, they may think it’s okay to be texting on the job. In these cases, it may be best to send out texts before work and make it clear that cell phone may not be used while working and especially not in front of customers.
Jim Balis' Blog 