Page 108 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

E-mail and instant messaging 97

Instant messaging and texting

Instant messaging (IM) and text messaging (SMS) are some of the
fastest-growing areas of business communication and are widely
used in social media too via services such as WhatsApp, Viber, etc.
Both are predominantly text based but instant messaging is
more about real-time, quick-fire replies between two or more cor-
respondents (usually internally within a business though you can
invite external members for specific projects). Unlike e-mail, you
can set settings, to see who is on- or offline, or busy – and alert
them to contact you at a mutually convenient time if necessary.
It’s a really useful medium where:

● ● things need to be moved quickly along (for example, sales or
financial teams needing the latest figures, or people needing to
know quickly about a bump in negotiations);
● ● teams and communities need to be kept in the loop and can dip
in and out of the ongoing newsfeed;
● ● you need group chat or a conference;

● ● those in the group have implicitly given members permission to
the effect ‘if you haven’t heard from me on e-mail or phone,
contact me in real time on WhatsApp’ (or alternative).

It’s also noticeable how employees, especially upcoming genera-
tions, can be more comfortable with IM over voice chat in these
situations and this is another reason for its effectiveness in business
writing.
That said, we’ve seen the problems in sending e-mails too
quickly, so it’s easy to see how the rapid reply feature of messaging
builds in more hazards to avoid! Around the world, we see some-
thing very noticeable in business communication generally as a re-
sult. Just take a look at any you have received recently. Even if you
work in a highly traditional organization, I bet you’ll see abbrevi-
ated language, emoticons, and imprecise spellings, grammar and
punctuation.