Why WhatsApp is ruining your ability to be organized.

I often get asked the same question from opposite ends regarding operating a business with WhatsApp. Operating a business many include incoming customer requests, intra-company communication, and outgoing communication to customers.

After all, everyone has it, it is simple, fast, and free, and it works- doesn’t it?

The 2 questions I am often asked are:

1) Why do I need a system? WhatsApp does everything I need.

2) Help! My business is on WhatsApp, and everything is all over the place. What can I do to set things straight again?

I get both of those questions all of the time.

Here are some thoughts as to why WhatsApp is not always a good idea, especially for a business that hopes to scale.

Unstructured

Project Management (PM) systems like Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Clickup (among many others) allow you to have items listed in a hierarchy- for example Customer > Project > Subproject, while in WhatsApp everything is in a single thread. Sure you can make different groups for different projects, but then you cannot see all tasks/messages from a single customer. With PM systems you can dice and splice all info in many ways. Project management systems allow you to further tag or categorize items, as well as search by multiple criteria (think who, what, when) in one search. They also allow you to set due dates, use formulas, and dozens of other features. When you are dealing with many clients and many projects, structuring your data is the only way to have good data.

Voice Notes

Voice notes certainly are a quick way to get your request across. But what happens a few days later when you need to reference that voice note. You probably don’t remember exactly when it was sent. Are you going to listen to all of your voice notes until you find that one 3 second part that had the info you need. Forget about searching for it - voice notes can’t be searched. If if contains text or numbers that you need, you’ll need to retype that as well. It is fast for the requestor, and poses multiple challenges for the receiver.

Collaboration

Sure you can do WhatsApp groups, but what happens when you want only certain info visible to your team members. Like, only the project details, and not the pricing. Or if you need to move a comment from a private to public setting. Or if you have a new hire or external person (freelancer etc) and they need to know only about certain aspects and don’t need to know everything that is in the group. Project Management software is built for this.

The Psychology of it

People who are using WhatsApp just want to send their message the quickest way are likely not going to communicate in an organized fashion.

Garbage in = Garbage out. You want your customers to be detailed and thought out when making a request, and avoiding WhatsApp (and voice notes) certainly helps the silly requests that make no sense or make it obvious that the requestor has not thought about the “… and then what happens when…” scenarios. When things are written out, they will be more organized and have greater clarity.

Features

PM systems offer notifications, emailing from the system, calendar views, Gantt charts, automations (when X do Y) and a million other features that are beneficial for managing projects. WhatsApp only takes care (lousily) of one part, communication.

Data

You can’t export your data in meaningful way (i.e. to view on spreadsheets). No API to interface with other systems. And no way to get your data out when you realize that you outgrew WhatsApp and you want to start using a PM system.

Conclusion

WhatsApp is a great method of communicating, but not necessarily for doing business, especially when you are looking to scale. Just because it is working for you now, doesn't mean it is a good idea. There is a reason why business is usually done on business platforms.