When our clients hear that Cradle now supports SMS, it's understandable for people to think of the feature as just another communication channel.
It's not.
We didn't build SMS because accounting firms asked for another way to contact clients. We built it because we kept seeing the same problem play out across practices of every size: work wasn't slowing down because accountants weren't doing their jobs. It was slowing down because they were waiting for clients.
Waiting for a receipt. Waiting for a signature. Waiting for one simple answer that keeps a job sitting open for days, sometimes weeks.
For years, email has been the default way to chase this information. But the way people communicate has changed.
Today's clients are managing overflowing inboxes, hundreds of unread emails and time pressure. And at the same time, many people are less inclined to answer unexpected phone calls than they once were. Communication has become more asynchronous - we read messages when it suits us, and we expect to reply just as easily.
Text messaging sits in the middle. It's immediate without being intrusive. A client doesn't have to open their laptop, search through emails or schedule a phone call. They see a message, type a quick reply, and get on with their day.
For accountants, those small moments add up. A two-word text response can be the difference between a job moving forward today or sitting untouched until next week.
That insight shaped how we built Cradle SMS.
A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found that people were significantly more likely to respond to an SMS than an email, with response rates of 70% compared with 45%. Separately, research from the Pew Research Center found that adding text message notifications prompted people to respond significantly sooner than email alone.
Technology should adapt to people, not ask people to change their habits.
For accountants, that means spending less time chasing and more time doing the work that matters. For clients, it means responding in the quickest, easiest way possible.
That's the thinking behind Cradle SMS. It's not just another feature. It's another step towards making communication between accounting firms and their clients faster, simpler and more effective.