Today I was reminded of a bad date I went on many years ago in the pre-cell phone age.  We were supposed to meet in front of a Greek restaurant for dinner.  We were both on time and we both thought we were at the front entrance.  Mine was on the pedestrian mall side.  His was facing the street.  The error wasn’t discovered until much later that evening when he accused me of standing him up.  Needless to say, it was all down hill from there.

Today’s reminder of the non-date from hell came courtesy of Monica Hesse’s fun article in today’s Washington Post about how communication styles can sabotage relationships.  Some people prefer text messaging to e-mail.   Others prefer Twitter or a phone call.  If, for example, they ignore their voice mail while waiting for a text message they might as well be standing at the wrong restaurant entrance. There is more opportunity than ever before to get it wrong.

Now imagine if that were to happen in a business context. 

Misunderstandings can easily arise due to terse text messages or lengthy e-mails that lack the intonations of a human voice and body language.  For customers who have little patience, those misunderstandings can quickly escalate from dissatisfaction to conflict to litigation.   

The lesson for businesses interested in controlling their legal risk is to choose their business communication channels wisely (rule #3).  To avoid creating a smoking gun document you’ll want to strive for clarity and accuracy (rule #7); but, to be “heard” and maintain a strong customer relationship you need to be in synch with your customer’s communications preferences.   The best legal risk management strategy marries the two concepts and strengthens the business relationship in the process. 

It’s a win-win.