ADVANTAGE: MATTHEWS

Customers still want to talk to people. As reported by the Harvard Business Review, a 2017 study by research advisory firm BIA/Kelsey found that calls to businesses are expected to exceed 169 billion per year in 2020, and that calls are 10 to 15 times more likely to generate a successful sale or follow-up activity than text-based communication. That’s not to say that texting isn’t more useful for some businesses than others—it allows information to be distributed faster, and data to be collected more easily. And it can be popular with a younger crowd. But the numbers say you shouldn’t give up that phone line just yet.