Communicating with clients: rules and a work channel

A personal trainer's communication with clients works when it has rules the client knows from day one: where to write, when you reply and what is kept in writing. Without them, your personal phone becomes an office open at all hours, with work messages mixed in with those of your own life. Here is how to set those rules, how to separate work from your personal WhatsApp, and how Entrenify's chat works, including what it does not do.

Why separate work from your personal WhatsApp

Looking after clients from your personal WhatsApp is the most convenient option with your first two and the most tiring once you have a few more. The problem is not the app, but mixing work and your life in the same place:

• There are no set hours. A client's message arrives among those from your family, at any hour, and every notification demands a reply.
• You lose the trail. What you agreed gets buried among voice notes, photos and conversations about other things. Finding “the PDF I sent you” ends up being a long scroll upwards.
• Their data ends up on your personal phone. Photos, measurements and what they tell you about how they feel get mixed with your gallery and your private chats. How to handle them is covered in data protection for personal trainers.
• Former clients never leave. When you stop working with someone, their conversation is still there, next to those of your friends.

Separating does not mean giving up your phone: it means work gets its own channel, with your hours, and the personal stays personal.

The rules, in writing and from day one

Communication rules are explained at sign-up, not when there is already a misunderstanding. Put them in the same document where you explain what the service includes and how it is paid for, and go over them with the client in the first session. At the very least, decide:

1. One work channel. Everything about the service goes through it. If someone writes to you somewhere else, reply in one line and move it to the work channel.
2. Your reply hours. The times of day when you read and reply. Outside them, the message waits.
3. What the client can expect. For example, “I will reply within the same working day”. A short promise you keep is better than an immediacy you cannot sustain.
4. What cannot wait. Cancelling that same afternoon's session does not fit within your reply hours: tell them how to reach you for that, for example by phone.
5. Voice notes, yes or no. If you accept them, tell them whether you will reply in writing. If a question needs more than a couple of messages, it is better to take it to the session or the check-in.

How this fits with the other agreements of the first day is covered in signing up a new client.

What should be kept in writing

The rule is simple: if in a few months someone might ask “when did we talk about this?”, it should be written down and in the work channel. That includes:

• Plan changes: what changes and from when.
• Price, fee and method of payment, and any change to them.
• Appointment changes and cancellations, especially those that come late.
• Documents: the plan, the terms of service and anything the client has to sign.

A voice note is convenient for explaining, but hard to find afterwards. If you agree something in a voice note, sum it up in one written line. And mind your tone: what sounds friendly in person can read as curt in writing.

Templates: write once what you repeat

There are messages you write every week in different words: the welcome, the check-in reminder, the “I haven't seen you today”, the notice of an outstanding fee or the “I've changed your plan”. Write them once, calmly, and save them as templates.

Three precautions so they do not sound like a mass mailing:

• The client's name, always.
• A line of your own before sending it: something from their week that shows you have looked.
• Review them from time to time: if one no longer sounds like how you talk, rewrite it.

A template is not an automatic message: you send it, when it is due and to whom it is due.

Groups and messages to several clients

A group is for what is shared: a timetable change that affects everyone, a challenge you do together or general information. But in a group everyone reads what each person writes, so nothing personal: no measurements, no payments, no individual progress. Each client's matters go in their own conversation.

Before creating one, ask yourself whether they really need to talk to each other or whether it is enough for you to write to them. And if you do create one, say what it is for and who is in it.

How Entrenify handles it

In Entrenify (in Spanish), the chat between trainer and client is part of the tool, with its own section in your dashboard and in each client's app:

• Inbox. Tabs for all, unread, favourites and archived, and you can pin the conversations you want to the top. The search finds by name, by the text of messages or by the name of a file.
• Attachments and voice notes. Images and PDFs of up to 12 MB, and voice notes. Images are re-encoded when uploaded, which strips the data a phone photo carries inside it, such as where and when it was taken. Each conversation has a list of everything shared in it.
• Search within the conversation, to jump to the message you are looking for.
• Groups. You create them, with a name and the clients you choose.
• Templates. You save your own with a title and text, and you can write {nombre} (Spanish for “name”) so the client's name appears. If you have none, the chat suggests examples (welcome, check-in reminder, missed session, outstanding fee…). The ones you use most come first.
• Message statuses. Sent, delivered and read, depending on when the other side looked at the conversation.
• Discreet notifications. The notification of a new message does not carry the text, and at most one goes off every ten minutes per conversation. You can mute a conversation and, in your notification preferences, set a do-not-disturb period: whatever arrives during those hours waits for you under the bell icon.
• Quick actions. From the conversation with a client you can send them the plan as a PDF, ask for their check-in, remind them of their fee or ask for a signature, and a record is left in the thread as a system message.
• Their context alongside. A column with their plan, last workout, next appointment and fee, without opening the whole record.

What it does not do: it does not integrate with WhatsApp or send notifications by WhatsApp or SMS, it has no video calling of its own and it does not allow video in the chat. How the chat fits into each week's follow-up is covered in following up online clients.