Send me your customer list safely

Customer lists are the most sensitive thing most small businesses own. A little care here costs you five minutes and avoids an awkward conversation later.

Export it

Most systems have an export button hiding in a settings or contacts menu. Ask for CSV if you get the choice. If your list is genuinely in a notebook or a group chat, tell me — that is not unusual and there are ways to handle it.

Before you send it

• Take out what I do not need. If I am building a booking system, I need names, phones, emails and job history. I do not need card details, social security numbers, medical notes or anything a customer told you in confidence. When in doubt, delete the column and ask me if I actually needed it.
• Do not fix it first. Messy is fine. Duplicates, inconsistent spelling, three different date formats — cleaning that up is part of the work, and doing it by hand first usually introduces new mistakes.

How to send it

Best to worst:

1. A shared drive folder — Google Drive or Dropbox, shared directly with my email address. You can revoke it later, and there is a record of who opened it.
2. A password-protected zip, with the password sent separately by text.
3. Email attachment — acceptable for small non-sensitive lists, not great for anything with a thousand phone numbers in it.

Never post it in a public Slack channel, a shared inbox lots of people read, or a link that anyone with the URL can open.

What I do with it

It goes into the project, it does not go anywhere else, and it is not used to train anything. When the project ends, tell me to delete my copies and I will confirm when it is done.