 | IS EMAIL DAMAGING YOUR BUSINESS? | | | | | Not to mention your sanity ... | Posted by Andrew Spencer on 05/01/2012 @ 08:30 |
Email is perceived as a "good thing" in operating businesses. It is fast, it appears to offer the means to deal with customers, contacts and colleagues efficiently and quickly, it is easy to understand and provides a digital record of conversations between 2 people ...
 with email it's so easy to say things you would never say in person to person conversation
But email can be seen as bad for the health of your business, your own productivity and the productivity of your employees or colleagues. It does not necessarily help your customers either!
Why is email damaging to your business? |
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Yes, it is fast but is it too fast? Emails are sent and received in an instant and people expect instant or very quick answers, where before there was not that expectation. It is so fast that responses are often ill considered and potentially very damaging, insulting or even libellous!
It is not necessarily the best way to deal efficiently with issues. It is the same as writing snail mail letters - albeit faster - but no better at closing sales, complaints or queries. Conversations can become protracted where a simple phone call would have dealt with the issue in minutes. This is particularly true internally - why write letters to colleagues when a face to face conversation sorts out the issue immediately?
Both internally and externally it is so easy to get into arguments writing letters and think what writing an exchange of letters does to your costs. I recall a director of call centres for a major national organisation address a call centre conference some years ago where he asked the simple question: "why had call centres taken up email when the contact centre industry had spent years trying to get rid of letters in favour of person to person conversations on the phone?" The latter move was very much for cost reasons as well as in the interests of better customer service so why move back?
Creating arguments in email is remarkably easy. It's so easy to say things you would never say in person to person conversation, easy to create defensive positions rather than compromise and remember that the lack of emotion means that what you mean can be taken completely the wrong way.
As for that digital record it would appear to only be of use when there is a breakdown in trust or communication. Hardly a positive reason for keeping the record and a reason that implies an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. Obviously there are environments such as in financial services, quality assurance and so on when an audit trail of conversations does need to be kept, but phone calls can be recorded and archived just as readily as email.
Above all email wrecks your productivity. Research has indicated that no more than 10% of the emails you receive are meaningful, relevant and useful and that it takes more than a minute to get back to work after reading an unimportant message. Multiply that by the number of emails pinging uselessly into your mail box. How many of you keep an eye on the bottom right corner of your screen and click that nice little "toast message" as it appears and signals yet another mail pinging into your inbox? Hugely distracting, isn't it? Too many people lose control of their time and productivity and actually achieve very little of real consequence.
Improving how your business operates ... |
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Turn off the toast message on all machines, Ring fence chunks of the day when email will not be delivered or dealt with, Maybe experiment with no email days? In Outlook dont have the mail view as the default, use the Today view or calendar instead.
Or you could just remove internal email altogether? Use collaboration tools and/or instant messaging if you have to but encourage face to face conversations above all else. Great for productivity and team building. You never know your colleagues might actually get to know each other! Email is not a right that every employee should expect or enjoy (though it feels like that) so consider removing personal email from many of your employees altogether in favour of a team email address or no email at all. This reduces abuse no end!
All employees should be encouraged to reduce the number of people copied into an email. Only copy those that it is essential to copy in and not those where you are covering yourself. If the copyee does not need to do anything why copy them in?
Turn off social media message notifications and discussion summaries. I am personally tired of the clogging of my Inbox with Linkedin discussion notifications and am disabling them. Discourage customers from contacting you by email. Encourage the use of the phone or forms (on websites). Form messages should be followed up by a phone call not an email where possible. You could also think about social media tools for communication with customers and contacts and channel the resulting communications to the best person.
Most businesses will not have even thought about the impact of email on their operations. I would urge all to have a look at what is happening on the ground and I know that if you do take a good hard look, you will take steps to reduce the negative impacts of email whilst retaining the benefits.
There are benefits but you can always have too much of a good thing! In the short time it has taken to write this piece over 10 emails have pinged into my Inbox and I will admit I found it hard to concentrate and not be distracted.
I bet that not one will enrich my day when I read them.
Until next time ... 
ANDREW SPENCER
PS: My thanks to Paul Lancaster (@lordlancaster) for some of the thoughts and suggestions here. May he organise more NO EMAIL DAYS like he did last year (11.11.11).
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 | During Andrews extensive business career he has worked in a wide cross section of companies, specialising in the creation of contact centres and business systems, software development, telecommunications and project management. Andrews key skills are:
Business planning and strategy
Matching technology to business needs
Project management
Software development and implementation
Designing and implementing business systems
His work has included sourcing and implementing a new integrated telecoms system for National Energy Services, designing and project managing a new IT and telephony structure for the Greyhound Racing Association, and directing technology development for Wembley plc.
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