Call 01202 43 43 40
Email info@mesmo.co.uk
By email (as the sender), how long do you have to make an impression on the recipient? Maximum, five seconds, before they form an opinion of you (the sender), for better or worse. That goes for every aspect of business be it internal and external communications, eg job applications, journalists, prospects, etc. Often it’s for worse. Stefan Stern’s article ‘Is the vehicle registered in your name‘ prompted me to reflect on the current state of email etiquette or rather lack of it.
How you open, close and construct an email is your email dress code. Sloppy email, sloppy you. Professional email and it makes one feel I’d like to do business with this person. The way an email is framed can make or break a business relationship.
Let us not forget that for most businesses an email is still a formal communication. Indeed, it bears your business’s/organisation’s name, not to mention your own name.
Yet, when was the last time you had any email etiquette training? Never. You are not alone. Here is the most commonly and frequently used business communications tool and yet our surveys show that less than 30% of business people are ever given any guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not. In part of course the standard of today’s email etiquette is also a reflection of the appalling standard of school teaching. But that’s another story.
For example what guidelines are there in your organisation/business on:
These are some of the items covered in this week’s blogs.
Meanwhile, please feel free to use my Email Etiquette Checklist to audit a few of the emails you recently sent.
Tags: email etiquette, email management, Email training
One of the recurrent questions last week was ‘how do we manage efficiently a team in box to make sure all emails are answered once and once only and tracked’ (eg information@, sales @, project@ and even ‘my manager’s inbox’)?
You need to decide on some simple processes. First, who ultimately owns and manages the mailbox, in terms of sorting, assigning and as appropriate deleting the rubbish. Second, agree a process for handling the incoming emails which shows clearly the priorities and who is handling the email, eg flags, folders, colours etc. Third check that all the users have an adequate level of Email (Outlook) IT Fitness (ie skills to use the software) and guidelines on which to make decisions about how to process and email.
Without a robust and clear process in place there is a high risk that important emails will be missed and possibly with significant costs to the business.
Do you manage a team mailbox? What guidelines do you have in place?
Tags: email management, email overload, Outlook IT Fitness, Team inbox
Have you set an Out Of Office message which meets the 3S standard: simple, short and secure.
Simple and short – just one point of contact and please, please make sure that person is around. More than one point of contact and you might find yourself divulging confidential information and increasing the risk of a breach of business security. Secure too, because it doesn’t immediately alert any cyber criminals to a potentially empty home.
Email etiquette for the best Out Of Office messages – ‘I will not be in the office between X and Y. If your email is urgent, please contact A, otherwise I will deal with it on my return.’ That’s the polite message.
I do know some people whose message reads ‘I will not be in the office between X and Y. If your email is urgent, please re-send it on A, as all incoming emails during this period are automatically being deleted’.
Actually, I think that’s a great way to manage the email overload. What do you think?
Tags: email etiquette, email management, email overload
Two more reports now suggest that social media as an alternative to email is not growing as fast as it should: Radicati Group’s latest industry survey and informal research from Brian Solis. This despite the fact that Facebook and Twitter usage continues to grow. Meanwhile for business, as IBM found, email is still the preferred media. Even although the IBM study found that 48% of respondents felt they suffered from email overload.
Why is this? One explanation might be the Generation X and Y. By and large business is still tilted towards more Generation X employees many of whom are not comfortable with social media and have not been educated how to use it properly. A second explanation might be that all alerts about new information on social media/social networks still comes by email. This in turn drives up the email traffic. One way to manage this aspect of email overload is to create rules to divert all such alerts away from the inbox and to a folder.
However that still leaves the need to educate Generation X.
What do you think?
Tags: email management, email overload, email stress
Good to hear that at last the Government is rationalizing its spending on IT systems and hardware. However, further substantial savings and efficiency improvements can be made if they educated people to use the existing systems properly. After all, one hours training provides a five hour gain in productivity!
For example, what is your level of Outlook IT fitness? Are you Bronze (only just get by and often need help), Silver (average, can do what you need to do) or Gold (know lots of tricks to save yourself time)?
To audit your Email IT Fitness email me and I can send you a link to our on-line Email IT Fitness Check.
Tags: email best practice, email management, Government cuts, Outlook IT Fitness