Urgent Versus Rude: Email overload

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:35:00 GMT

This blog was prompted by a conversation with a client who was trying to improve their communication process but was constantly bogged down in response mode. You are not the only one with 352 unread messages in your inbox; go ahead, breathe.

A famous dead guy once said, "if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." (mostly attributed to Pascal). I concur; we tell our clients when we are working on business processes that email is the big hammer - to which everything looks like a nail, thus other forms of communication, like forums, FAQ, even Blogs, open up the possibility of slicing the complex messages into smaller parts, but by nature people revert to what is easy (the big hammer). Solving the problem involves:

identifying the forms of question that eat up your time (not all questions are the same)
creating the other channels of communication based on the type of questions you get,
then training people to use the channels.

For example, in the software world, if people send two or three issues in the same email, they often get a response that says "Here are two links to our FAQ. For the third issue, please create a support ticket [here]" Short and informative responses are possible because the other two systems exist - and the next time the user knows to create a ticket.

We have to start making a choice between what is urgent (really) and what is just plain rude. Often, people don't mean to be rude, you simply have not given them a choice. The first step in solving this problem is to recognize that you are actually the problem - stop trying to answer all the emails! Set up a semi-permanent vacation responder, then focus on the steps above. Some may think you are rude, but really, who is in control of your choices? Take some time to think through the steps and you may find some better solutions exist, but like anything you have to first recognize the problem, when it comes to email (and increasingly, cell phones), people cannot tell the difference between the urgent and the rude.

ExoBlog (by John)

Urgent Versus Rude: Email overload