My thought of the week: Impudent & impatient emails

Have you ever woke up in the morning, as you sip your hot coffee, fire up your mobile phone or computer to check up your email accounts, and then… Booom!!! You got spammed, your inbox is full of emails. Few are the ones you’ve been waiting for, but the rest of them are mostly just junks. You thought you’ve got rid off those junk emails yesterday, but then they all came back, creeping inside your inbox again when you’re asleep.

This kind of situation is not a surprise for an avid email users, or for those who utilizes email as one of the crucial way to communicate with your work & personal life at once. Aside from voice call, it has been proven by statistic & study that we; mobile phone users, prefer more to use passive communication tool to interact with the person on the other side of the line. Those tools are the basic features in our smartphone nowadays, text message (aka. SMS) and email.

I’ve done covering the ugly side of SMS, you may have read it here at PalmAddict. And for email, I’ve personally experienced what I’ve just mentioned above. During last month, I got busy with plenty of works, but nevertheless I always try to reply all the emails that came into my inbox. Because the affiliates of the email recipients I needed to reply are connected to one another, I often use CCs and BCCs so I could kept them all well informed with just one click. I’m pretty sure you also do this, for the same purpose or not…

But later, I received more and more impudent email spam in larger quantities every day forward. I then realized that my own action to make short cut by using CCs and BCCs, has indirectly revealing my email account to others, and thus opening it up to unwanted solicitation or a boatload of spam. So instead of shortening my times to reply incoming emails, I’ve just lengthening my time to manage my inbox by deleting those unwanted emails. ~LOL~ A lesson learnt...

Speaking of time and emails management, I also learn to deal and manage these important rules when facing a large bulk of emails in busy days:

1. How much of time I wish to spent for checking email today?
2. How many time a day should I check my inbox?
3. Who are the people I should reply today, and who I shouldn’t?

I know it’s easier to be said than done, so sometimes I don’t do all of the three steps but instead one of them would be sufficient. But I always remember to do #3 above there, because I had a rather unpleasant experience whenever I received impatient emails. For an example, I once received an email concerning the billboard design from one of our sponsors. The person who emailed me was a designer at 3rd party company who’s being asked to handle the production of the billboard for next month, he sent me an email about the latest design at the middle of last month.

Because I was so busy with other works, I couldn’t get to reply his email immediately, I needed to see & judge the design first then ask the boss about it. But about 3-4 hours later, he emailed me again saying: “Did you receive my last email? How is it, do we have an agreement on the design? Reply to me as soon as possible, thanks!”

I thought I shouldn’t answer that one, since I always believe it’s best if I reply if I have the full answer. Besides, we’re still way ahead of the schedule deadline, it is for next month. But anyway, I quickly response with short line: “We’re very busy right now, I’ll come back at you when I’ve talk about it with my boss.” The next thing I know, the designer replied again around 1,5 hours later: “So, how did it go? Can we start moving to production now?”

The blood ran rushing into my head, and I’m thankful that email is not a direct two ways communication; or otherwise he would have listened to what I’ve said. ;-p I was just about to write back to him, still with adrenaline pumped in my vein, suddenly I remember a very good advice from an article I read at Asylum: "Re-read every word of your e-mail before you hit send, and if you're angry, wait a few minutes."

That is indeed a good suggestion, so I chilled out for almost half an hour (probably I forgot to reply at all *chuckles*) before I finally replied again. I wrote a nice and polite reply, saying again that I’m very busy right now and can’t rush things until the end of the month; plus I asked him to wait for me to contact him and not the other way around. After that last reply, the designer stopped sending me another emails. Another new lesson learnt… ;-D

There’s no written etiquette for sending email, what we have instead is our own personal experiences to do it. Maybe they should teach this kinda moral lesson in school? Since even nowadays child can hold a smartphone, and use email. And we are what we were taught, correct?

I believe a well manner written email can determine how well the recipient will respond, and a well time delivery can help to determine the outcome.

[blogged with my Treo 750v]