Did You Get My Email?
The only thing shorter than a New York minute is an email one. Does this conversation sound familiar:
“Did you get my email?”
“What email?”
“The one I sent you today.”
“I didn’t get the email. When did you send it?”
“15 minutes ago.”
So it goes.
How Quick is Too Quick?
Workers are more productive when they predetermine intervals for viewing email, rather than responding to every email alert in real time.
A 2008 research study by Karen Renaud, at the University of Glasgow, revealed that employees working on a computer typically switch applications to view their emails as many as 30 or 40 times an hour, for anything from a few seconds to a minute. The study showed that people typically wait ONLY one minute and 44 seconds before acting upon a new email notification. Surprisingly, two thirds of email alerts get a reaction within six seconds! This is faster than letting the phone ring three times!
“Email is the thing that now causes us the most problems in our working lives,” Renaud said. “It’s an amazing tool, but it’s got out of hand. Email harries you. You want to know what’s in there, especially if it’s from a family member or friends, or your boss, so you break off what you are doing to read the email.
‘The problem is that when you go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your chain of thought and, of course, you are less productive. People’s brains get tired from breaking off from something every few minutes to check emails. The more distracted you are by distractions, including email, then you are going to be more tired and less productive.”
How Long Will Customers Wait?
A classic survey by TargetX, an email marketing firm, indicated that 13 percent of their respondents said they’d take their business elsewhere if they don’t receive a response to email within one hour. 15 percent said they were willing to wait up to three hours. Eight percent said they would wait six hours. Almost everyone (88 percent) expected a response within 24 hours.
To customers, waiting for an email response has become the equivalent of standing in line. This means that your company MAY BE losing potential business if it doesn’t provide an immediate response to incoming emails. It probably IS losing potential business in its not responding to emails the same day they are received.
There are several things a business can do to alleviate the potential impatience/anxiety of customers who await an immediate response to their emails:
- Respond: It’s a good idea to send people an email response as soon as possible — even one that doesn’t answer their specific questions or address their immediate concerns. A quick response that acknowledges the message has been received and sets expectations for when they will be contacted again with an answer is often enough to placate, if not satisfy, an anxious inquirer.
- Instruct: A lot of the emails you receive don’t provide enough information for you to provide an immediate answer. When providing individuals with the opportunity to contact you, let them know in advance the information you need to provide to get an immediate answer.
- Direct: Routing all emails through a webmaster, who divvies them out to the appropriate person, is inefficient. When soliciting emails from your web site, try to route incoming emails to the appropriate person rather than having a single individual respond to all emails. For example, sales inquiries might be sent to the appropriate sales person, based on the location of the sender.
- Redirect: Give individuals an opportunity to call you if they’re not getting what they consider to be a timely response. This is particularly important for customer service issues. In the strive to become more efficient, customer service departments often make themselves the most difficult individuals to contact.
- Follow up: After responding to someone’s email inquiry, take the time to circle back by email, or telephone, to ensure the individual was satisfied with your response. Did they find the product or service they were looking for, even if they did not select your company? The responses to your follow-up provide a valuable view of your company, its products, and competitors.
- Phone: A 2008 Habeas study showed that sixty-seven percent of consumers prefer e-mail as a communications channel over other online vehicles and that 65 percent believe this will continue to be true for at least the next in five years. Nevertheless, knowing when to pick up the phone is important. If individuals provide their phone number and invite you to call them within the body of an email consider picking up the phone. It will likely provide more goodwill than email. As one person put it: “I prefer e-mail with people I don’t care much to deal with, or don’t have the time to deal with it. However when I want something, I prefer the phone because of the immediate interaction.”
The challenges of email time compression can be met. Although the average person may receive more than 50 to 100 emails a day, few of them require a response. After filtering through the unwanted Spam mail, A study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 60 percent of Americans who use e-mail at work receive 10 or fewer actual work-related emails per day.
Nevertheless, the number of emails we receive each day are predicted to increase exponentially over the next decade with increases in Web services, wireless access, and the integration of technology. Have any doubts about this? Email them to me.
And if you do, please, don’t expect a response within an hour.
Strongbad: An Email Legend
if you want to learn from an email master, consider Strong Bad. View the ‘best of Strong Bad’ reel below. Better yet, visit www.homestarrunner.com and view the originals.
Credits: Cartoon by Cartoon Church. I enjoy this site and the work of Dave Walker. Dave writes and draws for the Church Times and was the ‘Cartoonist in Residence’ for the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
