Managing a High Volume of Work-Related Emails

Believe it or not, there was a time when the daily task of going through your work inbox didn't begin with weeding through Viagra ads and chain letters. Poring through that box on your desk full of interdepartmental memos and letters that actually arrived by postal service was a daunting daily chore, but unless you worked for a plastic surgeon you could be pretty sure none of your correspondence was about breast augmentation.

Today, our inboxes are more cluttered than ever. They just don't take up valuable real estate on our desk, since our primary method of communication is email. Customers and co-workers can reach us instantly with a click of the "send" button, and to respond to them all we need to do is hit "reply" and type away.

In theory, email has made our work lives much easier. But communication tools that make things faster are a double-edged sword. While we might be more efficient, there is also an expectation that our responses will be immediate.

Whether I like to admit it or not, I'm old enough to remember thinking of email as a cool new toy that would help me get through my work day faster. That hasn't proved to be the case. Sure, I can respond to people with much more ease than I could in the days of printing and mailing letters or actually picking up the phone. But people can get to me much easier too, and they can do it at midnight. Email has chipped away at the notion of a "9 to 5" workday. Many professionals find themselves checking their work messages not just on the job, but from home in off-hours and during vacations, just to keep up with the pace of business.

In a fast-paced environment where your boss, the guy in the cube next to you, and your clients all expect a response yesterday, it is easy to slip into bad habits. We all use email in our personal lives too, and messages to our friends and family rarely look like form letters. After a while, email just doesn't seem like email unless it's plagued with typos, LOLs, and smiley-faces. Sometimes our careless or informal habits slip into our work correspondence.

But whether you work for a large corporation or use email in your own professional ventures, the messages you send are often a first impression to a client. Even co-workers base their perception of you on your email messages, since in today's world we communicate daily without actually seeing or hearing each other. Mastering the art of responding quickly without sitting at your keyboard 24/7 or sending garbled mumbo-jumbo out into cyberspace is a key to your success.

1. They want it now. So Give it to Them.

I realized just how out of control email had made expectations in my office about a year ago. I'd arrived at work in the morning and discovered an email from a woman who wanted some information on our program. Her questions required a carefully composed reply, and I was already late for a meeting. So I saved her message and dashed out the door.

When I returned to my office at noon, there was another email from her, which read simply "I sent you a message this morning. Did you get it?" There was also a voice mail, where she let me know by her clipped tone of that the four hours she'd been awaiting my response had left her feeling neglected.

Email is like that. It doesn't matter if someone wrote to you in the wee hours of the morning. In their mind the 10 hours that pass before you respond constitute a lifetime. Never mind that you spent most of those hours sleeping.

Since the customer is always right, you'll make your life easier if you give them the immediate response they want. Use your email program's auto-response system to set up an acknowledgement that lets people know you've received their message and will respond to them within a set time frame. An auto-reply can be as simple as this:

"Thank you for contacting me. I have received your message and will respond to you within two business days. If your concern is immediate, please contact our main office at 123.456-7890."

Sincerely,

Beth Smith

Assistant Manager

SuperCompany

In some lines of work, a standard auto-reply may come across as impersonal. If you feel that's the case, consider building yourself a series of templates you can cut and paste instead.

If you receive a question that will require some research, fire off a reply letting the sender know you're looking into his concern. Provide him with a reasonable time frame in which to expect a more detailed reply. If you get inquiries that are easily answered by browsing your company's web site, send a quick response directing the person to helpful links.

If your name appears first on your company's online contact list, you'll be spending a lot of time forwarding messages to co-workers. When you do forward an email to someone else, reply to the sender letting them know that you've sent their inquiry along to so-and-so who handles such-and-such. Provide that person's contact information so that the sender has a way to reach the right individual in your company.

2. Your Reply is a Letter, Even if it Doesn't Use Paper

Email feels quick, easy and informal, and since it is designed to allow quick responses it should be treated as such. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't carefully compose your paragraphs, re-read them to make sure they make sense, spell-check and grammar-proof your messages, and include an appropriate signature.

It is much easier to type "for more information about that pls come to our meeting tomorrow at 2. joe johnson will be going over the budget in detail. thanks, laura" than it is to respond with:

"Dear Stephanie:

Please come to our budget meeting tomorrow, where Joe Johnson will be providing detailed information that will address your concerns. I hope to see you there."

Thanks,

Laura Brown

Payroll Manager

SuperCompany

But unless Laura knows Stephanie really well, the first email will come off as hasty and unprofessional. Just because Laura knows that "pls" means "please" doesn't mean Stephanie is well-versed in e-speak.

Many well-written, detail-oriented people slip into down and dirty writing habits when emailing. But the following simple guidelines should never be forgotten:

- use good grammar and sentence structure

- format your response with a salutation and paragraph breaks

- use a signature that includes your full name, title, and company name unless you are responding to a co-worker with whom you are on a first-name basis

- don't use common email abbreviations such as "pls"

- don't fall into the habit of not capitalizing the beginning of sentences

3. Smile at the Customer, Except in Email

In our personal emails, we let people know that a message is tongue-in-cheek or meant to be funny with a cute little smiley emoticon. But those customer service training classes that told you to deliver responses with a smile weren't talking about literal ones when it comes to email. Communicate your service-friendly nature in the tone of your reply, not with an emoticon. While chances are that the person you're replying to uses them as well, they won't be expecting them as a response to a professional inquiry.

It should go without saying that your email address itself should also be professional. If you're working for an organization, you probably won't have any other option. But resist the urge to set up home business email addresses such as cuteandsexymomma@hottieland.com unless the services you're providing require being cute and sexy. And even then, be careful.

4. Typos Can Make You Blush

When you're responding to large volumes of email every day, your fingers fly across the keyboard. Typos are inevitable. But remember that spell check may not catch them all.

If you start a message with a "hello" but forget to include the "o," then you're going to begin your correspondence with "Hell, Bob."

If you explain to someone that you've forwarded her inquiry to "Tim Gray, our asst. manager," you've done your due diligence. If you forget the "t" in assistant, your recipient will spend a lot of time wondering what exactly Tim does all day and why her message ended up with him.

If you tell you're boss you've "taken a shot and drafted the proposal, so could he please review the attached document and give you some feedback," he knows you're working hard. If you forget that the "o" and the "i" on your keyboard are side by side and put the wrong one in the word "shot," then your boss will have images of you sitting on the toilet with your laptop. That's probably not what you really want.

5. The Send Button is Not Always Your Friend

My email program at work likes to make a jerk out of me now and then. The send button is located so close to the "attach" button that when I go to include a document with a message, I often end up sending a half-composed email without the attachment instead.

Be aware of such quirks in your email program, and don't be trigger-happy with your mouse. When a response seems to be hung up in cyberspace, avoid the urge to keep hitting the "send" button. This often leads to five copies of your reply in the other person's inbox, and that's just annoying.

When you do make a "oops - I the send button too soon" mistake, apologize for the error in your follow-up message.

6. Sometimes, the Send Button is Actually Your Enemy

There's nothing worse in terms of email screw-ups than sending a message to the wrong person. If you're lucky, you just send someone information they really don't need and waste their time. If you're unlucky, you send a note complaining about your boyfriend's wandering eye to your boss instead of your best friend, or shoot off confidential reports to a client instead of a colleague.

If you've set up an address book, it is very easy to end up with an additional or wrong recipient in your "to" header. Always check and double-check your recipients before you hit the send button.

7. Thank You for Not Just Thanking Me

We end standard business letters and phone calls with a "thank you" without even thinking about it. But for some reason, this second nature doesn't always exist in email.

Don't forget the power of showing appreciation.

If someone responds to you with critical information by email, thank them for it in a reply. But remember that in a world where our inboxes fill several times a day, a well-intentioned message saying nothing more than "thanks" can be as irksome as it is kind. Try to include other valuable information that you need to communicate to the recipient in your thank-you note.

8. Please the Masses by not Mass-Mailing Them

How many emails do you open each day that turn out to be nothing more than cc's of an ongoing conversation between two co-workers or a co-worker and a client?

The ability to "carbon copy" is a valuable tool that lets us keep a large number of people in the loop with just one message. But since it is so easy, we often make the assumption that everyone wants to know everything. Unless someone is directly involved in a conversation, ask them if they want to continue receiving cc's rather than just flooding their inbox.

The same goes for listservs and mass mailings. Give your colleagues the option to not receive messages unless the information is truly critical to their work. Maybe they'll do the same for you and you'll spend less time weeding through your inbox every day.

9. Don't Lose the Personal Touch

I have a colleague I email back and forth with several times a day. We get a lot of work done that way. I often go several days without actually seeing this man. That's rather odd, considering his office is just two doors down from my own.

We've become a society that prefers to communicate by keyboard. This has both advantages and disadvantages. We can get more done without leaving our desks, but we lose the personal touch.

Working out issues by email instead of spending hours in a meeting room going around in circles can be both efficient and headache-saving. But if all you need to do is ask a co-worker down the hall a simple question, get up and take a walk now and then. It is important to put faces behind names and words, and to remember that the people we work with are humans and not just keyboard-clicking automatons.

The same thing goes for clients. If you sense a tone of frustration or confusion in a message, try picking up the phone and giving the person a call. Sometimes a bit of personal contact is all it takes to turn an angry customer into a satisfied one.

10. Think Before You Delete

In the Pre-Email Era, we wrote letters and filed them carefully. Office assistants sometimes spent entire work days organizing correspondence.

Today, we send emails and never give them a second thought. Inevitably, a customer contacts the office complaining that she hasn't heard back from us yet. We frantically search our saved messages for the reply we know we sent, and come up empty.

Make sure to save copies of sent messages you know may come back to haunt you or need further attention. Organize your saved messages in folders that allow you to easily look them up by category. It can be quite satisfying to be able to forward your boss a copy of a detailed response you sent a client when that client has contacted him to complain about your lack of attention to her issue.

Email is supposed to make our lives easier. So let it. By organizing and planning out your responses, avoiding embarrassing typos and too much informality, and keeping the personal touch in your work interactions, you can use email to your advantage.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about email is to walk away from it and breathe in some fresh air now and then. Your messages will still be there when you get back.