Email Habits That Could Be Harmful To Your Business
There’s a lot that can go wrong with email communication. Unopened emails, cluttered mailing lists, wrong addresses leading to a high bounce rate, and missed messages from the amount of inbound mail your server receives on a daily basis.
But there are also some email habits that can be harmful to both your business’ reputation and the way it operates. And these habits can exist within your team, going unchecked for months on end.
As such, it’s best to be aware of the most common, potentially harmful email no-nos that your team members may be falling into.
No Detail
Ever heard the phrase ‘this meeting could have been an email’?
It’s not just a way for people to complain about being dragged into endless meetings demanded by upper management. It’s also a frustration that comes out of many emails lacking the right details, leading to more frequent face to face call requests.
Not only does this take up time in the work day, but it can seriously demotivate your best employees. If they feel like information has to be dragged out on a regular basis, they’re more likely to burn out from the simple mental load of trying to get things done properly.
No Customer Service Voice
With email communication being faceless, and technically voiceless, it can become a bit of a habit to be clear and quick in the way things are worded.
After all, it’s easy to quickly and sharply respond to an email. You just have to type out a message and send it off. That being said, many employees take this fact a little too seriously, and end up harming your business’ customer service reception.
When an employee answers a little too sharply, a little too vaguely, or sounds outright rude in the way they’ve responded, you could get an official complaint headed your way.
And during your investigation, you may find that this employee often comes across in a less than flattering way. You’ll want to make use of an eDiscovery Platform to collect as much data on this as possible.
In doing so, you can address the current complaint, and prevent future complaints by training employees in proper email etiquette.
Too Many Emails
Corporate email inboxes are often overloaded. Company newsletters, inter-department questions, and client messages all end up in the same place. And when they do, important things are likely to be missed.
This is the kind of problem that can be addressed in a variety of ways. For one, make sure you have a proper FAQs handbook for employees to refer to.
For another, make it clear that related emails should all go on the same chain, so no one has to go hunting for a certain message when they need to refer to it.
Employee email habits can both slow down the workday and even reflect badly on your business itself. But when you know the likely problems, you can iron them out from the get go.
