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e-Behaviour -- How to Avoid e-Mail Overload

With few exceptions, internal surveys conducted by Customer Champions demonstrate that good internal communication supports high levels of employee satisfaction. As a result, clients are asked to look into improving these communications and, more often than not, this includes e-mail.

In conjunction with communication expert Hilary Briggs, Customer Champions recently conducted a study into e-mail use and abuse. The study took the form of diaries tracking a days' worth of e-mail, both received and sent, for nearly fifty European business people (majority UK-based).

E-mail elicited surprisingly emotionally-charged reactions ranging from angry frustration in the most extreme of cases, to a feeling of relief when one finished with his or her e-mail. The two most common sources of irritation were inappropriate use and information overload.

Inappropriate Use

One diarist had consistent problems with his manager because she liked to avoid awkward confrontation by conducting her reprimands via e-mail. It is too easy to hit the reply button in anger and let rip in response. In the old days of letter writing, this would have been a rare occurrence because of the cooling-off period involved in and the more formal rules associated with letter writing.

Inappropriate use was often seen from people who were fixed into a routine of electronic communication, had eschewed other forms of communication and perhaps even used e-mail as a barrier to hide behind, as illustrated above. Psychologists estimate that at least 60 percent of communication is performed through non-verbal means. Non-verbal communication includes body movements and gestures, touch, facial expressions and eye contact. Another 30 percent of communication occurs through the tone of voice. That means that the actual words used in communication only contribute 10 percent to the actual conveyance of a message. e-Mail, of course, involves only words.

In an attempt to add some expression, emoticons were sometimes used:

These can help convey a joke, sarcasm, etc. However, emoticons don't go very far in conveying the complex range of emotions that are seen through body language and tone of voice. They were also not widely used because they were seen by some as a little too frivolous for the business environment.

Management gurus often site the impromptu meeting around the water-cooler as the most valuable communication exchange in a company. But what about the office notice board? Maybe it could be resurrected to eliminate those annoying "Can the person who left the mouldy sandwich in the fridge please throw it away" kinds of e-mail. Consider that when you add up the time it took to write that e-mail, the space it took on the network and servers, and the time for everyone in the building to read and discard it, the figures add up to a phenomenal amount of wasted money in lost working time.

For those people who have to communicate over time zones, e-mail and voicemail are often the only real way. However, we have seen that the telephone is a severely underused tool because people claim they don't have time for the small talk involved in telephone etiquette. But, do away with at your own risk -- it is this very personal interest that builds relationships, and these relationships help our working life go more smoothly!

Information Overload

In business environments where employees felt the need to protect or defend themselves, e-mail was used as a weapon rather than a tool, with wholesale information dumping being the norm so as to avoid being accused of not keeping anyone informed. This leads to poorly tailored information and reams of text to wade through in order to find items of real value.

One might think that overload in a "blame-culture" will surely be endemic and impossible to change without a complete change in culture. People did wage their own war on e-mail dumping with some success. This was done in two ways:

First, people led by example, making improvements in their own e-mail communications. When sending an e-mail, these people would consider the purpose of the communication and tailor the e-mail around gaining the desired response. They kept the text short and to the point, and included attachments (most everyone's pet hate) only when absolutely necessary. They also considered the distribution list so that the appropriate people received the message. Finally, they used the subject header to carry key information and any deadline date.

A second, more radical approach was to simply return e-mails deemed to be too general with a statement telling the sender that the e-mail has not been read and requesting a more customised version.

"There is no quick and easy panacea," says Juliet Miller of Customer Champions, "but what we can do is start to change the way people within companies view and use e-mail." The need to deal with this issue is just beginning to be addressed. An article by eCustomerServiceWorld.com, adapted from "The Ten Second Internet Manager: Survive, Thrive and Drive Your Company in the Information Age," by Mark Breier & Armin A. Brott, suggests picking three discrete blocks of e-mail time to avoid it taking over your day.

Evidence suggests that poor use of e-mail leads to a more stressful working environment. We're all familiar with "Dress-Down Friday" -- some companies are now even instituting "E-mail-Free Friday." The stress caused by e-mail is obvious, however, taking a look at e-mail communication as a whole is a much better solution than banning it altogether once a week.

Contact Customer Champions at info@customerchampions.co.uk or telephone Colin Bates or Juliet Miller at +44 (0) 1527 894521.


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