Emails Negative Rate of Return

118146 Resource 102302 102466 102466 1141911284486 1141911284486 Controlled Rethinking Email

New Research Raises Important Questions About Everyone's Favorite Tool

Recently had the opportunity to read the research of a University of Chicago Business School <a href="http://www.chicagogsb.edu/news/2006-02-16_epley.aspx">Professor Nicholas Epley on the subject of email</a>, our expectations of it and what it actually delivers. Essentially, though I think you should definitely check it out yourself because this is important, Epley's work comes to the conclusion that email is an extremely poor medium for emotional speech. By emotional speech Epley is not referring to ranting or off the charts emoting, but the more subdued inflections and nuances of the spoken voice, the emotions that we tend to take for granted since they are so common in our face-to-face or over the phone communications.In an earlier post we discussed <a href="http://sightlog.sightlinesconsulting.com/public/item/102792">Email's Negative Rate of Return</a> to the business, the idea that a lot of corporate knowledge assets are buried in the Inbox, which naturally goes dark during normal staff attrition. After 10 years or so of using email, having it take over business life might be a better way to say it, many people have started to question the medium. Does it make sense to bury communications with customers in email Inboxes, from which it will never see the light of day, or more importantly will never be cultivated for the insight it might provide to the sales, service and overall relationship with customer?Now there is another reason to really question email's monopoly on business communication. Are we speaking to the customer in a voice that they understand the same way we do? Face to face verbal communications are difficult enough, anyone who has been married will vouch for this, but Epley's research now questions whether or not we are actually communicating with the inflection and nuance that we think we are. His conclusions throw more suspicion on the whole email medium. One of the ideas that Epley advocates as the result of his study to limit email to pure content and try to keep the emotional tones out of it to the greatest degree possible. I am not sure that this is even possible. We do very little that is not in some or many ways influenced by the dreaded emotions. And when we talk about Customer Relationship Management aren't we really acknowledging that we have an emotional connection to the customer that we need to nurture? If we think we are nurturing this over email we may be sadly mistaken.So what's the alternative? There are now two hurdles that we must jump. First is the email Inbox issue and the imminent loss of corporate knowledge assets, and the second is the email medium's shortcomings as a rich communication medium. One alternative is the use of a business collaboration tool/service. We have started to use <a href="http://www.customervision.com/">CustomerVision</a> at SightLines, inviting clients in as well. When we have the need for electronic communications and a phone call is not the best option, we'll write a post in the CustomerVision business wiki and, through email, the correct people are notified. They can then join the discussion and post a reply, etc..What the difference between email and a business collaboration tool like CustomerVision? Well, first of all the communications are saved in an area you have created for this particular client relationship, forever. So no loss of knowledge. Second, because the medium is different and more public users are inclined to speak appropriately and professionally. That is not to say that their posts are unemotional; to the contrary, they are emotional but in the same way that the spoken voice we adopt in business situations is emotional - with nuance and inflection.It may not be the perfect answer but my guess is that management and staff are both starting to tire of the email Inbox and all if its attendant weaknesses, from embarrassment to lost customer loyalty. Services like CustomerVision will eventually handle the bulk of important corporate communications, while email will be used for notifications and updates on sports scores, and of course, spam. 9 application/xml false business wiki collaboration email Emails Negative Rate of Return What happens when the Inbox goes dark? http://sightlog.sightlinesconsulting.com/public/item/102792 When what you type isn?t what they read: the perseverance of stereotypes and expectancies over e-mail In short email does not work as well as we think http://www.chicagogsb.edu/news/2006-02-16_epley.aspx Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 68.79.117.127 68.79.117.127 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web