a(HUGE)company

Widgets need to go to hell.

Enough said.

This is a continuation to my previous post entitled: What is email and how quickly should I reply?

I quite honestly think Instant Messaging will be the demise of my future. Like I had said before, email has its time and place, its prioritized. IM isn’t however, when you get an IM you’re obligated to reply instantly. So it really ticks me off to see people talking about how IM will replace email as a form of communication. IM has its time and place; it shouldn’t be used as a replacement to email. With email you leave a digital paper trail of everything previously said so that a large group of people can review it quickly if necessary, this does not apply with IM however, you need to have a client that supports logging and always be in a group conference so everyone gets everything. This of course is never the case though.

I agree, IM is nice, I use it religiously which is probably why I get next to no work done on a daily basis. I could go on about VoIP and video chat, but that would be a whole new post, which is why I will stop here.

I often ask myself, how should email be prioritized? Sure I’ve read up on all this “GTD,” but aside from that, really how should email be handled? I’m guilty of always being tethered to my computer/phone checking my email every 20 minutes, most of the time I don’t physically check it though because some sort of notification always pops up You’ve got mail!; except not in the creepy AOL way. The reason I’m bringing this to the table is because I often feel 50% of the email I send goes to /dev/null, not because it’s junk, just because people don’t care.

Here’s my own rendition, on a scale from 24 hours down to 3 seconds of how quickly emails should be replied to.

• 24 hours - acceptable, but feels like snail mail
• 12 hours - mediocre
• 6 hours - good
• 3 hours - great
• 1 hour - this should be the standard
• 10 minutes - excellent, I should pay you but not in a whorish way
• 2 minutes - this person should use IM instead
• 3 seconds - get a life, stop raping your mail server

Now, does it blend scale? Let’s say this email is going to a support help desk, some general mailbox that gets picked apart by vultures. I expect a reply within 1 hour in most cases. This same bar should apply whether you’re paying for the service or not, yes that’s harsh but if you’re not paying for it I’m a little more flexible. For example, I email them at 2 am; I wouldn’t expect a reply till morning anyways. They aren’t getting paid to stay awake so why bother? Ok I take that back, I stay up and I have no reason! I’m just crazy, that’s all. Paying for a service and getting horrible support is another thing though and I wish more businesses would work on this.

Ok, now personal email. This is a touchy subject because I’d expect a reply within 12 hours at least. Let me put this into real life perspective. Would you let your traditional mailbox pile up for days? Of course not, it would simply be overrun by junk mail, bills, packages, or whatever else you may have coming. I could most certainly deal with a piled up inbox because you can easily sort and eliminate emails which don’t need reply. I know, your defense is that the post office will stop delivering after a while, but set that aside and treat this as you would your inbox. But, how would you physically remove mail from a mailbox that had been stuffed for 5 days? Using your Kanata of course!

The only reason I’m in such a tizzy over this is because I’ve experienced several different things with email over the years. Either you get a reply or a lump of coal. Sometimes the reply could be as simple as “ok got it, working on it,” while other times people go out onto to that extra limb to provide you with as much information as you requested and then some. I just think that’s great, and I try to put that extra “oomph” into my emails too.

To end this, I would like to commend those who’ve replied to me quickly and efficiently. Robert Scoble - Scoble Show, emailed him a few months ago, replied in 7 minutes; impressive, but sad at the same time because if I were paying him I would of had to wait longer ;). Cali Lewis - Geek Brief TV, emailed for podcasting advice, replied 2 and a half hours, great considering the length of my email; yes I basically wrote a small novel. Unfortunately that concludes my very short list, sure it may be bias since I haven’t really emailed that many to test their reply time; but there are a few dozen I have yet to receive replies from; not particularly podcast related, just small stuff in general. In example, suggestions like “how about add an RSS feed?” or “your template is cool, are you releasing any of those?”

I’m going to make it my personal agenda when I start my podcast to reply to everyone’s emails, good or bad. Even Cali takes some heat sometimes as displayed in her recent episode “The Critic.” You know what; right now I wouldn’t even care if you emailed me about this blog. Or anything, I like to talk and meet interesting people. Sure I’d prefer you use the comments if it was something you had to say publically, but aside from that my email address is in a block on the right.