Write Good Responses

If you are going to follow through and cut back your email usage you really need to consider how you are replying to messages that you recieve. Writing quick one line answers that almost ask for a response back especially when you are trying to avoid a continual email conversation are what you really need to avoid.

Taking your time and writing more detailed responses is where you really need to be heading. This is not to say that you need to write a book or a really long email, but then what do I mean you may be asking well, here are a few tips.

• Give Details – Try and make sure you give details of something if you think it may be something that the recipient will ask for.
• Be clear and concise – While you may understand what you want done, some others may not be as clear it may take you an extra minute but explain what you want done.
• Share the deadline – If there is a deadline when the task needs to be done by include that in your email. If you want something done by 5pm and do not mention this it may not be assumed that is what you meant.

By being sure to include the details that others might want in the first email should help to avoid delays, and mean that you will get better results hopefully in less time. Even though you may imagine that you cover everything in almost all cases, there will be people that still feel the need to ask a question. There is a way around this, especially if you have adopted the idea of only checking and replying to email’s twice a day, then mention this at the end, just “by the way i wont be in front of email again till late this afternoon, I am sure you will be able to manage with these details”.  This of course is generally more a thing you would suggest to an employee rather then someone from another business.

Finally be sure that your phone number is on the bottom of the email, most people if they need a quick answer often don’t have a problem calling, and as long as you are efficient in how you handle your calls, you should be able to deal with a phone call a lot quicker then checking email often.