REPLY TO EMAILS.......

Though Email was invented in early 1970s, it was used in Business commonly from late 1990s and early 2000s. This was a revolution at the point of time, as it helped exchanging messages and files really very fast when compared to the traditional post method. This also helped business to function faster and in turn grow faster.

Once Emails became the common form of communication, training on "Email Etiquette" became very common and almost all Organisations provided this Trainings to its employees. The reason why Organisations made its employees to undergo this training was that, since employees will be communicating through emails with external stake holders, they need to uphold the reputation of the Company and those Emails became the face of the Company. I would say that there will no Soft Skills Trainers of those time, who never conducted a training or session on Email Etiquette. We have seen CHROs, CEOs insisting the importance of Email Etiquette in their communications. Various points were covered under this training, but today, I would like to insist on one point, which is still not learnt by many professionals - Replying to Emails, yes even today, we see that there are many executives who never reply to emails even after reminders or they take their own sweet time in replying to emails, sounds familiar ? Reason why I am talking about this now is that recently I came across such a situation, wherein one of my client is refusing to reply to emails even after few reminders when followed-up on payments. Now, without spending much time about the person or company, let us see what negative impacts it creates

1. Apart from creating negative impact about the person, it also creates negative impact about the Organisation. It creates a generalistic view that employees working in that organisation never reply to emails or reply eamils late
2. Also, since the follow-up is related to payment, it also creates a negative impact that they pay their vendors late
3. More importantly, when more and more people behave like this, a general feeling of acceptance is created that 'Not replying to emails is OK"

Dear friends, let us not misuse or spoil this wonderful tool which helped Organisations to grow rapidly. Let us contribute for further growth and not press the rewind button. Let us create a habit of "clearing all mails by end of day" or atleast "clearning all mails by end of week". This will show how empathetic we are.

If for some reason, we don't have an ansswer, let us atleast reply back informing the same and provide them a tentative time by when we could come back, or if the reply is negative, let us communicate instead of keeping the other person waiting.

Though this is a very basic skill, I thought i need to highlight this as still many people have not developed this skill yet.

#replytoemails

#emailetiquette