When "It must have gone to my spam folder" is no longer acceptable in business

I was a bit upset when I facilitated an introduction that would be beneficial to both parties and one person did not respond. I gently reached out to them wishing them well and asked if they had received the introduction. They responded quickly saying it must have gone to their spam folder for which they quickly retrieved and did the follow up. I'm grateful my intervention may help in the conversation, but how often is this the 'excuse' that we give to others?

While SPAM folders provide a purpose to protect us from unwanted messages; given we know there are things in there that may not belong, why do we not manage that? In the end, when we don't mitigate the risk of potentially missing a communication and blame it on the SPAM folder, what does that do to the relationships we do want to nurture? Quite frankly, it sends a bad signal when we give that as an excuse.

As leaders, we need to put in place systems that assure us that we reduce risks in missing transactions or communications. Customers don't accept communications going to SPAM. Then why do we think it's acceptable to use this as an excuse for our other interactions? I simply want you to think about your lack of managing your systems reflects poorly to those who are impacted by them.

Instead, I recommend the following:

• You or designee review the SPAM folder daily and any missed communications, send your apologies for the delay and take ownership of it.
• Create additional rules in your mail system that "if" and "from" important people or entities, to send them to another folder or mark them for follow up.
• Unsubscribe from all mailing lists that you don't want so your name / email is not shared with other mailing lists; causing more SPAM to go to that folder and possibly missing something important.

While technology has become a life savor for us from an efficiency perspective, over utilization and dependency can be our demise and ruin relationships.

So, the next time you find an important communication in your SPAM folder, what will you do? Blame the system or will YOU take accountability for the relationship?

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-Deb Coviello, The Drop In CEO