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When Can I Expect an Email Response?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the turnabout-is-fair-play dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ever sit there waiting for an email response and wonder what's going on? Did they get it? Did it get filtered? A study looks at the responding habits of a large group of corporate users. They find, among other things, that users would try to 'project a responsiveness image. For example, sending a short reply if a complete reply might take longer than usual, intentionally delaying a reply to make themselves seem busy, or planning out timing strategies for email with read receipts.' Tit-for-tat, 'Users would try to reciprocate email behaviors -- responding quickly to people who responded quickly to them, and lowering their responsiveness to people who responded slowly to them in the past.'"

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Its all individual by RevDobbs · · Score: 5, Insightful
    . . .The little notice they get apparently does not stimulate their curiosity as it does mine. . . . I have one person that will check it each morning and that is it. So if you need an answer before that, you have to call him.

    Which is fine. It means he is concentrating on the task at hand and not being easily distracted.

    If you need an immediate answer, why the hell are you resorting to email? There is no reliable way to even be sure that he received your message, let alone that he is going to read it right away or take the time to addesss it.

    If you need an answer for something, never rely on email. It is great for "please review the attached doc and get back to me by Friday" (if followed up with a phone call before Friday) or "FYI" stuff. But it isn't a substitute for a phone call (which may still be shunted to voice mail), or a physical visit if the person is close enough.

  2. I disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We're the Cut'n'paste generation. We don't really think about what we write before putting 'pen to paper' anymore for the following reasons:

    1. You can cut'n'paste you sentances to make some resemblance of ordered thought.
    2. You can get a quick response, so if you're imprecise, you'll know about it quicker.

    So basically latency has plummeted, but we're probably less efficient at doing things than we used to be before all this 'new fangled technology'.

    Am I going to read this comment through? Do a spellcheck? nope, I'm going to spin in out, with it's imprecision, flaws and ambiguity, for I know that someone else will pick up on those point very rapidly and therefore I do not need to bother...