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When Can I Expect an Email Response?
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.'"
...anymore. you never respond to my comments.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
I just the other day got...an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday.-Ted Stevens, honorable US Senator from Alasak
See, it's not that people time e-mails to make themselves look busy, it's that the tubes get full!
sigfault. core dumped.
because the email is down due to clogged vacuum tubes.
The first comment to the article on that page is awesome and must be shared:
some additional behaviors that I've seen while working at a 30+ person startup:
- certain people respond to all emails in person, by getting up to talk to them or yelling across cubicles
- certain people prefer to communicate by email even when the recipient is sitting right next to them
- there is another group of people who send very few work-related emails, but who send interesting and/or funny emails to the entire company now and then.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I have 8 people that work in my Unit. When I send out an email to the group needing an immediate response, I know that only 2 will respond right away (assuming they are at their desk). The rest of them check their email at different frequencies. The little notice they get apparently does not stimulate their curiosity as it does mine. One of them will check each hour. 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.
I'm not. Frankly, I would have guessed this, especially considering that this is _corporate_ america, where looking busy can be more beneficial than doing good work. It is interesting how people would send an email and then keep checking "constantly" for a response. Why not just pick up a phone (or walk to the next cubicle in some cases) if you are that concerned about the message? Reciprocating, however, is ... odd; What do all the OCD emailers do the first time they contact someone?
"Email means that someone can ignore you instantly"... this after sending 25 emails and making 10 phone calls to someone else in the organization, and that person's supervisor, and the supervisor's supervisor.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
"Ever sit there waiting for Slashdot post and wonder what's going on? Did they post it? Did it get ad-blocked? A study looks at the posting habits of a small group of Slashdot editors. They find, among other things, that editors would try to 'project a responsiveness image. For example, posting a short summary if a complete summary might take longer than usual, intentionally duping a story to make themselves seem busy, or planning out timing strategies for posts.' Tit-for-tat, 'Users would try to reciprocate posting behaviors -- responding quickly to people who responded quickly to them, and lowering their responsiveness to people who responded slowly to them in the past.'"
Somewhere along that post, I got bored and just did a copy-paste. Feel free to correct it later.
One thing that contributes to that is Lotus Freaking Notes' brilliant feature of checking email, putting up an alert when you get new mail BUT NOT ACTUALLY DISPLAYING IT IN YOUR INBOX, thus forcing you to break your activity to make sure it's not something that can't be ignored.
As with much of Lotus Freaking Notes, this is a) an interface issue that was ironed out by the rest of the developer world 20 years ago and b) would have taken maybe 15 seconds longer to code properly than it did to do it wretchedly.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
At my company, almost everything is done by email. Most messages are responded to nearly immediately, and so everybody's expectation is that email is more of a conversation than something that will be looked at in 24 hours (may as well be 24 years).
Of course, little actually gets done since interruptions are contstant. Seriously, probably 2/3 of my time is allocated to just sending and receiving emails. And I work in a major, highly profitable company. I just don't understand how we do it.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Thanks for sending me an email. I'm taking a short break today, Wednesday 8/30. In my absence, please talk to KaraM about the MxTK project, JuhnA for workflow issues, or HiuS for general questions.
I've massively cut back my response times to email, and deliberately so. Maybe five times a day I'll go through and reply now, sometimes maybe three.
Instant messenger I tend to reply to...well...instantly. Even if it's only to say that I'll have to answer in a couple of minutes. Your best bet for getting hold of me is a phone message. Why will sound familiar to many. I was getting so distracted and interrupted by email that I turned off any notification that I'd received any. From then on, I found I was able to concentrate on my work a lot more.
What's been interesting is that people I regularly correspond with have noticed this and fitted in with the pattern fine. I don't think they've consciously done it - they've clearly learned how to get hold of me if they need to, and what kind of response times to expect otherwise. It's beneficial all round really - the key is that the two methods of getting hold of me quickly are interactive methods - phone or IM. This cuts down misunderstandings, stops people wasting time formulating the perfect email to send me because they can just get through it in a normal conversational style, adds informality as we're able to use a spot of humour whilst discussing whatever needs doing...it's just better. IRC aside, flamewars are more common in email than in IM. And phone-based flamewars? When's the last time you ever heard of one, if ever? Personal contact always mitigates such behaviour.
So email is no longer a quick way to reach me at work. It's a conscious choice, and it's worked out absolutely fine.
Cheers,
Ian
I'm surprised they didn't mention the people who are black holes. You send them emails, they read them, but they do nothing until you walk over there and prod them to see if they have read it and only then will they give you an answer.
I've tried all sorts of things to coax an answer out of people like this through email... writing shorter messages which only ask one yes/no question, writing longer ones, etc etc nothing I try seems to be able to make them type that damn reply.
Not only all the behaviours from TFA, but also those noted in your post, are exactly as they were back in the snailmail era. Only the medium has changed.
Back when I was a lad, we had actually write with pen on paper, address envelopes, lick our own stamps, and trudge to the post office uphill both ways in a snowstorm! you kids have it easy, what with email to do all the dirty work. Think of the galoshes makers!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Or we might leave that to medical professionals and keep doing tech stuff.
you never respond to my comments.
You only give me your funny mod points...
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Its also really interesting, how people behave when you send them a job application: they just wont send a reply, even if you send another shit-friendly email, you can do whatever you want, they just wont effin' reply to your emails/whatever! No way!!! I'm sorry, beeing unemployed just totally sucks...
I like to copy the text from a read receipt and then send a dozen or so messages containing that text to the sender over the next 30 minutes. : p
This guy's the limit!
Like cancer or AIDS? Just a thought.
Because everyone knows that research in one discipline never proves useful in other disciplines. Thank God knowledge is inherently categorized into "useful" and "unuseful" boxes, so we can easily dismiss research that is a waste of time.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Not a study, but I did write about it...
b itch-and-so-am-i.html
"When I send somebody an e-mail, I expect them to respond. One day is nothing. Two days if you're busy, I can understand and appreciate that. Three days is rude, and anything beyond that is stupid. We're not talking about sitting down to write an essay here, some grand quest to prove to everyone that you do actually know how to spell, use grammar, punctuation, and occasionally capitalize letters. I'm talking about a simple "Sorry, I don't have any information about that." How hard was that? It takes a few seconds to read, a few to comprehend, and a few more to pen an answer.
Seriously, what is the point of having e-mail if you aren't going to use it? How can you ever expect it to be useful when you treat it with all the responsibility of a two-year-old? When the phone rings, you answer it. You wouldn't for a second think about letting it ring, figuring they'll just call back in a few weeks. And what the hell makes you think you're so special that someone who obviously wants something from you is going to find it acceptable that you made them wait days if not weeks to be blessed with your response?
This past week, I sent an e-mail to an executive producer for a TV show that airs on the SCI FI channel. I'm pretty sure I sent that on either a Friday or a Saturday night, and got a reply on Monday. That's fine, business and all that. I pinged him back, and within minutes got another reply. He was obviously sitting right there still dealing with his mail, and I appreciated him taking the time to help me out with something. But that's the rub, I appreciated him not taking a month to get back to me, something that otherwise should be baseline. It should be commendable that you answer your email within hours, not that you answered it at all." [...]
Rest is over here - http://bitch-what.blogspot.com/2006/08/e-mail-is-
http://about.me/paultenny
FROM: Potamus, Peter
TO: Falcone, Blue
SUBJECT: That thing I sent you!
Did you get that thing I sent you?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Cripes, what is funny about this is that I have already metmodded posts from this topic.
Anyway, when I first started in business, which was a surprisingly long time ago given what I'm about to say, the head of our company met with every new hire and, among other things, said this:
Respond to every voice-mail within one hour, and respond to every e-mail within one day.
I have always taken that as a maxim of business communication. Professionals should respond in those timeframes, or else you need to assume (a) something went wrong with the transmission (this covers a lot of professional gaffes, which is good when the person you are accusing is your client), or (b) they have been too busy to respond (which means you should "annoy" them anyway -- busy people like to be gadflied with important items), or (c) they are intentionally ignoring you, which means you should assume #1 or #2 anyway.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The same applies to improtance. ohh yea, the importance flag in outlook is of no use whatsoever because an emergency on your part, doesnt' mean an emergency on mine, unless your a client in which case see above.
Agh! E-mail "priorities". In my experience, anything marked "!" important was absolutely not important at all. I used to work for a company where some people would set that on every single e-mail they sent, no matter the content. I ignored it for a while, and then I set a casual rule for myself that anything with a little red exclamation mark next to it got ignored for 10 minutes minimum. Still, it annoyed me, so I made inbox rules to reverse any priorities (setting e-mails marked "low" to "high" and vice versa).
That was all well and good until my boss walked by and noticed all his e-mails were marked low priority. "Oh... huh, you didn't set them low priority? I just thought you were being considerate to my schedule. Must be some kinda bug!"
Ok, mod me down if you must, but I'm genuinely interested in this.
I work for a company in the UK which works with a company in the States. Sometime I have to email fairly technical (ie its about source code and programming in general) messages to my counterpart in the States. To make the process as simple as possible I spend some time breaking my question(s) into pieces, numbering them, and making them clear and hopefully straight-forward. The American company practically *always* only replies to the first point in the email. If their reply addresses the problem, we still have all the others to go through, as could be seen if they'd been read at the time the first one was.
I've had this with a couple of other companies which are based in the US, and even in the company I'm talking about I've emailed several different people with the same response.
Is this a widespread practice? And if so......why?
ARRRRRGGGGHHHH! I can't stand these. I hate them times a million. I have one vendor that wants a receipt sent when I DELETE their message. (I'm CC'd only, I'd yell if I could). I, as a rule, never send receipts back. Never. Not to my boss, no one. If you want to know that I got your message, call me and speak to me. That's a pretty good way to verify, and say, while you're at it; maybe you could just tell me what's up. If you want the aloofness and lack of immediacy of email, then I'm sorry, you don't get to immediately know when I've read your message.
blarg.
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...
I ignore them until I want an interrupt, then I deal with them in the priority *I* give them. I do not acknowledge how important you think it is (or how important you think you are). If they come to my desk, I tell them "I'm in the middle of something, and will get to your email/call soon".
So what is the "responsiveness image" presented by this article, considering it's an anonymous submission linking to a Wordpress blog that appears to have been created soley for the purpose of presenting a 2nd-hand discussion of a paper published 3 years ago? The part that really confuses me is the lack of ads.
I tend to reply as quickly as I can (that might depend on a lot of factors), but I never take into account how slowly someone responded. Just because (for example) someone doesn't have any respect for me to convey a timely reponse to me via email/sms/im/pm, doesn't mean I need to lower myself to that level.
Hi Eln,
Thanks so much for your prompt response. This is now urgent! I'm cc'ing all of the dev managers and the VPs of developments so that we can all track your responses to this issue. Please respond to all ASAP!!!
Oh, can we set up a meeting tonight at 8pm to discuss your findings? I've added this to everyone's calendar - I realize that this is short notice, but attendance is mandatory.
If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, random musings, opinions, or collateral information please respond.
Thanks everyone!
Bob
Senior SCSSACP
TPS report generation, QLDT division
AGAAP
email: bob@corp.com
fax: 1-212-212-1212
Mobile: 1-212-212-1223
Telex: TP-10925645
Pager: bob7979797@pagingservice.com
GPS coordinates: N36 06.285', W114 46.655'
IM: hotlovr69@msn.com
What I'm currently listening to: Mr. T - Respect yo Mama
The opinions epressed in the above email represent my opinion and do not represent the opinion of my company or management. This communication from corp.com may contain forward looking statements or confidential information and must not be forwarded or archived.
--
THIS MESSAGE WAS SENT FROM MY BLACKBERRY
--
THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN SCANNED BY AVG-PRO AND FOUND TO BE VIRUS FREE
Personally when I'm at work I only look at my emails about once or, if I get really bored, possibly twice, a day. With my private email accounts it's now got to the point where it may be as little as once a week. There's just that much crap being transmitted by email that I can barely be bothered to use it at all any more.
:) as I simply can't be bothered reading it. It's somewhat depressing really as everyone is aware of the problem and if there's actually important information in one of these mails then either a telephone call will ripple down the management chain or there'll be a desk visit to pass on the information as well.
:)
At home it's the never ending spam that's worn me down. My ISP runs spam filters and I run local spam filtering prior to downloading any actual messages and, whilst the level of spam became reasonable for a while, it's getting worse all the time and I get really bored deleting all the crap - even though most spam is automatically marked for me by software.
At work 70% of the email is useless noise which has been forwarded down the entire management chain with a message to "cascade to all staff". Sadly these message are usually along the lines of "Fred Bloggs has just been appointed as deputy leader to Mike Hunt and will now be reporting to Freda Smiggles" and whilst this is obviously a source of pride for Mr Bloggs, and undoubtedly useful for anyone who has dealings with Mr. Hunt and Ms. Smiggles, it has absolutely nothing to do with me or the team I work for. And in case you're wondering the other 30% consists of:
10% poor quality or old jokes, "unfunny" images and simply awful powerpoint slide shows.
9.9% good jokes or "funny" images.
0.1% funny powerpoint slideshows.
4% false rumours,
4% true rumours and
2% useful information.
Luckily though most of the mangement stuff get's processed by my mail filters so that it's automatically "marked as read" and moved into a spam folder (which is named "Management Information"
I've found that the more prevalent the use of email technology, the poorer the "signal to noise" ratio has become. I therefore long ago took the decision to give email less status than normal mail. So I have a quick scan first thing in the morning, seperate out the stuff that looks interesting and then either bin or ignore the rest.
If I'm sent something that requires a reply then I'll usually get round to it but very rarely with much regard to timing. I also always refuse to allow anything like "receipt reports" or "the email has been opened reports" and if I ever lose the ability to do this I'll just not run my mail client more than once a week.
So if you're expecting a reply to an email you've sent me then don't hold your breath. I'll do it when I get round to it. But by the same token when I send emails I don't expect a reply in any great hurry so at least I'm consistent
Personally I think the whole idea of a letter, whether transported via a physical medium or the aether, is to facilitate offline communication. You send it when you feel like it and I reply when I feel like it. That's a civilised way to communicate.
Devices and methods which facilitate urgent communication should be used sparingly and should be restricted to life changing/threatening events such as a loved one being taken ill or imminent disaster. Personally my job involves me concentrating on the matter in hand and I do not appreciate being continually interrupted with trivial crap.
Just my tuppence worth.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I just sent a mail professing my love to a girl i know and the suspense is fucking killin me.
It depends on the person's preferred method of communication. (I'm sure I'll mess up the categorizations.) Most people prefer one specific type with less preference for the others. Some folks are equally comfortable with multiple types.
Tactile? Those are the face-to-face meeting folks. They're not comfortable unless they can see you in the same room and watch the body language. They process new things by working with them in a hands-on fashion.
Visual? The e-mail and IM gods. Written is best for them. Very good readers (they tend to learn a lot from written texts).
Aural? The phone for everything folks. Or a cross-over with the face-to-face meeting folks. They are great at communicating and learning via verbal communication. These folks can repeat a conversation verbatim (or darn close).
I forget what the estimates are for the population at large for each category. But a lot of aural-centric folks simply aren't wired for communicating via e-mail / IM and have to be taught. They might come across as abrupt in written communications or leave IM conversations without saying goodbye.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I write code for a living. My mail-box has typical content like:
Trust me, I often don't get around coding as much as I'd want to myself.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I have 8 people that work in my Unit. When I send out an email to the group needing an immediate response, I know that only 2 will respond right away (assuming they are at their desk).
I've had a request to "send" "data" to someone, with a deadline of thursday for a few weeks now. It began, "OK, fine, no worries just tell me what data you need and in what format." No response. The owner of this project starts sending me colour-coded emails. "Urgent send data" I reply to him, "Give me an idea which items you need and in what form to send it." I get back "put it in an excel spread sheed, I don't know, here talk to this person xxxxxx@xxxxx.org" I email their contact and a week goes by. I get another urgent email. I reply I still don't have any spec or specifics and get another email. I send out a query to that one. Days pass and nothing. Finally I'm getting orange (which I presume is more urgent than red) and another plea to "send data soon, deadline approaching." I reply, to the entire list of those cc'd with the plea. "these people need to contact me, I need specifics, I don't just send "data" any old way." Finally someone kicks the people at xxxxx.org in the pants and they phone. Bam! It's taken care of in mere minutes. Got exactly what they needed.
So why did it take so long?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have found the reason a lot of people use email over phone, IM, or in-person meetings is that when email is sent, they have a (semi-)permanent record of that message, and it provokes a response back in the same manner, resulting in the same record. This "paper trail" then allows someone to go back and claim they discussed topics, brought up facts, alerted the appropriate people, and generally did everything they were supposed to do, and if a response did not happen... it's not their fault.
This is a double-edged sword. I work Help Desk - often, I request that a user send request by email so that A) we get all the details in writing, such as screen shots or error text, and B) they have a record that they sent the request. B is important because it prevents someone from saying "I reported this a week ago, why isn't it fixed?", but it also means that when they DO send it, I need to respond and follow up in a reasonable time frame, because it then becomes a part of Help Desk Metrics.
Some users despise email, because it consumes all their productivity handling it. Others live and die by it, unwilling to throw out even one-liners from 4 years ago for fear that a manager will ask them to review it at some point in the future. It is the latter that ratchet up the stress associated with email, because if you don't treat the system with the same importance they do, it throws their own system off-kilter (They no longer can rely on a timely response they can refer to in the future if needed), and it may be perceived as a lack of respect for them personally. It also means you need to carefully word and consider every email you send, because someone else will keep it for reference for possibly years from now.
Lotus Notes also has the Important flag available, in a column to display various pre-set icons for type of message... I've built dialogs for myself to insert custom icons into my messages (Notes hackers: the field is "_ViewIcon", values are positive integers). If used sparingly, you can definitely get someone's attention when your message shows up in their Inbox with an icon they've never seen there before. :-D
"Resist the pace of urgency"
These are the wise words from the Director of my department. She has a lot of experience dealing with kids with Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder, who believe it or not, resemble many geeks. For those of us who provide technical support this doesn't mean ignore or stall. It means prioritize and set reasonable boundaries for yourself. Some people seem to think better after they've articulated their problem in an email. Half the time, given some perculation time- they can actually solve their own problem. So stay focused, do your work, and deal with emails as you see fit. If you are one of those who may have high functioning ASD tendancies, don't worry, you are in good company.