Hear No Evil, See No Evil — E-mail Kills the Phone

coondoggie writes to tell us that in a recent study e-mail has overtaken telephony as the most common workplace communication tool. "Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail, followed by fixed-line telephones (80%), mobile telephones (76%) and instant messaging (66%). The study points out the three most ubiquitous technologies increase productivity the most. Over 70% of the end-users surveyed say e-mail impacts positively on their productivity, followed by conventional fixed-line telephony (53%) and mobile telephony (52%). From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive, and could negatively impact productivity if not managed properly."

Comments

Discussed this with my boss...

[Smidge204]

I discussed this point with my boss once. I argued for e-mail:

There may be a record (via phone company) of when a call took place, what number was dialed, and how long it took...

...but with an e-mail, all parties involved have a record of when it was sent, who received it, and what was said.

That last part is hard to do with a phone conversation, legally anyway.
=Smidge=

Re:E-mail survey, right?

[garcia]

Let me guess. They did the survey via e-mail.

We'll they're better off doing it that way then by phone. It's not like I answer my phone for any number I don't recognize.

For just about anything I prefer chatting, e-mail, or any other electronic method as my time isn't 100% devoted to a single person. I can do 100 other things while responding to electronic messages. With a phone call my attention is solely with one person and that's just not a good way to operate for MOST functions of my day.