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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."
Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail
Let me guess. They did the survey via e-mail.
I discussed this point with my boss once. I argued for e-mail:
...but with an e-mail, all parties involved have a record of when it was sent, who received it, and what was said.
There may be a record (via phone company) of when a call took place, what number was dialed, and how long it took...
That last part is hard to do with a phone conversation, legally anyway.
=Smidge=
That it really didn't kill the phone. And the overlap between landline and mobile phone usage probably makes that 100% as well. And hundreds of millions of people get their email through a phone line using dial-up or DSL.
Let's say I wanted to ask someone a question, a simple question with no real need for an immediate reply. I send an e-mail. If I were to use regular phone, I have to deal with polite conversation which I may or may not have time for. Not that I don't mind idle conversation, it's just something I don't always want to deal with.
Let's say someone was visiting me and there a traffic advisory, or something else they would need to index later. I would phone first, then text an instruction block to the phone. Same when grocery of component shopping.
And messaging when someone is not around, e-mail is so much better than voice. Mobile phones are not always reliable to relay all the important words, and some people on land lines use really crappy answering machines, but an e-mail will always get the message out.
E-mail is more important than phone these days. That's rather a fact of life. Welcome to the 21st century, where no one has to talk to anyone.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive
Probably because those three things are more typically used for personal reasons, not business reasons. It's not so much a problem with the tools, but the use. If they became more widely integrated into the workplace, they wouldn't be considered "disruptive".
At any rate, if you have employees that are good at managing their own workflow, you don't have to worry about clamping down on "disruptive" technology.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
People hate voice mail.
It is easier to plan, revise and think-out email.
People are nervous about speaking.
E-mail leaves the ever-important trail to use against people later.
You're already using the computer, so it seems like an extra effort at times to switch tasks to the phone.
And this is the biggest supposition on my part, but it seems that people "look forward" to getting email, where as they feel annoyed anytime the phone rings.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Email for instruction. Telephone for clarification. Remote VNC when the other two fail.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
I gotta throw out my opinion here, with a bit of perspective from my last employer. Not everyone I worked with was nice. But the mantra was throughout the company, if you can't get them on the phone, hunt them down in person. So when someone got a bug up his ass about some issue, they would call my phone... over and over. You couldn't send them to voicemail... they would know right away you were there... so you had to wait out the three or four consecutive phone calls in hopes that they will just give up. But they rarely did. They would storm into my office ranting and raving about XYZ and they need ABC and whatever else they could complain about to keep me from my work. I honestly fought for an hour with a coworker (salesguy) that FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME STILL COULDN'T INSERT A PICTURE, FROM FILE, INTO A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION! And somehow this was my fault, because I was the computer guy. But I digress... anyway, even on the phone, they all went a mile a minute, giving me no time to think, no time to compose, nothing I could do where I could come out on top of that situation.
For this sake I preferred email corrispondance. I could think, sometimes over hours, what I needed to say, and constuctively lay it out how the situation needed.
But the old folks out there... the ones who insist I wear a tie, shine my shoes, shave my face TO SIT BEHIND A DESK, actually told me I was no longer allowed to respond to any issues of ANY kind via email. It had to be by phone.
Seriously, welcome to the 21st century. It is the future. A better mousetrap has been made. Quit making me catch mice with a broomstick and a bucket.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I lost points on my last review because of my "over reliance" on email. And I'll probably lose points on the next one.
Don't forget that in a lot of email systems I can tell when you've opened my email and whether you deleted it or not.
Email is its own paper trail AND with magical CYA powers. And that really annoys a certain type of personality.
Now don't get me wrong, email has its uses. However, I would MUCH rather use a phone for most day-to-day business activities. Here's why:
- You're a lot more likely to get an answer in a timely manner if you call the person first, and THEN email them if they're not there, than if you just email and wait for a reply. I don't keep outlook open all the time because I find it a nuisance and it crashes all a time; phones don't crash usually.
- It takes longer to write (and to read) an email than to make a phone call.
- You don't get to show off your communication skills (such as bargaining) as much through email as you do on the phone.
Of course, over both of these, I prefer to walk down the hall to the person's cube and talk to them in person, but that seems outdated these days.
Email is asynchronous. Also, for (legitimate) emails, it's a lot more time-consuming for the sender to type it (~40wpm?) than for the recipient to read it (~a few hundred wpm). It doesn't take as much time -- and can be saved for handy reference, too.
I for one welcome our new SMTP overlords.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
And by "kill" we mean "is used 25 percent more often than", according to one survey. But we might as well have a funeral now, right?
Aren't you glad you posted that one anonymously.
Seems obvious that new tech will replace old tech. That said I still find that picking up the phone gets more done then an email. For the simple reason that people have to respond right away. It's simply harder (but not impossible) to stonewall.
Email and IM are the tools of choice at work. The crappy voip phones in our office use meridian mail, which I can only surmise was designed as an enormous practical joke on how to make someone quit their job merely over the tools instead of anything strictly job related... and which was accidentally shipped.
Our phones have this big red light on them when you have a voice mail waiting. Since somebody setup Meridian to ask you for a new voice mail password (one you've not used recently) every... what is it, 6 minutes?.. and since someone leaves me a voice mail once every 6 months.. invariably that light would come on and i'd have no way of getting it to shut off. Well, eventually I just unplugged my phone for a while and luckliy, when I moved desks and plugged it in, the light was gone. Now when people call me and try to leave voice mail, they get this horrible message saying this user hasn't setup their voice mail. Say it along with me in your best mortal combat announcer voice: "Flawless Victory!"
In any case, my phone is effectively a 1 way device. I use it to make non-work-related calls, or to dial into conference calls that aren't using pc/ip based audio streaming.
I'd like to dump the phone altogether and use a soft phone that integrates with an IM client. If I'm sitting at my laptop, we can communicate, and chances are, you'll try IM first.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Wasn't there an article on /. a few weeks back that claimed that email was dead? So now email is alive and is killing the phone?
I think if you add the landline and mobile percentages togther, you have 100% "Telephone" usage -- It's like asking if you get your e-mail "wirelessly" or "wired"...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
A few months ago my company came through the office and tore out everyone's regular phones and replaced them with super-duper Cisco VOIP sets.
... as if I don't have enough passwords to remember already, now I need to sign in to my freaking phone?) but they do have one upshot. If I just don't sign into the thing, nobody can call me -- the calls just roll right over into voice mail. And since my voicemails get emailed to me as attachments (where I can conveniently play them at faster-than-normal speed), I can basically ignore the phone handset and do everything through my PC.
The things are crap (you have to sign into them every morning
By my unofficial count, I'd say something like 30-50 percent of the office is doing the same thing, either intentionally or just because they can't remember to sign into the phones in the morning. I think it's actually boosted productivity -- nobody uses the phones to call around the office anymore, unless they've already sent an email or an IM to see if the person is available on the other end.
Maybe they're not so bad after all...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Unless both parties are signing their messages, either side can edit them to their hearts content, and there's no way to prove who (if either) is being honest. Even if they are signing them, they can simply ignore your message and claim it was never sent.
We are apparently supposed to conclude that 20% of the people in business do not have telephone service?
I am guessing telephone service in business is 100% as well. Now, we could make a similarly arbitrary distinction between email gotten via pop3 through a desktop client and IMAP email gotten through a desktop client and pop3 through a web client adn IMAP through a web client and I bet all four of those would fall below land lines in adoption.