In today’s environment of being steeped in constant communications coming at us from every angle, it is perfectly understandable to fall behind in replies. We have voice mail messages, emails, IM’s, texts and of course facebook posts and twitter DM’s. How is anyone expected to keep up?
It is a challenge but unfortunately it’s not an excuse to leave someone hanging when they need information or input from you.
Blow off the top layer of dust in your email inbox, and see how many messages are sitting there because you can’t move forward without a response from someone? If you check your sent items folder you’ll find more evidence of the same – questions put out there in the universe, falling flat with no replies. Or perhaps you’re the culprit, creating a backlog because you haven’t replied.
Following is a simple suggestion, which, if everyone followed, would eliminate the email log jam. When you receive a request or question from an email:
Ask Yourself – do I know the answer or have enough information to supply the answer right now?
If yes – shooting off a quick reply right now is much, much better than assuming you’ll reply later. This is because “later” will get you deeper into email clutter from more incoming messages.
Bonus tip: unless you have a definitive reason not to, once you’ve sent your reply, delete the question to clean out the clutter.
If no – reply now anyway – except your response will be something like, “I don’t have an answer for you right now” or “I’m not able to get you that information right now”. Then tell them that you will get back to them in ‘x’ number of days. It could be tomorrow or it could be in 10 days – either way – you’re not leaving the person hanging, you’re setting proper expectations.
Bonus tip: drag that email down to your Tasks icon and open a new task to respond with the appropriate information. Give yourself the ‘x’ number of days to complete it that you’ve promised. Create a reminder for it if you need to, or move the task to your calendar on the day you need to respond.
What if you’re on the receiving end – or I should call it the NOT-receiving end. You’ve sent a question or request for information and have gotten nothing. What’s the correct and polite approach?
In general, unless it was a critical request, give the person 3 to 5 business days. Then email again with the subject line “following up on this open item”. That gives the recipient the alert that he or she owes you an answer. In the body, you can state very simply that you sent the original email x number of days ago, have received no reply and still need an answer. You can also state that “if you’re waiting from information from someone else, please let me know”.
Some people are simply disorganized with communications and they always need a reminder. Other people are not very good at cluing you in on a background situation that is causing the lack of reply.
In both cases it is perfectly acceptable and even helpful to remind someone that you are on hold! Another helpful suggestion, when you send a question to frequent offender of “replying with silence”, how about including, “I need an answer by x date, so I will be following up 2 days from now”. Then keep hounding! And don’t apologize for it!
Makes great sense to me. Now if we can only get everyone to follow these recommendations, this will be a lot easier for all of us.
Good post! I generally follow this. But I must try out the ‘deleting of emails right after replying’ rule. I don’t do that and wind up with a lot of old emails until I do my monthly (or so) cleaning. Good tips!