When do you reply to e-mails?

[Speicher]

It may sound a strange question and perhaps it is. It relates to work/business rather than personal.

When I e-mail someone, I might get a reply within an hour or two, or never. In the latter case I wait one, two or even three weeks for a reply, depending on how urgent it is.

Increasingly people do not reply at all. The first time this happens, I will send them a polite prompt that I would like a reply, repeating my request etc, so they do not have to search for the original. So Ok they manage a response, to which I respond. Now if I send my second/third e-mail and receive no response -

Do I accept that my suggestion/request is unimportant to them, and they have no intention of replying

OR assume they have three millions things to do, and might respond if I try yet again.

The above scenario also applies to phone calls.
What might you ask is my big question to them. In the latest infuriating example, I have offered assistance to a local Charity, for me to do some office work, invoices, basic accounting, ordering etc. Seems I am not a suitable person for a fairly quick response.

Do you have a system/mechanism/folder? so that if an e-mail comes in that you are too busy to reply to at the time, you are prompted to reply perhaps a day or two later? (or even ? later that day)?

Is it reasonable of me to assume that if three weeks have gone by with no reponse, that I will not get a response.

 

[Black Sheep]

i normally reply straight away or start writing a reply so that it shows as a draft in my e-mails - this way i do actually go back to it since i hate drafts sitting there

if it doesn't seem to need a response or i can't give one at the time then it sits there until i either remember or they remind me,

tis the same with work that i've been asked to do, if people ask about it it gets dragged to the top of the pile, stuff that isn't asked about drops to the bottom and after three months i assume they're not bothered about it anymore and it gets swept off the desk into the bin.

 

[cheadle hulme]

Depends who its is. Important people get a quicker response. Depending on circumstances though, replying too quickly can look like you have too much time on your hands. (Like me today!)

Ring them if its urgent, they may have a full inbox.

 

[ChrisKH]

My system involves using the inbox for undealt with e-mails only. All e-mails that have been answered or resolved are filed under a retained e-mail folder. I never have more than ten items in my in-box at any one time. If things get really busy, I just delete them and pretend I never received them in the first place.

 

[ChrisKH]

Depends who its is. Important people get a quicker response. Depending on circumstances though, replying too quickly can look like you have too much time on your hands. (Like me today!)

Ring them if its urgent, they may have a full inbox.

Which reminds me of an e-mail I got from a good looking secretary several years ago. "That was quick!" she replied after having dealt with her e-mail in a matter of minutes. "That's what my wife says" I sent back. And then wished I hadn't.

 

[Speicher]

Thanks people for your responses, they have told me two things:

If you want to reply and/or it is important you do it straight away. (Except perhaps in ChrisKH's case ). Or if you leave it in your In Box and reply later. So as she has delayed replying each time by three weeks, I can safely assume that I need not bother to follow this up. My email is unlikely to reach the top of her list again.

I have created myself two new folders in "Manage Email"; one called "Reply soon" and the other "Read later" (in this case of longer more detailed info), which needs to be acted on, but not necessarily that day. I assume I can alter the order in which the e-mails are listed so that the oldest is listed first. I have tried to move the folders around so that those two are at the top of my list of folders, but was unsuccessful. If you have lots of e-mails relating to on-going projects and lots of folders, presumably it makes sense to have the current folders at the top of the list. I tried "drop and drag", but just got a message saying "items cannot be dropped here"

I am currently not working, but when I do find some work, I need to know how to manage e-mails, before I get in a horrendous muddle with them. It is one thing dealing with personal e-mails, quite another in a working environment.

Sorry to be so long in coming back to my thread. I was waylayed by someone regarding all sorts of interesting things to do with Fairtrade and fabrics and knitting and sewing. , oh and bicycles from Kenya.

 

[fossyant]

I reply fairly quickly - if it needs some work, I'll print it (yes I know) and it's on the desk for 'doing'.

Quite often get folk that don't reply, but I tend to keep anything important for a few months.....just in case..i.e. you never told me etc.... "Oh yes I did, here are the 5 copy emails"....got ya !

Keep an audit trail...you'll need it at some point....

 

[Fab Foodie]

I've had enough email. Too much time is spent f*cking about with them. If it's critical I'll return with a call. If not, I'll wait for them to call. I only send email now to broadcast a message/information. People know where I am if they need me. Business wastes too mmuch time with pointless email traffic.
Look at your email twice a day, no more, once in the morning, once early afternoon. As for Blackberry's... I ask you...

 

[HLaB]

I usually start to respond almost immediately to an email at work, I don't always send it straight away however depending on the circumstances.

I like email, as I'm a bit lazy on the QA front so I have a written transcript of a conversation and it also a useful reminder to me.

 

[Speicher]

The power of the internet eh? I had a reply from said person this morning. So I have put in my folder marked "reply soon".

Fossyant, I used to print out e-mails, but tried to cut down on this. Long Personal ones, I might still do that so that I can add notes about what to put in a reply that is interesting.

 

[redjedi]

My jobs revolves around emails, and I get loads of emails everyday.

Most of these are orders from our sales dept for things that I need to get in, so they can get filed away quite quickly, but if it's something I can't do immedietly it stays in my Inbox.
I currently have 62 messages in my inbox, and about 60 different folders to file things away in. I like to be organised.

The search function is invaluable to me.

 

[Shaun]

I use a combination of Outlook's flags for incoming work email:

Red - Important, requires a response, and must be done
Blue - Important, but for filing only, does not need a response
Green - Interesting, keep on file for possible future reference
Orange - Web account and management stuff (I work in IT and we manage a host of customers web sites, email, etc.)

For outgoing email, if I want to prompt the person to respone I simply add the high importance notice (red !) and then add a timed reminder for a couple of days ahead - I think this is Outlook based, and if the recipient isn't using Outlook I'm not sure the reminder pops up.

I also have a series of sub-folders for various things, and then a list of Rules in Outlook to sort the mail into these folders as it comes in.

An example of this is our server monitoring software; if a server goes offline we get an email to let us know so we can look into it. I have a rule in Outlook that files these emails in a particular folder and also plays a police siren sound to give us an audio prompt that a server has gone down, which allows us to respond ASAP.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Willow]

My jobs revolves around emails, and I get loads of emails everyday.

Most of these are orders from our sales dept for things that I need to get in, so they can get filed away quite quickly, but if it's something I can't do immedietly it stays in my Inbox.
I currently have 62 messages in my inbox, and about 60 different folders to file things away in. I like to be organised.

The search function is invaluable to me.

I have similar system. All my folders end with calendar year. At the end of the year I group them together and start a new set of folders. That way the files I'm using regularly don't get too cluttered.

 

[derall]

Most of the junk mail I get at work comes from the upper echelons of management. All sorts of corporate crap that is becoming far too prevalent in the NHS. None of which I need to know about.

The only stuff I need to answer is scientific or technical queries from my immediate department. Anything that comes from someone in my contacts book gets flagged and I deal with it immediately.

I have filters set up so anything from a sender not in my contacts book goes in the deleted folder, and that gets emptied on exit. Anything in there probably gets sent to my line manager as well, so she can deal with it if it's that important.

 

[Sittingduck]

If you know the person's Boss, simply CC them in and chase. Amazing how folks will suddenly respond if their tardy replies are highlighted to their superiors