The little red light

Anyone else got a blackberry or similar phone with a little flashing LED when the phone wants attention? You know the one, the little light blinks on and off when you have a new Email, or SMS, or IM, or something. Do you find yourself looking at the phone, waiting for the light to come on, and jumping on the phone when you see that little light blinking on and off?

I am starting to feel like I have been trained like a puppy, looking for the light and jumping on the phone to check what message may be waiting for me, its time to change!

Looking for the light is not helping anyone, and responding quickly is doing nothing but generating another Email in return, I am not actually achieving anything productive in this behavior.

So its time to get smart, time to turn the little red light off! Lets see what happens without being a slave to the little red light for a while, I figure not a lot, the world will keep turning, I will check Email as and when I need to, and everything will be fine :)

I dont like Email #2

I still dont like Email, and here is another reason.

97% of all Email is nothing more then spam according to this recent report . Yes, Email is a critical business application nowdays, it is indeed a necessary evil, however if I can get my messages to customer delivered in other ways (Web, RSS, Twitter?) then that is going to be a better option I think.

Why would I want my critical business communication caught up in all that rubbish in the Email world? Most spam is caught by very good spam filters today I agree, however, so is some legitimate Email. And why would I want my business Email sitting in between an ad for prescription drugs and one for penis enlargement?

Even if your inbox is spam free, I am sure it is not Email free, so how do i get my Email the recognition it needs in a full inbox?

Maybe some marketing types know the answer!

Outbound Email from the service desk

Don't get me wrong, I don't like Email! (see previous post), but it is a necessary evil in some cases. There are two types of Email that need to come out of the service desk to customers

- Pre-canned "status update" type Emails
- Ad-hoc communication from service desk consultants to customers, other staff, etc.

The focus of this post is on the content of these Emails, not on recording and reporting, should you use email, etc, etc, just on the content.

The reason why I want to focus on the content is because generally it is not very good. Quite often it is poorly written, with hard to follow instructions, or ambiguous information, the tone of these emails are also in most cases not very customer focused.

So what to do? Firstly, we need to use Email, customers have Email, they want to use it in communicating with us, so moving off Email all together is not an option. The service desk needs Email in order to communicate efficiently with customers, and reduce phone call volumes, so lets get it right and make it work for us.

Get your marketing department or customer communications people involved in drafting your pre-canned Email. Make sure it makes sense, is easy to follow, is written for the customer, and is not going to generate another call to the service desk asking what your Email means. Oh, and make sure when you are using a pre-canned response, you use it for the right question asked! No point in using one that "kind of" suites the situation.

Where your team are writing ad-hoc responses, have them trained in business communication or work with the client communication people, after all, this is client facing communication and we need to get it right. Where possible send screen shots, or recorded screen sessions to show the customer what is happening, a picture tells a thousand words!

Dont forget, we are using Email to get a message across to our customers, we need to ensure that the message is clear and that they can understand what is happening, otherwise we are wasting our own time and out customers, and increasing our workloads.

Exploring the cultural impact of Blackberries

I just finished watching an interesting presentation from MIT on the cultural and business impact on the use of Blackberries within the enterprise environment.

The presentation is based on research into the use of Blackberries in a medium sized enterprise, and to be honest, if you are a Blackberry user there are no surprises here. Any Blackberry user will be away of the urge to check the device constantly, and how the use of the tool makes others expect you will be available constantly. They also touch on the blurring of lines as to when the work day ends (if ever).

Its worth watching if you have time.

I dont like Email

I am not a big fan of Email.

There are a few reasons why I am not a fan

- hard to keep up with a conversation
- Over use of CC (and BCC) means a lot of useless information is sent
- Hard to search my Email (I use notes) to find the Email I am looking for with the information I need

There is another reason not to like Email, it just is not a good way to communicate a message! This video explains the draw backs of using Email, and only being able to use words, not tone or visual clues within your communication.

Why Email starts fights