I am an email junkie so I wasn’t aware of any “problems” until I read this BusinessWeek article – *!#@ The E-Mail. Can We Talk?
The problem isn’t the distraction of spam or stuffed inboxes. Nor is it the potential for legal liability. The concern, say academics and management thinkers, is misinterpreted messages, as well as the degree to which e-mail has become a substitute for the nuanced conversations that are critical in the workplace.
I think almost all of us have experienced the misinterpreted email issue. I have sent them and ignited a thermonuclear response and I have received what was supposed to be an innocuous email and found myself hunting down the sender.
There are many studies that discuss how words are actually only 10% or so of communication. Tonality, inflection, gestures and other nonverbal cues make up the vast majority of how we communicate. Obviously, those cues do not travel with an email. Of course, video email seems to be gathering some steam and may become more prominent in the near future.
But there is a potential problem with the non-email approach:
Clients are so impressed that they have started to visit and call his staffers more often, too. The biggest peril now? Getting trapped in telephone tag.
Remember the days before the internet when the phone was king? I was a salesperson in a national territory and the phone was the only method for reaching a remote prospect. Telephone tag became a tedious task, along with gatekeepers, voicemails (if they had it) and snail mail letters.
Writing that last sentence makes me feel old.