Imagine telephoning someone, and after they pick up the phone, they utter not one word back to you. You may regard it as the height of rudeness, but in today’s society where emails have replaced many phone conversations, non-responses to your messages can be common.
Of course we’re not talking about email messages such as notifications, announcements or items of general interest – most of those don’t require a response back. But for those emails where you are expecting a direct and timely reply, you may feel like either the recipient is ignoring you or maybe you’ve said or done something to offend them, so they aren’t replying.
If you do receive an email that is time-critical, and you can’t deal with it today, why not spend just a few seconds to send a brief response back letting them know you’ll get onto within the next couple of days? At least then they’ll know you’ve read it and haven’t ignored or forgotten about it.
Email communication is promoted as saving time and cost, but how many times have you resorted to phoning someone up due to a lack of reply and asked them the tired old question “have you read my email?”. Or maybe you’ve sent them a second or third email reminder, with each successive non-reply from them making you even more frustrated?
Treat email messages with the same respect as phone calls. While of course you can’t be expected to drop everything the instant an email arrives and deal fully with it, people these days do expect timely responses. And if you can’t give them that, let them know, rather than ignoring them and leaving them in the dark.
Here at Travel Victoria, one of our hallmark characteristics over the years has been timely responses to emails. If someone has gone to the effort of writing us a message, we feel the sender deserves a timely response, excluding those sending us spam emails or unsolicited advertising offers of course.
Make your business email friendly and reply to those emails!
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