Frequently in training, I ask attendees, “how long should you wait before responding to a customer or even a colleague using emails?”. The answer can vary from “one to two hours”, “the next day” to more surprisingly “as quick as you can”.
Interestingly enough, from an email etiquette perspective, the answer is 24 hours or the next day.
Naturally, depending on our job role, the situation we find ourselves or level of urgency needed in a given time we might respond sooner. However, the idea that we need to come back to someone instantly or within the hour is unreasonable and unfair to both parties.
If you think about it, companies frequently pay premium rates so service providers, like IT companies where they promise to respond within a 4-hour timeline. Yet why do we respond so quickly?
A number of years ago, a survey was carried out in a Glasgow University. The participants were asked how often were they going into their email each hour. A lot of them thought they were checking 3-4 times per hour. However, the research revealed that people actually clicked into their email around 30–40 times per hour. That’s every two minutes or less.
What was also interesting was that 2/3’s of the people surveyed looked at their email within six seconds of it arriving. They also tended to get back to people within 44 seconds to one minute.
Many of us can relate to the little button that pops up in the bottom right-hand corner to tell us we have an email. We can only see a short description about who it’s from and what it may be about. We haven’t even gone into it. Yet it’s already eating into our time.
Not many people will be aware that every time one of these notifications appears, we get distracted and lose 64 seconds. Our concentration suffers. Stress levels increase. Our cortisol levels go up and we can even become impatient or irritable. This has a greater impact as our productivity levels go down and we may start to make mistakes.
I realise that some people like to “get the email out of the way”. However, when we get back to people that quickly, there are even more greater consequences.
- By doing this, we “create a monster” where people expect this level of service each time they send a message.
- When we instantly respond, we are unconsciously telling people that we are always available.
- We are saying we are not busy and at their “beckon call”.
- If we work at such speed, we possibly are not reading or thinking about what they have asked. So, we may not always answer their questions, give the right information or provide the most appropriate advice.
- What’s worse is that when we genuinely can’t respond so quickly, the other person won’t like it. When they are not used to waiting, they may become impatient and a little more demanding.
Because of the stress levels involved, we are also inclined to “react” rather than “respond”. This is often a knee jerk reaction where we act emotionally rather rationally. If we think about it, we have all had moments when we sent an email in haste. Then later realised that perhaps we read the initial email wrong and we should have waited to respond.
Every time these conversations happen, my advice is to do the following:
- Switch off the pop-up notification to tell you - you have email.
- Allow regular dedicated time to your emails so you are fully present when reading or replying to people.
- Give yourself the time you need to think and let people wait a reasonable amount of time as needed
- More importantly, remember to pick up the phone when you want an instant answer.