The author highlights the importance of following email protocols in order to project the right image to one’s professional network
EMT in medical parlance is a life-saving acronym. It means Emergency Medical Technician. This is a tribe of medical professionals who travel with the ambulance to attend to dire emergencies.
But this article has nothing to do with these do-gooders. Here, I am referring to Electronic Mail Tardiness! Yes, this article is about those corporate professionals who are tardy to the point of being illiterate when it comes to basic email protocols.
Emails have been around for more than two decades now. You may ask, why are we talking about protocols now? The answer is that even to this day many of us don’t follow these protocols, much to the chagrin of those who do.
What are these protocols? The most basic of them all is that when you receive a mail, you acknowledge it by replying. This acknowledgement could be in several ways. If the mail is from a colleague discussing an issue, either you can redress the issue or you can say, let’s talk about it. But acknowledge the fact that you have read the mail.
If the mail is from a stranger and you want nothing to do with it, the least you can do is send a polite turn-down. Say, thank you for your mail, but I’m not interested, all the best.
If the mail is from someone who’s keen on exploring a business partnership with you, you are interested but you don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it just now, just say so. Just reply saying, thank you very much for your mail, I am keen to explore this but not just yet, the time is not ripe for it, mail me in about six months and we will see how to take it forward.
If you are an editor of a newspaper or magazine, and you receive an article from a writer, first acknowledge receipt, then say, sorry, we don’t publish such articles. Or say, we are interested in publishing it but we can’t pay you, are you okay with it? Or say, we will publish it on such-and-such date, thank you very much.
If someone is spamming you, say so. If you just mark into the spam folder, the sender has no clue of your action, so in all probability, he will spam you again. So just say so. Say, please do not spam.
My point is this. Any time you receive a mail, it is binding on you to acknowledge it. It doesn’t take much time or effort to either kill the conversation then and there or take it forward. Whatever you choose to do, be polite, be nice. Don’t be dismissive, don’t be hurtful in your choice of words, and don’t show the power of your position.
The second protocol is with respect to group mails, where multiple recipients are marked. Let’s say someone has sent you a Happy Shivaratri mail. When you reply with a thank you, same to you please hit only ‘Reply’ button, not ‘Reply All’ button!!! By hitting ‘Reply All’, you are doing two things, one is you are flooding everybody’s inbox. Two, you are drawing attention to yourself!
The third protocol is when you send such mails as Merry Christmas or Happy Shivaratri, please BCC the recipients, in today’s day and age of identity theft, you don’t want information floating around, especially if the email is an official one!
The fourth protocol and this assumes critical importance in today’s context of cyber-attacks, when you are using office mail id, please be very careful in what you say and how you say it. Do not write sensitive/classified information; do not make derogatory remarks about your boss, organisation, colleague or customer. There is this famous instance of the Spirits Airline MD who received a customer complaint on his mail. The MD forwarded it to his head of Customer Service with a small note saying, “I don’t care if this MF never travels with us again, just deal with him.” But instead of forwarding it to his head of Customer Service, he hit the reply button by mistake! You can imagine the fall-out from this ginormous blunder!
The fifth, and to my mind the most significant protocol is, when you are replying to mails with automated replies saying you are out of office and will reply when you get back in a week’s time, do reply when you get back to office. This gesture goes a long way in establishing your professional standing.
Emails have made our lives very easy, opened up channels of communication like never before. These are obvious benefits. But to my mind, the biggest but least talked about benefit is it gives you a chance to project the right image to your professional network like no branding exercise can do. Use it because it is an easy, effortless, and inexpensive way to build your brand
The writer is about to commence her fourth professional avatar with her bakery and restaurant business in Jaipur (www.concoctions.fr) with her French Michelin-star chef life partner
