Email Auto Responders: One Person’s Opinion

 
 
 
Email Auto Responders 200x300 Email Auto Responders: One Persons OpinionOkay… so we have come to the day where I may have a little rant. It happens once in a while so bear with me. icon smile Email Auto Responders: One Persons Opinion

I have experienced something over the past few months that continues to annoy me. My mom always taught me if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all, so I thought I would write it down – maybe my opinion is not the majority and if that is the case – you all can tell me so and I will stop being annoyed and accept it.

Auto Email Replies…

I am not referring to email marketing but those auto replies some business owners setup that come back as a reply for every single email they receive. Or maybe not every one, but for the ones where they are contacted via their website contact page.

You know the type I mean :

XXX thanks you for your message. This email is checked at least twice a day at 8am and 8pm, we will reply to your email as soon as possible.
Sincerely,

OR how about:

Your email has been sent to my account. I will respond to it as soon as possible, but please do not hesitate to call me at XXX if you don’t hear from me soon.

Even better:

Thank you for your email, I will respond to it as soon as possible, in the meantime you can Like us on Facebook.

This one tells a life story:

I am leaving Thursday morning for my annual Conference in Chicago. I won’t be available on 4/13/12 and 4/14/12 as I’m using this time to focus on my business. I will be back in my office on Monday 4/17/12. If you need something done before I leave on 4/13/12, please get back to me prior to the end of the day on Monday, 4/10/12.

Even this seemingly simple one is also on my list:

Thanks for your email, your message is important to me and will be answered shortly.

 

Now…maybe it is me but I find these annoying and amusing at the same time.

My reasons for this are very mixed as well, but primarily come in about what I feel these emails are telling me about the business owner who set them up and to whom I have sent an email.

  1. You are in business, and are telling me you only check your email every 12 hours!!!
  2. I know my email was sent, I emailed it and guess what, if I did email it – it is because I don’t want to call you. Besides …what does ‘soon’ mean?
  3. Like you on Facebook? I have emailed for a reason and that most certainly is not it.
  4. Don’t even get me going on this one… I need a calculator to figure it out.
  5. If my message is so important to you, then answer it for real, is all I keep thinking.

Truly what I feel happens with these auto reply messages is that the real message that goes back out is: I am very busy, too busy to directly reply so in the meantime I will have this auto response go out so you know I am busy and that my reply is coming. The added fun comes in how they are all worded.

 
It is like the thank you card for the gift, that gets acknowledged with a thank you card, prompting another thank you card – it can turn into a neve ending loop.  Imagine what would happen if one email gets sent and gets an auto reply, to which someone has now set-up an auto reply. Yikes, the two emails could shut down entire systems sending the notes back and forth.

 
Overall I think people understand these days that immediate responses do not happen with email. The world is filled with people who are more than overwhlemed with email and many are getting help to manage it or setting time aside each day to deal with it in order to stay productive. Few people in this day and age will expect an immediate response - if they do, you can expect to get a phone call, skype message or a text not an email.

 
We all get there are email issues in everyone’s inbox – and boundaries are a reality now.

 
If you plan to use a tool like these auto replies, really think about what message your are sending – it may turn out to be very different than your intended goal of the auto reply. You may find that by the time you do check your email at 8pm, the person who sent it was so annoyed at your auto reply they have moved on and emailed someone else.

 
My opinion??? STOP IT!

 
You can keep them coming because I enjoy them and they also can inspire some of my blog posts… but you will not see me setting one up and depending on why I sent you an email – you may also never hear back from me after sending an auto reply. 

Sooo… what’s your opinion? Love ‘em, Hate ‘em… Don’t Care? What say you?

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The Benefits of Gmail

gmailimage The Benefits of GmailRecently I made the decision to switch my email program from Outlook and Thunderbird to using Gmail. My primary reason is to be able to check and follow emails while I am out of the office – meaning away at a conference or on a trip.

Logging in to my PC from away is not always an option and it requires my office PC being on and ready for use. When away this can be a hazard if no one is checking on it.

I can use a webmail system for some but then I have no access to emails already in my inbox or sent folders. All of this made me take the jump in mid-December to Gmail.

Gmail does have some limitations but I am slowly getting used to them or trying to find a work around. MY latest word around discoveries have been:

  1. Getting my email signature to appear below my reply back to someone and above the message they sent (As opposed to showing waaaaay at the bottom of the email below all conversation that has gone back and forth already.
  2. Working around the limitation of only being able to import 5 additional email accounts.

Today I wanted to share the solutions here – in case others are having the same issues.

The solution to #1 – the email signature was solved using Google Labs. Now you have to be brave enough to try out a Labs feature as they come with a warning:

Gmail Labs allows you to try out experimental new features in Gmail. If you’re going to brave the Labs world, it’s important to keep the following things in mind about these features:

  • They may break at any time.
  • Similarly, they may disappear temporarily or permanently.
  • They may work so well that they graduate and become regular features.

When you go into the Labs, you want to enable the Signature Tweak function and this places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures.

The Solution to #2 – limitations of only being able to add 5 additional email accounts into your system.  This one is solved with the new feature “Multiple Sign-Ins”.

With this setup you turn on the multiple sign in feature and then you can sign into another gmail account (one you have also imported up to another 5 email accounts in) and then you can toggle back and forth between the two accounts.  This will give you access in total up to another 5 outside accounts.

Hope this helps you fix up a couple of your issues with gmail – any other features you like to use – please share here in the comments!  Thanks.

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The Email Inbox Monster

gotmail The Email Inbox MonsterI was inspired for this blog post when talking to a friend of mine the other day.  She is starting a bookkeeping business and will be working from home.  She made a point of saying how she will have to start managing her mornings better; she has found herself having to take a computer break around 10 or 11 to have a shower and get dressed. (Yes, office folks, that is something we work at home people can do – work in pajamas or sweats if we choose)

What my friend has found happening is  she is getting lost in emails and work before she has even gotten ready to start her day.  She wakes up before the kids and hubby and goes to check her emails.  She starts acting on some of the emails and soon has to rush to get the kids off to school and then sits back down at the computer to finish what she started. When she finally looks up it is mid morning and she now needs to get showered and dressed. She also made the comment – “and it seems like I have been working all morning yet nothing was getting done”.

She’s falling into the email trap and it is so easy to do.

Time Management experts will tell you to plan out your day and schedule in time for checking emails. Your inbox can be the biggest time-suck in any workday – whether at home or in an office setting.  The best piece of advice they recommend is to NOT check your emails first thing in the morning but to attend to tasks that need completion first. Accomplish and finish one or two main tasks and then check your emails.  The best process I have seen so far is:

First, have a to-do list or schedule set for the day.  Take the time to write it out the night before – or once for the entire week with adjustments during the day and things change – then have a revolving system that goes as follows:

  1. Tackle one or two main tasks first thing.  Get them done!
  2. Then make time to check emails. Process the emails as recommended in another blog post here – DANG my Inbox Looks Great! * VIP!!! remember that you do not have to followup on each email immediately.
  3. Move onto the next items in your daily schedule and later go back to check your inbox again.

Ideally you should be able to check your emails 3-4 times per day, depending upon your type of business and how work is assigned/processed.  The main point is to have a plan around your daily tasks, larger projects and your inbox.  Letting them all run wild will result in you thinking statements as my friend did and you will find yourself being less productive, getting more and more disorganized and wasting time.

What tips do you have for keeping the inbox monster at bay??  Please share them here.

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A friendly reminder about your inbox…

 
 
 
Last year I wrote an article on how to better manage your inbox so it does not take control.  Yesterday I realized was not following my own advice lately and was reading this again to refresh my memory on what I should be doing.  Here’s the article for those who may not have seen it…

Is your email inbox, or inboxes, as many of us have more than one, full of old received and sent emails?
There are a few easy steps anyone can follow to help take back control of your inbox and emails.
Before you get started, make a point of setting aside a specific time each day to check your email.  It is so easy to become distracted by dealing with emails you lose time for dealing with other projects or work.  Three times per day is plenty; unless you are in a Customer Service role and as part of your job, you may require doing this more often. A good schedule is and hour after the start of your day, an hour after lunch and an hour before quitting time.
So, what’s the system, the simple steps?  We like to refer to it as:

 

DANG, my Inbox looks great!
  1. Dump it, if it’s junk, or not fitting into one of the following categories.
  2. Archive it. This means file it away if you will need to refer to it later.
  3. Not now, later. If you’ll need time to deal with this email later, then flag it for followup and enter a reminder, so you don’t forget.
  4. Get it done, now. If you can deal with it, then do so, immediately. <

Sounds easy, but in order to make this work you have to follow a few simple rules of picking which category the emails fit into. [Read more...]

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Stop Spying on Me!

A friend sent an email the other day, panicking about whether people were getting her emails or not?  Her reason for thinking they were not going through?  She was not getting the ‘read receipts’ back.

no yes 150x150 Stop Spying on Me!I laughed so hard!  I am one of the people she is always sending these read receipts to and every time when it asks me if it’s okay to send a receipt I say No.

Why?  I guess I feel it’s an invasion of my privacy.  I feel it’s no one else’s business when I read the emails sent to me.

It’s not like I avoid my inbox.  It pretty much rules my life as a virtual assistant and without I would have a very hard time working with clients.  I have a schedule for that as well as time and work every day.

When she and I spoke about it and she was trying to understand why I always hit no.  I realized that it always came back to the privacy issue.  Nothing else…

What is your take on read receipts?  Do you click yes or no?  I’d love to know if I am the only one with this viewpoint.

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