Email Overload: Band-Aids Are Not Solutions

This article is from Channel 10, a Microsoft blog for tech enthusiasts. To subscribe to Channel 10, the link is http://on10.net/Feeds/RSS/. To subscribe just to my posts, the link is: http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/RSS/.

A company called Seriosity has introduced a new tool for email productivity, Attent, which attacks what they say is the main source of information overload: SENDERS! Yes, it’s the people sending email that are the real problem that need to be addressed, according to Attent, so they’ve come up with a system for businesses to implement which is supposed to make people stop and consider if something is worth emailing. 

With Attent, each employee is given a set amount of “Serios” per week, which are basically like virtual dollars. For each email you send, you can attach a certain number of Serios to it, depending on importance. More important emails are sent using more Serios. The system works as an Outlook plugin, and, since it only works with other people who also use Attent, the company would have to roll this out to everyone to make it an effective tool.

While this is an interesting idea, the reasoning behind this idea is that you can force people to email less by forcing them to calculate how much they can “afford” to email, and that seems to me a pretty much a knee-jerk reaction to dealing with info overload.

For one thing, Attent can’t stop people outside the company from emailing, so it only forces internal employees to turn to phone calls and face-to-face requests which may be even more disruptive than emails.

From personal experience, I found that a lot of people chose to email simply because email was the absolute fastest way to send out a request for help, a question, or to share a message with a large number of people. When this became a burden, such as it was at one of my I.T. jobs, the real cause that should have been addressed was why were people turning to email instead of using the tools to them at hand? Why were people sending emails instead of logging help desk tickets? Why were people sending emails instead of referring to online documentation? Why were people sending emails instead of doing the job themselves – which they had the ability and permissions to do, but not the know-how?

The problem that must be addressed in every company are the underlying causes that lead some people to use email far more than necessary – and use it first, without thinking things through. This tool, Attent, aims to do that, but without  deeper understanding about what’s wrong in the particular company.

For example, in my situation, implementing a I.T. support email address that directly posted items to the helpdesk instead of arriving in my inbox would have been a big help. Training people where to find the answers they need and how to use the tools we had in house would also have cut down on the emails. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have the authority to implement changes, because believe me, I would have!)

At another job of mine, where I did have authority to make changes, I spent a good part of a day out of the new hires’ week of training teaching the new employees about our in-house web resources – one of which was a SharePoint site. Even for those who had never been exposed to SharePoint, the majority were able to understand pretty quickly how they could use it and it definitely helped cut down on requests in the future as people weren’t emailing in basic questions like where to find a certain file or bit of information. They already knew where it was online.

Often businesses tend to overlook the value of training, but then they end up working harder due to the lack of training of their new employees. The value of real, instructor-led training is something every business needs to understand because, once in the thick of things, employees will never find the time to study user manuals or do research – everything becomes “I need an answer now.” The best time to reach employees and set out what the expectations are for them is at the very beginning of employment before they become reliant on using their preferred tools and processes that result in increased efficiency for them, but that decrease the overall efficiency of the company as a whole since they put the burden on other people who have mastered the use of the company’s informational systems.

Of course, training isn’t a panacea for the entirety of the information overload problem, but it’s certainly a better use of a company’s money that setting up a virtual economy where emails have a price tag associated with them, in my opinion.

For dealing with the remainder of the email, tools that add efficiency to the process of sorting through your inbox - like my business email add-on of choice, ClearContext - are really the way to go. Heavy use of filters, rules, and informational auto-responders can also help cut down on the flood. However, real solutions to today’s information overload problem are going to much more in-depth and complex than an Outlook plugin. Maybe IORG will come up with some answers for us.

(Image courtesy of Seriosity)

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

This is a guest post by Perry Reed, Twitterer, and LJ and Spaces blogger.

Call me old-fashioned.   While I think all this Web 2.0 (or 2.5 or whatever number you kids are up to now) is great and all, I still prefer email as my primary tool for getting things done.  In particular, I use Outlook because of its rich features and its ability to easily tie together my email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and other information.  I use several plug-ins that help me with all of that, too.  I still subscribe to several email lists for content on all sorts of content.  So I use email for more than just personal information; it’s a source of incoming content for me.

But I also read a lot of blogs, which are slightly less old fashioned than email, I suppose, and I am lazy enough that RSS appeal to me greatly.  Why should I have to navigate to 50 different websites when I can have the content delivered to me, much like my email lists?  But that’s not the end of my laziness.  Why should I have to use a different application for email and RSS feeds, too?

Here’s my thinking:  Blog entries are usually bits of discrete content, just like emails.  So why not treat both as messages and deal with them in the same way?  I had tried a couple of different Outlook plug-ins back when I was running Outlook 2003, including an old version of Newsgator, that would let me read RSS feed entries as emails.  With Outlook 2007, that feature is built-in, and works pretty darn well.  I can read the entries just like emails, and I can forward them or reply back to the blog author (most of whom are people I know and are therefore in my Outlook contacts) right there.  Very slick!  One issue I have found with the built-in Outlook RSS feed service is that it is not able to handle feeds that require digest authentication (that’s where you pass your login credentials to the site).  Unfortunately, a lot of my friends use “friends-only” locked LiveJournal accounts which require that digest authentication.

The solution has turned out to be the latest beta version of Newsgator Inbox, about which I first read here when Sarah blogged it.  Now I should mention that the version you would download from their site has a bug that prevents the digest authentication from working.  But when I and a few others posted about the problem on their forums, they quickly (I mean really quickly, like in one day) put up an interim test build that resolved the problem.  Nice customer service!

So now, I have all of my feeds and various email lists all in one place, along with my personal correspondence, of course.  But it gets better.

Not only do I use Outlook, but I pay for a hosted Microsoft Exchange email account.  So all of my email is really sitting on the Exchange server.  And so are my RSS feeds because I’ve configured Outlook to store my feeds in folders that are on the server.  All I have to do is keep Outlook running on my desktop PC so that the feeds are pulled in periodically and synced up to the server.  Maybe someday Microsoft will add RSS feeds as a server-based Exchange plug-in…

So now I can access all of my email and all of my RSS feeds from my desktop PC, my Tablet PC, my Windows Mobile phone, or any other computer with a web browser via Outlook Web Access (OWA).  And it’s all synced automatically, so any email or RSS message I read or delete is marked as read or deleted on all of my devices everywhere.   And, since it’s all on the server, it’s all backed up for me, too.

Sometimes being old fashioned and lazy works out really well.

This was a guest post by Perry Reed, Twitterer, and LJ and Spaces blogger.

Despite Louis’s attempt to start this weekend’s bitchmeme on the topic of blogs and advertising - damn, Louis, you’re getting good at this! - I’m going to refrain from that discussion (as long as I can resist, that is) and write about something else instead.

…And we thought Techmeme was the echo-chamber!….OK, just kidding, guys…I’m actually looking forward to the influx of thoughts on this that are sure to come.

Thoughts on Pitches

However…what I’m interested in is the debate occurring now in the comments of Marshall’s latest post on the topic of how to pitch to Read Write Web: "Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way."

His suggestion, in a nutshell, was to let everyone know that the best way to get our attention was not via IMs, phone calls, and the traditional email pitch, but to send us your company’s OPML file or RSS feeds along with your news.

He highlighted a company that had done just that.

As voracious readers of RSS, Marshall explained that the best way for us to not just hear your news, but to stay constantly updated on the latest news from your company, was to provide us with a feed or feeds along with your pitch.

Most comments were positive, thankful for this new insight on how to be heard above the noise, but a few were downright negative, implying the post was "arrogant and condescending."

What?

Everyone, Please Breathe. Chill.

It’s just a suggestion people. Take it or leave it.

Just…doesn’t it make sense that when you’re telling a blogger about a new service/product that you would also encourage them to subscribe to the companies feed(s)?

To me, it clicks. It’s obvious. It’s no different than when a TV ad promotes a company’s phone number and web address…it’s just that the RSS address is the one a blogger wants to see.

Re: Phone Calls, a Personal Note

Also, on a side note, I’d like to point out that the reason I’m not a fan of the phone call is due to the past year I spent in I.T. where my phone just rang off the hook. I grew to despise the phone and its constant interruption of my workflow. I still do.

Unless we’re friends, an unsolicited phone call is met with shifty eyes as I try to determine who it may be (what’s that area code? an unknown number? am I expecting this call?) The exception, of course, is a scheduled call, but I digress…

I also have a personal goal of pushing out 6 posts per day (not including here) - 2 for RWW and 4 for Channel 10 (they don’t necessarily run all 4, but they do get written and uploaded as drafts). Interruptions, like calls, have to be kept to a minimum as I am not the speediest of writers nor the master of HTML.

Another Pitch Idea

I also highly, highly, highly recommend the Twitpitch, something I wrote about today on RWW: "Twitpitch, the Elevator Pitch Hits Twitter."

I have already subscribed to the Twitpitch RSS feed for the hashtag…(oh, thanks again Todd! I swear I am so blonde sometimes.)

I really hope that takes off. I am totally in love with the idea. (do you digg it, too?) Let me know what you think in the comments here, there, FF, Twitter, anywhere.

Digsby is a new application that functions as a universal instant messaging client but also integrates with facebook and MySpace and your email! On the IM side, the app gives you one combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber Accounts. You can manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows and you can even send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window. Digsby also lets you manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts get popup notifications when new email arrives. When you click a popup, you will be taken right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts.

And last but not least, Digsby also helps you stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook or MySpace account. You can receive alerts of events like new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc. You can also get a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to which includes everything from new photos, to status updates, and to upcoming birthdays. The only thing the software doesn’t work with is twitter (the horror!), but they might add that at some point since they hint that more social networks will be supported soon. Digsby is private beta now, so you’ll need an invite to download it.

MintEmail is a useful service that gives you a four-hour temporary email address, perfect for filling out forms on websites where you aren’t comfortable giving out your real email address. When you visit the MintEmail website, you’ll see a temporary email address has been generated for you. You can choose to either use that address or click the link provided to create a custom address of your own. The address is conveniently added to your clipboard, so you don’t have to hit Ctrl + C to copy it - you can just paste it into whatever form you are filling out at the time. When new emails to that address arrive, they will automatically display on the MintEmail homepage. New email notifications will display on the title bar, so if you navigate away from the page, you will know when to return and check your messages. MintEmail also offers an email forwarding service which allows you to create a mintemail.com email address for a period of time that lasts longer than 4 hours. The address forwards all emails to your real email address for a time frame of your choosing, which can be anywhere from 12 hours to 3 months. You can also check all your MintEmails from the URL http://mintemail.com/username. Although there are many other temporary email services available, the speed with which you can generate a disposable MintEmail email address makes the service extremely handy.

According to today’s blog post on the Official Gmail Blog, there is a new feature in Gmail: colored labels! With the ability to assign colors to different types of email, it’s easier to see, at a glance, what’s in your inbox. This is a feature that I find really useful in Outlook 2007, which I use heavily at work…it’s gotten to the point that a quick look at the colors in my inbox can tell me exactly what kind of day I’m going to have. And now, I’ll have that same ability in my Gmail! That is, if the feature would hurry up and appear already. I hate when I know a new feature is coming and I don’t have it yet. I tried logging out and back in, which apparently works for some, but no luck yet. I guess I will just have to wait.

If you have one or two blogs that you are addicted to, you may find this service useful: SendMeRSS. Unlike an RSS email subscription like service like mine, which emails you a digest of recent blog posts, SendMeRSS will deliver individual posts as they go live in a single email to an email address you provide. The service is not only useful for keeping tabs on your favorite sites, but could also come in handy to receive blog posts on a mobile phone, a computer where the website is blocked, or a computer where you have email but no internet access. However, if you sign up for more than a couple of blogs using this service, your inbox will soon be overrun with blog post emails, so use this service sparingly!

If you haven’t figured out RSS yet, check out this video for a great explanation:

(via Digital Inspiration)