Episode #201: DOES EMAIL-INBOX MANAGEMENT REALLY MATTER?

Cryptic communication, tardy responses, shoddy detail management, and unanswered customer questions can cripple business success, and hamper future growth. On the flip side, prompt and detailed correspondence can help companies grow by exceeding customer expectations. However, both sides of this coin rest on the shoulders of managing email activity. So, why do so few companies touch on this? Why do so many owners and managers leave such an important function up to personal preference? What do our customers think of how we manage their correspondence? Are there costly dangers to poor email-inbox management? How should we be approaching this administrative skill set, that marries up with our customer service deliverables? We hope our questions can energize quality thinking! Enjoy the show!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky . Let's fight to show.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Hello everybody and welcome to Simple Biz 360 Podcast number 2 0 1. Can you believe it? We turn the corner on the two hundreds, August 24th, 2023. We're so happy you're here. We're on YouTube, we're on 28 listening platforms. We're now on Rumble TV too, so we're really pumped up. You're here, and today we're gonna have some fun. We're in that, you know, cap and t-shirt series three business tips in five minutes. So we're gonna breeze through this episode. We're not actually gonna give you three tips today, but we're gonna ask some questions and we're gonna throw some things out there. So the ultimate question today is, does email inbox management really matter? Do should I really even address this in an episode? Do I really care if you've got fifty seven hundred and thirty two emails in your inbox 8,019, or if you've got seven, does it really matter to me? Well, it matters if you are not able, as the recipient and the manager of the inbox, if you're not able to manage it in a way where you're getting back to people in a prompt manner and you're answering their questions thoroughly and you're, you know, you're responding professionally. And I, I can just tell you , it's been my experience. Uh, you know, that , uh, I, I see a lot of bad communication behavior and skillsets , and when I kind of peek around the corner and get a chance to look at their computer, you know, as I'm standing over their shoulder, we're working on a project, and all of a sudden, oh, now this makes sense. They've got 8,019 emails in their inbox, and yeah, they're sorting them by date, or they're sorting them by name, but you know what I mean? Come on, we , we all highlight , uh, you know, we look at the things on the phone, right? And on the cell phone , once we look at it, it de highlights it. So now it's not bright blue. If we're using Outlook and we think we got to it, but we're not sure. It's kinda like, you know, trying to find our car in that crazy big parking lot, right? That , uh, airport parking lot at 11 at night, we get dropped off. We don't know really where it is, but you know, it , it's near some pole, so we don't have the , the row written down and we're trying to find it, right? Or we're trying to find that we're the type of person that just throws our clothes on the floor all the time. And now we, we gotta get out the door and, you know, I gotta look for the semi unclean shirt, and you really don't know which one's the semi unclean one and which one's the one you wore three times and you end up stinking when you get out there, right? Well, it's kind of like with us, we, we get to a point if we've got this much activity, sometimes we don't remember and we're not conscientious of the ones that we didn't answer. And we think we did, but we didn't. How about the episode where I, I've mentioned that I worked for a customer service , uh, manager once that just absolutely deleted all the emails at the end of the day. So if there's 22, 42, 15, 12 didn't matter. She had to get out the door to catch her bus. Bam, just delete all the emails. If it's important enough, somebody will email later. So these are the things that are out there, and these are things that are working against the, you know, the company's success, if you will. It's working against client success. And what happens is, you know, this type of stuff eventually leads to, you know what, I don't wanna go back to this company. This, that Mason runs. I don't wanna go back for seconds . You know, I don't like the way he deals with this. Too many things. You know, he's got like , you know, just in the last a month we've had like three or four emails he just doesn't remember getting, didn't answer thought he answered. I , I'm , I'm done. I gotta go to somebody who does a better job of this. And chances are Mason isn't handling it right, because he's got so many in the inbox. So just something to think about, right? You don't want your, you know , inbox looking like this graphic on the wall with all kinds of crazy upside down letters and numbers and caps and, you know, lowercase and sideways and oh my goodness, all kinds of great things, right? So if you are the type of person that manages your inbox this way, I I just invite you to rethink it. Think about doing it another way. Give it some thought. Talk to some other people who've done it. It takes a lot of work to get it clean, but once it's clean, man , you can keep it clean. And I know I've been there operated that way for many years and , uh, have not operated that way for a while . So we always, as always, we love to dip into some rock and roll stuff. It's summer, right? The Beach Boys 1970. We're gonna rewind the clock. Sloop John b, upper right hand corner of the YouTube experience. You'll see it on there, you click on that, it'll always be in the show notes, and we will see you in 168 hours .