To buzz, or not to buzz?

Most people these days have a mobile phone and at least one or two email accounts which keep them connected to the world. I, for one, am easier to reach by email, mostly because I find it easier to respond to things and initiate action on my device by email than by phone. Perhaps it’s time for an assessment on how a phone should and should not be used, and when an email would be more appropriate.

To that end, I have sat down and thought about this for a while, and come up with a list of questions to ask yourself before giving whoever a buzz (including a few naughty things of which I am almost certainly guilty of doing myself). Most of these relate to business use of phones, but then there’s always a grey area, isn’t there?

Do you need a response… now?

If you don’t know someone too well, you wouldn’t normally go up to them and interrupt them in the middle of whatever they’re doing in order to get an opinion, sell something, or to see if they are free for an Amway meeting. It’s much more polite to leave them a note so that it can be attended to at their own pace. The demanding tone of that “ring-ring” can read as an unrelenting “I want to talk to you… now“.

It hasn’t always been like that. Not so long ago, a phone call was the only way to get information out of someone that didn’t involve a postal service or pony express, and a subsequent wait of many days for a reply. Today however, we have a new standard – it’s called email. It is mostly free, very fast, leaves a paper trail and does not require that a tree be cut down so that you can send your lunch order to your secretary on its mashed up carcass. If you want someone to know something, email them. Call them if it’s urgent, but you may find your phone call’s recipient a bit harassed when they receive a phone call that could have easily been substituted by an email.

Can you talk?

In addition to that, we live off our mobile phones these days, and it’s not always easy to answer your phone when you’re out and about. The Japanese have very strict rules about public telephony, and I think they’re onto something – you will get a dirty look or even a reprimand if you are caught talking on your phone on a train; much more polite to send a message by SMS or email. No one sharing your train-space wants to know why you really dumped your ex, or how you turned your scalp all scaly on your third peroxide attempt.

The Libran in me wants to see how the flipside can go wrong, and I can’t silence it, so…

Email can also get a bit out of hand when it’s placed in the hands of those who perhaps don’t live off it. Perhaps a few pointers for email-sending are in order for balance.

Is it too big?

Consider the fact that business people will usually have mobile data plans that are charged per kilobyte before sending that 3 megabyte email. I have heard from at least one client about how the cost of downloading a large email exceeded the cost of getting in a taxi, picking up the sender and taking them out for a sumptuous lunch, over which the contents of the offending email could have otherwise been discussed.

Remember that email as a medium was designed to transmit messages, not rich content. Where possible, keep emails to below 2 megabytes. If you need to send a file that is larger than that, use a document server (such as a SharePoint document library) or upload it to a file distribution service like YouSendIt (http://www.yousendit.com) or FilesAnywhere (http://www.filesanywhere.com) – when a file is uploaded, the recipient is automatically sent an email containing a link to the download. The latter facility is free and you will save your email recipients much grief. Trust me.

Right address?

Also consider the fact that some office email administrators set up very complex rules for forwarding incoming business email. Perhaps do that before you send that chain letter which ends up being automatically forwarded to someone’s entire client list. You can usually get around this by sending that all-important chain email to someone’s personal address. Work addresses are for work, and many workplaces may subject their employees to random checks and reprimands if they are found to be using work email for personal purposes (and that includes receiving personal emails).

Right field?

It’s not just to whom you address your email, but how you do it. The “To”, CC and BCC fields at the top of an email are so important, yet are still so often misused or completely overlooked. As a general rule, make sure anyone listed in the “To” or CC fields has explicitly allowed you to distribute their email address. You wouldn’t randomly give out your entire phone list; the same applies here. If there is more than once recipient, the other recipients will all be able to see the names and email addresses of anyone else in the “To” and CC fields. When in doubt, always use the BCC field. BCC stands for blind carbon copy – email addresses in this field will be hidden from other recipients.

Should I send this?

Then think about how much someone would want to sift through five of your emails containing pictures of kittens, when they have fifty emails in their inbox requiring urgent attention. That’s after the five hundred spam emails have been filtered out. It is in this environment that so many people get added to junk mail lists.

Is this a big deal? It can be… I, like lots of other people, like hearing from people; it’s just that sometimes explaining that you didn’t see someone’s email because you put them on your spam list can get a bit tiresome. Should one feel offended because of it? Perhaps, but maybe one should have called…