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The Costs of E-Mail All of us know the human toil of clicking onto an e-mail box and finding it stuffed with messages. We know that as much as two hours can be consumed responding to thirty to fifty messages. The average user receives 15 e-mail messages a day, but there are a lot of us who are raking in close to a hundred each day, and they all aren't spam. In fact, my experience is that most of them have to be answered. Creative Networks (www.cnilive.com/mktrsch.htm) says that messaging systems cost on average $4,189 per user per year. And the Gartner Group (www.gartner.com) estimates that 25 to 30% of all messages are of a personal nature. On the positive side, those personal messages were probably being handled before—they just were handled over the telephone, probably at a higher cost than e-mail. At least you can more easily limit the length of the e-mail than you can a telephone call. And telephone calls are not without cost. Most people are lost without e-mail. They simply aren't as productive. Creative Networks estimates that when e-mail is not available that productivity slips by 16 to 26%. Of course, people are going to try to measure its negative impact. But let's look at some of the positive sides to e-mail. • You can look at it basically any time of the day. This means that people can literally respond to questions at times when the other person is not available by telephone or in their office. • People have more contact with people they have never met than they ever would by telephone. As an author, I get lots of e-mail from people around the world who have read my books. I know these people would never have called me, but they are willing to send me a few lines, ask a question, and we can start a dialogue. It's helpful to them and useful for me as well. • E-mail lets us respond to as many as 30 people in a couple of hours. We would never get through that many telephone calls. • E-mail's speed varies depending on the user. Some of us read fast, type fast, and work the system fast. When you listen to voice mails, it's real speaking time, and there's no way to hurry that up. With an e-mail, you can look at the top, skim through the middle, jump to the conclusion and get the heart of the message. You simply can't do that on voice mail or live. • E-mail lets you keep records of things that you would never have notes of if you were just talking over the phone or in person. There are, of course, some downsides, and maybe it is
useful for organizations to start to measure how much it's costing them.
While they are doing that, however, it might be a good idea to measure
the benefits as well. One thing we know for sure, e-mail is here to stay
for awhile, unless something better replaces. Clearly people wouldn't be
getting all those e-mail messages every day if there weren't some utility
for the user.
Good luck! President TMI, USA Please submit your questions to Time Manager Questions
and Answers. If you have questions, undoubtedly someone else has the same
question. By asking a question, you'll help a fellow Time Manager user
become more effective.
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