E-mail: For better or worse

From the information I received from the people I surveyed, the feedback I got was that e-mail has greatly improved peoples ability to communicate. I talked to my mom, my dad, and my good friend. E-mail is all a major part of either their personal or business life. E-mail can easily give you another medium to keep connected. When I asked my dad how much e-mail he got per day he said anywhere from ten to fifty messages. Since he’s an accountant during tax season he checks it almost every hour during the workday, depending on the time of year he spends a lot of his time with e-mail. He said about 75% of the e-mail he receives are important He said e-mail definitely helps stressful times of year because if people don’t always call about their taxes they e-mail their responses for whatever reason, makes it easier. I asked him was the communication between yourself and your clients more organized or less organized before e-mail came into the picture and he answered at the beginning of e-mail it was a little less organized but now he doesn’t know what he’d do without it.

My mom is an office manager in his office and she said she receives about 1-10 messages per day. She doesn’t spend as much time with e-mail she says maybe 30 minutes a day at most. In her case it doesn’t really simplify her life as much because there isn’t much coming in so it’s not that big of deal she wouldn’t mind if they were all phone calls instead. I also asked her was it more or less organized before e-mail came into the picture and she said more organized for the company itself. It’s too miniscule to really decipher if it made her life more organized in the office or not.

I also asked my friend who works as a head of a construction company with his father and when I asked how much e-mail he gets per day he said it’s very seasonal. During a big job they can get continuous e-mails anywhere from 5 or more from one person they are doing business with. He said he spends about an hour a day dealing with e-mail and that it simplifies his life if they are working multiple jobs and they can’t always get to the phone while on the construction itself. He said it’s more convenient then not. I asked him would you rather have e-mail or a telephone as a means of communication during a big project and he immediately replied with he’d much rather have e-mail for the simple reason that they can respond at the end of the day rather then taking breaks when it’s inconvenient.

The ways that e-mail has improved these people’s ability to communicate and receive information is that it gives them more way then one to communicate. If the phone is becoming a distraction the e-mail can serve as a convenience factor which can let you return certain e-mail or messages with ease. You don’t have to be computer savvy either to send and receive e-mails its one of the easiest and most popular forms of communication on the internet. The trade-off that is required in terms of the negative aspects of e-mail in order to get these benefits is that you are giving up informal ways of communication the more you use e-mail. This can hurt you in the long run if you are dealing with a business in that people can see it as less professional then giving someone a telephone call. To get the convenience of e-mail which is returning questions or problems at you complete discretion, you’re giving up telephone or even more face-to-face. The most personal way of communication is face to face and if you’re giving that up in the long run it might hurt you rather then help you.