Reply in a Timely and Appropriate Manner

There are few things that annoy people more than not getting a response in a timely manner. The problem is that ideas of exactly what “timely” means vary from person to person and situation to situation. Way back when I used to manage an IT help desk I treated all of my business-related email much the same as I would have answered a help desk call, lobbing back a response as soon as I could come up with an answer. I think that’s the way many of the people at my firm, used to dealing with attorneys who treat everything as an emergency and expect white glove treatment, tend to deal with their email. But now that I’m focused on managing trainers I’m operating under a much more relaxed paradigm. There just aren’t that many training-related emergencies. The rule that I’ve set for myself is to respond to every message within half a day. So if I get a message in the morning I’ll reply to it by that afternoon. If I get one late in the day I’ll make sure to respond by early the next morning.

Of course there are exceptions. If someone has a simple question I can answer immediately I try to do so. If they have managed to come up with one of those rare training emergencies I get back to them right away. If someone important needs something they go to the top of my list. This isn’t brown-nosing, it’s covering my own ass. And if you don’t think there are VIPs in you workplace who require special attention I’m guessing that there are some office dynamics that you don’t understand and would benefit from studying.

There will still be some questions and requests that you can’t deal with in as timely a manner as you’d like. Maybe you’re tied up in a meeting and have to consult with someone else or crunch some numbers before you can provide an answer. If that’s the case, at least reply and let the sender know that you’re working on their request. That way you let them now they’re not being ignored and you can save yourself from dangerous hard feelings. I once put in a request with one of our software developers to see if he could help my group by developing an application to track attendance in our classes. By the time I heard back from him six months later we had already researched and bought software from an outside company. I guess I did get a response, but it wasn’t helpful or timely. I had to wonder if he’d been thinking about the issue all this time or if he was just six months behind in reading his email.

The most important thing you can do when answering email in a timely manner is to ask yourself when your recipient needs or expects a response and try to fulfill their expectation. Of course, some people believe that all of their emails are mission critical-- you’ll have to figure out how to deal with them yourself. Personally, I tend to ignore those people as long as I can. But I’m a bit of a jerk.