Just like anyone else, I’m busy and am not always able to answer right away, but it’s always been my policy to try and respond within 24 hours and no later than 48 hours, even if it’s just to acknowledge receipt of one’s email and to let them know I will provide them with a more detailed response later. Other than spammers or auto-generated responses, I have never felt that it was okay to just completely ignore an email with no response. Given that everyone is busy, I also do not send out unnecesary or lengthy, overly wordy emails. Am I mistakenly under the assumption that email is still a communication tool? As a Virtual Assistant, email is a critical tool for communicating with clients from any location. This is one of the advantages of working with a Virtual Assistant…that one can be traveling the globe and still receive crucial assistance for their business. But we still need to be able to communicate and email is a prime way for doing that.

I took a little look around the ‘net to see if their were some newly published top secret email etiquette rules out there that I had missed out on. In fact, I found a post over at Business Email Etiquette which addressed not only my exact issue but validated my feelings about these non-responders. Here is what it said:

By not making the Sender aware you are away with a courteous away message, the Sender will assume their e-mail is received and if not responded to promptly, in your view, not a priority.

If you are so busy that you cannot respond at all (you’re there but not “away” to require an away message be in place), you are in fact deciding to ignore the Sender — even if for the time being — and that’s exactly what they will assume. You’ve made a decision that their e-mail is not important to you or you would have responded.

Exactly! Perception is everything. As technology has advanced making it easier to communicate with the flick of a finger and the click of button, we are slowly losing our ability to acknowledge that all this technology is still human-driven. There’s a person behind every message sent and a non-response has become one way to give someone the virtual finger. I find it ironic though as more and more people jump into social networking and media with all this evangelism about making connections and creating relationships, that people are failing to also see that email is still a part of that web. Your “virtual” presence can be everything when you primarily do business from afar.

As a Virtual Assistant, I’m here to help, so here are my suggestions for how busy people can make responding to email a little quicker when time is short:

1. Even if it’s just one line…send a response. It can be as short as “Hey, I received your email, will respond shortly.” That’s takes like two seconds folks.

2. Create a template email for those quick responses, especially if they are responses you find yourself sending often.

3. Get a Virtual Assistant. They can help with your email morass more than anyone. HOWEVER, you must still be able to communicate with your Virtual Assistant on a regular, consistent basis in order to get the most value out of the relationship. I think this is where so many VA-Client relationships fall apart…but that’s another post.

What is your email response policy? How do you handle non-responses?