Bookworm Computing

Email.  Everyone uses it, but not many people truly think about it – so let’s start with a reasonable definition.

Email, e-mail, or electronic mail, is a formatted, encapsulated electronic message sent from one person to another through a network, or series of networks, intended to provide descriptive information.

That sounds odd, does it not?  In truth, that is email.    You could bring in the technologies behind it, you could bring up the computers that it passes through, you could even try to point to other types of formatted messaging, such as “Instant Messaging”.    Those would be true, but then again, false.   Instant messages are almost email, but not quite.  They aren’t encapsulated, and most of the time, they aren’t formatted.  There is no definitive structure to an instant message.  Notice, as well, that the definition says absolutely nothing about reliability or promptness.

Email has a specific layout, and has specific methods (MIME) to include all the wonderful things that people like to attach, such as business documents, pictures, programs, and the ubiquitous Portable Document Format file.   It’s a wonderful tool, and almost no business uses it with forethought.

The Good:

Email is robust and reliable.  In general, the RFC documents regarding mail servers intend that the machine should do their absolute best to make sure that the email will get to the receiving server, or at least will return a notice that the email could not be sent.   That’s it.  Email almost never just disappears.  It may be delayed for up to several days, but it will be delivered to the end server, or it will be rejected.  (Whether it gets to the end recipient is up to their server.  Spam filters can be overly aggressive and delete desired emails)   If you send an email to a client, a customer, or a friend, you can be reasonably sure it will be there the next time they check their email; if not, that you’ll eventually know they never received it.

The Bad:

Emails are not reliable for business.    Modern businesses seem to be driven by the ‘Right Now, Darnit!’ mode of thought.  Emails don’t work that way.  If you need an answer immediately, use the telephone.  It’s the only way to make sure that the person at the other end is aware of your issues.  An email can be lost in the shuffle, be taken care of as part of a batch at certain times of the day, or be completely ignored because of external circumstances.   If someone is driving home, on vacation, or enjoying the weekend, they aren’t likely to be answering your email – and they shouldn’t.

The Ugly:

Businesses, and often individuals, don’t use email very well. They almost never have good policies for electronic communications, and they have unrealistic expectations.  Then they look for some one, or some thing, to blame, when those expectations aren’t met.   Here are some common cries from the business owners, and their inherent contradictions.

“I don’t want to lose any emails from customers, make sure we get them all!”
“I don’t like all this spam, why don’t you stop them!?”

“We need a reliable mail server that’s easy to back up!”
“We want to use X mail client, why can’t you make it work right with the mail server!?”

“It needs to be easy!”
“This doesn’t do everything we want!”

“We don’t want to spend a lot of money on software!”
“This isn’t what we want!”

You can’t have it all.  You can have inexpensive.  You can have reliable.  You can even have easy to use.  You usually can’t have all of them.   Before you try to drive all of your business through email, look at what it is, and what it is not.  Then make an informed decision.