- Keep An Open E-mail Box. Open Ciramail at the start of the work day and commit to yourself to spend a specific block of time processing your e-mails, or until all e-mails are actioned upon if possible. Then keep your e-mail box open throughout the day, and assign yourself several blocks of time each day to come back to it.
- Remember to hit refresh each time you revisit your emails.
- Checking your emails once a day will not suffice and will keep you from achieving your goal of effective e-mail management.
- Make use of two screens to multi-task; work on one project (i.e. approving invoices) on one screen while processing e-mails on the other
- Touch it Once. Try to touch each e-mail only once; it is always more efficient to read and respond (or action) immediately. Visually scan subject lines to identify those of utmost importance or those that can be processed quickly.
- Read, respond, or take action: archive/complete.
- Avoid falling into the “I’ll come back to this later” trap.
- Every time you read an e-mail without taking action means, you have to come back to it, wait for it to load again, and that means double the work, double the wasted time and energy.
- Every time you touch an e-mail, it is locked for 15 minutes, preventing other team members from being able to access and work the e-mail.
- Acknowledgment. If you cannot answer the e-mail without further research, at least e-mail an acknowledgment to let the homeowner know you received it. A quick response “E-mail Acknowledgement” template has been added for this purpose. Add your own text to it to personalize it and prevent it from appearing as a canned response. Sign your name. Then, do not mark it complete, and do not move to the completed file when prompted after hitting “Send.” Instead, conduct the research that is necessary and process accordingly:
- If the matter requires review by another department, put a note on the notepad and transfer it to that department right away. Never transfer an e-mail without an internal note. As soon as you receive the information you need, promptly respond to the homeowner with your findings.
- If the matter needs to be handled by another team member, put a note on the notepad and “assign” it to that team member.
- Sometimes, it is best to transfer to a department rather than assign to a person, such as transferring to amenity rather than assigning to the amenity programmer who might not see that e-mail for some length of time.
- Say No to the G. Avoid using G-mail for Homeowner, Board and Vendor communication. Get to know Ciramail like the back of your hand to increase your comfort and competency level. Use G-mail primarily for internal communications. If you do not copy the association e-mail address on your G-mail e-mail, there is no permanent record in Ciranet. If you do copy the association e-mail address on your communications, it creates additional e-mails in Ciramail for you to review, attribute, process, complete, etc., thereby creating extra work. And even worse, if the original e-mail you are responding to contained your G-mail e-mail address as well as the community address, when you reply all to it you are creating yet another e-mail in Ciramail to have to process!
- Where do I begin? Set up your Ciramail grid so that “Date Received” is the first column, allowing you to sort by date, identify at a glance the older e-mails, and work those first.
- Getting from Start to Finish. One great aid to getting from start to finish with your e-mails is to make the most use of the Start action.
- If the e-mail is from a homeowner requesting a repair, generate a work order right from the e-mail by going to Start > Generate New Work Order. Then acknowledge the homeowners e-mail, let them know a work order has been issued, provide the work order number, and set the expectation by advising them when to expect the repair to be complete. Depending on the timelines given to you, you may want to convey to the homeowner how long the operation will take to complete. For example, you might say, “we expect this work to be completed within one week.” At times of higher work order volume, you can set the expectation that it may take longer by saying, “due to recent storms, we are experiencing delays, as there are more damages throughout the area than the contractors can repair in the standard turn-around time”, adding for example, “Please allow two weeks for this work to be completed.”
- If the e-mail subject is one you must send to the Board for approval (perhaps a request for a hearing or waiver of numerous fines), create a task by going to Start > Create Project/Task. Then acknowledge the e-mail and set the expectation as to how long they should expect it to take for the Board to render a decision and complete it. No need to keep that e-mail open, you will create a new e-mail to the homeowner once you have the Board’s decision. Use your task to track your progress and to remind you to follow up with the Board if you do not hear back within a week or so.
- If the e-mail is from a homeowner requesting ACC approval, generate a new Architectural Application by going to Start > Add Architectural Application. Then you can acknowledge the e-mail using the “ACC Response Received” Quick Response template, set the expectation as to how long they should expect it to take for the ACC Committee to render a decision, and complete the e-mail. Again, no need to keep it open, you will create a new e-mail to the homeowner once you receive the decision of the Committee directly from the Architectural Application module.
- If the e-mail is from a vendor submitting an invoice, submit the invoice directly into the AP system by going to Start > Create AAP Workflow, and then complete it.
- Teach an Old Board New Tricks. If you teach them, they can learn! It will probably take several reminders, but train your Boards to leave you off of board discussion-only e-mails and appoint one person (typically the President) to merely advise you when a decision has been made (one e-mail instead of many). Teach them to communicate with you via Projects/Tasks. They can create a new task when there is an issue they wish you to research, they can edit existing tasks to provide you with further directives, etc.
- When they create tasks and assign them to you, you are notified via e-mail, so it can’t be overlooked.
- When they modify them to add new information or directives, teach them to use the task feature that sends an e-mail to alert you that the task has been updated, triggering you to take a look at it.
- Multiplicity Use the Multi-Selection box to process multiple e-mails at one time whenever possible. For example, when you check your mail box and see multiple unwanted Linked-In Invitations; check the multi-selection boxes and move them all to junk with one click. Or if you see numerous e-mails that you can tell by the subject line are related to ACC requests; check the multi-selection boxes and assign them all to the appropriate ACAM with one click.
- No to Thanks! It may seem an abstract concept at first, but the e-mail arena is one place where it’s not just OK, but sometimes even preferred, to not reply to or transfer e-mails back to another department with a “Thank you” or “OK.” Opening and reading them, and in Ciramail, attributing and processing them, steal away fractions of minutes, and over a busy day, it adds up.
- Just the Facts! Keep your e-mails brief and concise, but not so brief that they create confusion. Most of the time we spend dealing with e-mail is spent writing e-mails and clearing up confusion with an e-mail you sent earlier. Avoid one-word or one-sentence responses that create more questions and, e-mails.
- Spend less time on e-mail and more time working productively by practicing good e-mail habits, such as clarity, concision, and relevance.
- Trim your e-mails so that they address the essentials (who you are, what you want, why you should receive it, and when you need it by).
- Structure your e-mail for better readability, using bulleted points or well-defined paragraphs that will help the receiver scan the email faster.
- In consideration of everyone’s time, resist the temptation to include the entire team in every communication; only include those who truly need to be in the know. Remember the boy who cried wolf; copying them on everything reduces the chances they’ll actually read it (you might get a quick scan at best), but if you are selective, they will learn an e-mail from you is one they really need to pay attention to.
When you are caught up, monitor e-mails assigned to others on your team. If they are buried under, pitch in to help them out, and ask them to do the same for you. That’s what “teamwork” is all about!
