Watch your "netiquette"

Friday, 4.45pm: time for one last check of your e-mail inbox before taking off for the weekend. It's been a long, frustrating day ... your headache is getting progressively worse and you can't wait to get home, put your feet up, have a drink and watch some TV.

There's a message - a complaint - something about your company's product (or service, or receptionist, or fees). You immediately feel a shiver down your spine, a knot forms in your stomach, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

"WELL EXCUUUUUUUUSE ME!" you fire back, just seconds later. "IF YOU'RE SO UNHAPPY, WHY DON'T YOU GO AND FIND ANOTHER COMPANY TO BOTHER THEN!"

In a matter of moments - you realise afterwards - you've managed to not only offend (and probably lose) a customer, but also potentially damage your company's reputation with other customers and rival businesses, as well as the general public.

This is because, unlike a phone call or face-to-face meeting, an offensive e-mail can be forwarded (again and again and again) to other recipients, literally at the touch of a button, who can just as easily forward it again, and again, and again...

Brad Bond, a director at IT support company Invizage Technology, says situations like this are becoming increasingly commonplace because "the ease and speed at which we can now communicate via email has become one of its greatest downfalls. This can often lead to people making careless mistakes, sometimes with disastrous consequences - such as information being communicated in writing that could be construed as representing the company's viewpoint, or binding the company into an agreement."

While it helps to follow the usual rules of good writing, a number of unwritten laws associated with the writing and sending of online messages - a concept loosely defined as 'netiquette' - have emerged. Applying these can help avoid these situations. Ignoring them can create a negative reaction in any message recipients who do follow them.

An interesting phenomenen of the Internet is that it's major growth came at a time when society seemed largely focussed on "me" - making money, getting a bargain, etc. Despite this, the cooperative ethos of the early Internet users - largely academics and scientists - still shows through. People will generally help other people on the Internet - when in real life they might just ignore them. This shows through in the vast numbers of sites and e-mail lists where information is willingly shared with no expectation of monetary reward. (This has caused problems for many commercial enterprises which have tried to charge for content. People now expect Internet information to be free.)

"The content of a formal message should be structured in much the same manner as you would a letter, beginning at the 'Hello X' line," says Bond. "There is no need to include the date or other address information that you would normally include. Signoff should be as per a letter."

As such, details such as company name, sender's name, sender's job, contact details and even signatures can easily be added to the bottom of every outgoing email. In fact, an e-mail signature automatically added to the bottom of every outgoing message can actually become a powerful advertising tool, especially when someone forwards it many times.

When replying to an e-mail, you should quote the original message. Most e-mail programs allow you to set this up to happen automatically - and to differentiate the original message by inserting specific marks - usually ">". The greeting and signoff are still normal, but your reply to each point in the original message is written immediately after each point. Delete any parts of the message which do not need a reply - including the standard text at the bottom of the original message.

There are many other aspects to netiquette. For example, the use of all uppercase letters in our message above is the equivalent of shouting. It is common these days to use HTML to improve the look of e-mail messages - but this is not always popular as it multiples the size of the message. Similarly Outlook in particular has some settings which can cause problems in other e-mail programs.

As an aside, it is generally better to put your message in the e-mail program, rather than attaching a Word document. While most people use Word, and many others have programs that can read Word, some do not, and others have older versions of Word. If you have to keep the format accurate, or want to send a large document, converting it to Acrobat (PDF) makes it smaller and more universal. (It also makes it harder for people to edit the document which can be important.)

Many arguments / flame wars happen because of misunderstandings. In face to face communication the words make up only 7% of the message. On-line messages do not have the other 93% of the message (e.g. facial gestures). To help that, people have developed "smileys" or "emoticons". These can convey some emotional content as in ;-) or :-( - or if you wear glasses 8-) and 8-(. Particularly in a business context, you need to be very careful with the use of humour. It can be minsinterpreted and backfire.

An Internet search will quickly reveal numerous sites explaining the intricacies of "netiquette". There is much more than we have highlighted in this article.

For more guidance on how to provide outstanding customer service, talk to your RAN ONE advisor about the Towards Awesome Service training programme for your team.

For more information contact your RAN ONE business professionals at
Academy of Business Excellence Limited