Hear No Evil, See No Evil — E-mail Kills the Phone

coondoggie writes to tell us that in a recent study e-mail has overtaken telephony as the most common workplace communication tool. "Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail, followed by fixed-line telephones (80%), mobile telephones (76%) and instant messaging (66%). The study points out the three most ubiquitous technologies increase productivity the most. Over 70% of the end-users surveyed say e-mail impacts positively on their productivity, followed by conventional fixed-line telephony (53%) and mobile telephony (52%). From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive, and could negatively impact productivity if not managed properly."

Discussed this with my boss...

[Smidge204]

I discussed this point with my boss once. I argued for e-mail:

There may be a record (via phone company) of when a call took place, what number was dialed, and how long it took...

...but with an e-mail, all parties involved have a record of when it was sent, who received it, and what was said.

That last part is hard to do with a phone conversation, legally anyway.
=Smidge=

Re:E-mail survey, right?

[garcia]

Let me guess. They did the survey via e-mail.

We'll they're better off doing it that way then by phone. It's not like I answer my phone for any number I don't recognize.

For just about anything I prefer chatting, e-mail, or any other electronic method as my time isn't 100% devoted to a single person. I can do 100 other things while responding to electronic messages. With a phone call my attention is solely with one person and that's just not a good way to operate for MOST functions of my day.

Slashdot Editors Forget

[Anonymous Coward]

That it really didn't kill the phone. And the overlap between landline and mobile phone usage probably makes that 100% as well. And hundreds of millions of people get their email through a phone line using dial-up or DSL.

obvious

[User 956]

From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive

Probably because those three things are more typically used for personal reasons, not business reasons. It's not so much a problem with the tools, but the use. If they became more widely integrated into the workplace, they wouldn't be considered "disruptive".

At any rate, if you have employees that are good at managing their own workflow, you don't have to worry about clamping down on "disruptive" technology.

Reasons?

[Enderandrew]

People hate voice mail.
It is easier to plan, revise and think-out email.
People are nervous about speaking.
E-mail leaves the ever-important trail to use against people later.
You're already using the computer, so it seems like an extra effort at times to switch tasks to the phone.

And this is the biggest supposition on my part, but it seems that people "look forward" to getting email, where as they feel annoyed anytime the phone rings.

Re:E-mail survey, right?

[garcia]

Hopefully you're not opening a lot of emails from addresses you don't recognize, either.

Unfortunately it's the nature of my job.

My opinion

[TheRealMindChild]

I gotta throw out my opinion here, with a bit of perspective from my last employer. Not everyone I worked with was nice. But the mantra was throughout the company, if you can't get them on the phone, hunt them down in person. So when someone got a bug up his ass about some issue, they would call my phone... over and over. You couldn't send them to voicemail... they would know right away you were there... so you had to wait out the three or four consecutive phone calls in hopes that they will just give up. But they rarely did. They would storm into my office ranting and raving about XYZ and they need ABC and whatever else they could complain about to keep me from my work. I honestly fought for an hour with a coworker (salesguy) that FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME STILL COULDN'T INSERT A PICTURE, FROM FILE, INTO A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION! And somehow this was my fault, because I was the computer guy. But I digress... anyway, even on the phone, they all went a mile a minute, giving me no time to think, no time to compose, nothing I could do where I could come out on top of that situation.

For this sake I preferred email corrispondance. I could think, sometimes over hours, what I needed to say, and constuctively lay it out how the situation needed.

But the old folks out there... the ones who insist I wear a tie, shine my shoes, shave my face TO SIT BEHIND A DESK, actually told me I was no longer allowed to respond to any issues of ANY kind via email. It had to be by phone.

Seriously, welcome to the 21st century. It is the future. A better mousetrap has been made. Quit making me catch mice with a broomstick and a bucket.

Ugh, email

[Anonymous Coward]

Now don't get me wrong, email has its uses. However, I would MUCH rather use a phone for most day-to-day business activities. Here's why:

- You're a lot more likely to get an answer in a timely manner if you call the person first, and THEN email them if they're not there, than if you just email and wait for a reply. I don't keep outlook open all the time because I find it a nuisance and it crashes all a time; phones don't crash usually.
- It takes longer to write (and to read) an email than to make a phone call.
- You don't get to show off your communication skills (such as bargaining) as much through email as you do on the phone.

Of course, over both of these, I prefer to walk down the hall to the person's cube and talk to them in person, but that seems outdated these days.

Re:I'm not shocked...

[Firethorn]

Let's say I wanted to ask someone a question, a simple question with no real need for an immediate reply. I send an e-mail. If I were to use regular phone, I have to deal with polite conversation which I may or may not have time for. Not that I don't mind idle conversation, it's just something I don't always want to deal with.

I love email for this very reason. Somebody asks me a question over the phone, if I don't have an immediate answer ready I have to get their contact information. That can be a pain in the butt, especially if we have a bad phone connection(It happens).

With email, if I have the info I dump it into the email and send it off to them. I even tend to keep a 'faq' listing for that very purpose(no, I don't make it public, because I'm supposed to be providing the 'personal touch', and customize the answers a bit for the customer's exact situation). If I need to collect it, no big deal, I have their contact information right there. It's in my queue, so to speak.

Unfortunately, most of my answers require research at this point because I just shifted positions and am still learning my new job.

email killed the FAX machine

[p51d007]

since I'm in the "document" business, I'm seeing more and more people (thankfully) going from a fax, to using email. A lot of multi-function-printers (MFP) have the ability to connect to a network connection. You can scan to email, scan to fax and also reverse it, printing what needs to be printed, or, fax to a "fax email" box, which would be networked, passworded so the intended receiver has access to the fax. Look at the document, edit, forward, or print, or simply delete. Scan to email, obviously, is a LOT faster than a fax. 20 pages on a fax, can, depending on the quality (or lack thereof) of the phone line can take 15-30 minutes! With an email, it is almost instant.

Re:E-mail survey, right?

[gmack]

I hate phones for the same reason I hate instant messengers. I don't like things that demand my instant attention and interrupt what I'm doing.

If I'm working on something I can check emails when it won't affect my ability to get work done. If I'm constantly answering the phone I never get anything done.

Duh...

[FlyByPC]

Email is asynchronous. Also, for (legitimate) emails, it's a lot more time-consuming for the sender to type it (~40wpm?) than for the recipient to read it (~a few hundred wpm). It doesn't take as much time -- and can be saved for handy reference, too.

I for one welcome our new SMTP overlords.

for certain limited definitions of "kill"

[jfruhlinger]

And by "kill" we mean "is used 25 percent more often than", according to one survey. But we might as well have a funeral now, right?

Pretty obvious...

[Ian123]

Seems obvious that new tech will replace old tech. That said I still find that picking up the phone gets more done then an email. For the simple reason that people have to respond right away. It's simply harder (but not impossible) to stonewall.

I find the phone quite disruptive

[bmajik]

Email and IM are the tools of choice at work. The crappy voip phones in our office use meridian mail, which I can only surmise was designed as an enormous practical joke on how to make someone quit their job merely over the tools instead of anything strictly job related... and which was accidentally shipped.

Our phones have this big red light on them when you have a voice mail waiting. Since somebody setup Meridian to ask you for a new voice mail password (one you've not used recently) every... what is it, 6 minutes?.. and since someone leaves me a voice mail once every 6 months.. invariably that light would come on and i'd have no way of getting it to shut off. Well, eventually I just unplugged my phone for a while and luckliy, when I moved desks and plugged it in, the light was gone. Now when people call me and try to leave voice mail, they get this horrible message saying this user hasn't setup their voice mail. Say it along with me in your best mortal combat announcer voice: "Flawless Victory!"

In any case, my phone is effectively a 1 way device. I use it to make non-work-related calls, or to dial into conference calls that aren't using pc/ip based audio streaming.

I'd like to dump the phone altogether and use a soft phone that integrates with an IM client. If I'm sitting at my laptop, we can communicate, and chances are, you'll try IM first.

Re:My current boss does that.

[SRA8]

Perhaps once i quit the firm. Anonymous is not really anonymous, as the circle of people who understand processes is quite small. It would be obvious I ratted him out if I did.

Bullsh*t

[alcmaeon]

We are apparently supposed to conclude that 20% of the people in business do not have telephone service?

I am guessing telephone service in business is 100% as well. Now, we could make a similarly arbitrary distinction between email gotten via pop3 through a desktop client and IMAP email gotten through a desktop client and pop3 through a web client adn IMAP through a web client and I bet all four of those would fall below land lines in adoption.