Whether you work from home or in an office environment, a lot of your time is consumed by answering emails. You have to write them, which is fair enough, but you also have to respond to them.
Hours every day are wasted replying to emails because you don’t know what to say or if they even warrant a response. If only there was some magical way to cut down on email time, freeing up more productive hours in your day.
There is! You can spend less time responding to emails - and more time reaching your goals - if you follow the tips below.
Make AI your friend
Artificial Intelligence has numerous uses when you’re hard at work. People worry about AI taking over our jobs, but the reality is it’s a great tool to help us be more productive.
When it comes to emails, AI can be used in a couple of great ways:
Use AI to automate email responses
Use AI to reduce the number of emails coming in
The first idea is highly common and lots of email clients will use Artificial Intelligence to send out automated responses. It means people get a response right away without you needing to do anything.
The second idea refers to why people might email you. In a lot of instances, you get emails from prospects or clients with issues that need solving.
If you speak to a chatbot company and get an AI chatbot on your website, common questions can be answered before an email is sent.
Effectively, you’re using AI via another platform to improve customer service and stop emails from littering your inbox. Thus, you spend less time each day responding to messages as there are fewer to deal with.
Delegate your emails
In many situations, you receive emails asking for something you can’t provide. It could be a client complaining of an issue that has nothing to do with you.
Here, you can save so much time and stress by delegating these emails to the right people.
Read through an email, and if you can’t provide a solution - but you know someone who can - forward it to them. Let them deal with it, so you can spend more time on the things that matter in your working day.
Filter your emails
Use email plugins that filter your emails into different categories. It’ll let you figure out which emails should be responded to now, which ones can wait and which ones don’t need a response at all.
This is a fantastic way of seeing all of your important emails without worrying about anything else. You can spend the necessary time responding to these messages, saving the others for later when you have time spare.
Also, you realise that loads of your emails are pointless and you don’t even need to waste time writing a response.
You don’t have to be the last one to talk in an email chain - if someone thanks you for something and says “have a good evening” in their email, you don’t need to waste time replying back just to be nice!
Emails will drain your productivity if you’re not careful. Thankfully, there are tools and ideas to spend less time responding to messages and more time focusing on important tasks.
Do you spend a lot of time replying to emails? I'd love to hear about your experiences!
Love, Sarah xoxo
