Office Etiquette: Mail Reply Skills

1. reply to Email in time.

It is often necessary to reply to each other immediately after receiving important e-mail from others. This is respect for others. The ideal time to reply is within 2 hours, especially for some urgent and important mail.

It takes time to deal with every email immediately. For some low priority mail, it can be concentrated at a specific time, but it usually does not exceed 24 hours.

If things are complicated, you can't reply in time, at least you should reply in time. "Yes, we are dealing with it. If there is a result, we will reply in time."

Don't let the other person wait, remember: respond in time, even if you just confirm receipt.

If you are on a business trip or vacation, you should set the auto reply function to prompt the sender, so as not to affect the work.

When answering the questions, it is better to copy the related questions to the returned parts, and then attach the answers.

Don't be too rigid with simple ones. You should make the necessary elaboration, let the other party understand once again, avoid repeated communication and waste resources.

3. reply shall not be less than 10 words.

The other party sends you a large amount of mail. You only reply to the words "yes", "yes", "thank you", "know" and so on, which is very impolite.

You need to add 10 words to show your respect.

If the two sides receive more than 3 responses to the same question, this will only mean that the communication is not smooth enough.

At this point, telephone communication and other means should be used for communication before making judgement.

E-mail is sometimes not the best way to communicate.

For more complex problems, multiple recipients frequently reply and express their views. The higher the RE, the more cumbersome and unreadable.

At this point, we should summarize the results of previous discussions, reduce the weight loss and highlight useful information.

5. distinguish between Reply and ReplyAll.

If you only need a single person to know something, you can reply to him alone.

If you respond to the sender's request, replayall should be known to all of you.

If you are not clear about the questions raised by the sender or have different opinions, you should communicate with the sender individually. Do not go to RE in the presence of RE, discuss with the sender.

When you discuss it, let us know.

Do not send frequent email to your boss without definite results.

Think twice before clicking "reply to all".

In order to avoid unnecessary recovery and waste of resources, some recipients can be given a reply in the text, or add the following statement at the end of the article: "all done", "no action", "for reference only, no reply".