Emails as the only means of business communication for a company

In the recent times, it has been noted that emails have become quite popular and famous worldwide. Email is also known as Electronic mail. This type of communication is an essential part of written communication. In fact in the contemporary society, email communications are popular among business firms, organisations and companies. As Victor Terrazas, owner of Rejuvenate Therapeutic Massage states that ‘’ Email is our prime mode of communication. We rely really heavily on it because whenever I send something out, I’II get a flood of telephone calls.’’ Therefore this initiated me into reflection whether nowadays emails are really more effective as a means of communication in a business than face to face interaction with customers. Hence I formulated my question: Should a company use only emails for business communication? For my work placement, I was posted at State Informatics Limited Company where most of the employees as well as the manager Miss Mokshada Gopee use emails as a means of communication instead having a personal meeting with the clients.

In fact, I noticed that the company has a messenger who delivers messages, emails are used to communicate to clients because when management, human resources or other departments use email to send notifications, it sends the messages to the company as a whole. For instance if certain software programs are shut due to some maintenance issues, still emails will reach all employees or clients inbox. Thus, I conclude that email must be effective if the employees prefer this means of communication. As I gathered data through observations and informal interviews, I understand that emails are given more priority as it allows instant responses. Yet with the rise in technology, I fear that there can be much abuse of such facilities at work by employees.

One of the tangible benefits for email is that it is the cheapest way to deliver message that is no geographical movement is involved. Communicating via email is the potential to save money and time as well. This means that if an employee is absent and he has to send an urgent mail, it is very easy for him to send it wherever he is. Hence, this indicates that the employee can instantly send the mail at any time. Moreover, this benefit also applies for the company as well. Email can be checked on laptop or computer or even smartphone. According to Carol Singer, owner of Arlington Promotional Products states that ‘’ we are definitely focused on mobile devices now. I want to know that if someone gets our email, no matter where they are, they can look at it. In fact, when I sent our last flyer I got three phone calls! That’s big! And I am almost positive that all of those people were on their phones, not in an office.” So this indicates that there is no need to have employees to occupy a desk full time as employees may spend significant periods of time outside the office to work which might create more incentives to work harder. Thus I believe that whenever employees are absent the company faces less inconvenience as the work is ongoing via email and through email, it gives the employees an advantage of better understanding the needs and interests of the customers’ base and the employees will be independent working on their own rather than relying on their colleagues or boss.

Peter Boucher states that ‘ another definition for Email is Flexible working is more than just working from home. It’s about working from wherever you need to be, whether that’s from a café with a client, a customer’s HQ or during your commute’. Hence this indicates that email is a means of technology that can be used as audio, video conferencing, instant messaging and more commonly sharing of ideas. One main advantage of using email as a means of communication is that it is a fast method of transferring data that is a person can quickly and easily send electronic files such as text, photos and data sheets as well to multiple of contacts simultaneously by attaching the file to an email. This is because when colleagues of the same or different departments need to send or receive any information related to same projects, then email is the useful tool as it takes only a few seconds or moments to receive an answer or feedback from the person. Therefore, this strengthens the collaboration and enhances a sense of community between the persons and recipients even if the latter is not physically in the same place. Thus I believe that by the use of emails, important data can be transferred spontaneously and it is more practical and convenient in case an issue crop up so the person and the recipients can easily deal with it. I believe that in today’s hectic world, use of email is a boon to a company as it saves time and boosts productivity.

In the same vein, working through email produces a better customer service and can increase customer loyalty. Indeed, SIL is a company where they sell hardware and software. So most selling process is done by email. According to Emma Barnett ‘ If you aren’t face to face with your target, nothing gets a message across quicker than two minutes’ that is competition is tough so company should know how to establish a good interaction with the clients. Thus, when dealing or communicating with customers through email, it can easily increase a better customer service and at the same time increase customer loyalty as customers will feel valued when they are being assisted and their requests are being entertained quite spontaneously. Indeed when the delivery will be done fast and the clients will be satisfied with the service. Consequently the clients will repeatedly buy the products from the same company as email will give the employees’ opportunities to capture the client’s attention and nurture the relationship with a helpful and informative content. Hence this will increase customer loyalty, increase volume of sales and lead to an increase in profitability.

Moreover Rasel an author of business communication article states that ‘ email enable record keeping that is email messages remain in an employee inbox unless it has been deliberately deleted’. But email software and the webmail services offer a search function and filters that allow an employee to track down some specific message that will only take a matter a seconds. So although having an overloaded of mails, the employee can easily use the search function and receive the mail he was looking for which implies that it is less time consuming and might create more scope for multitasking in a company. According to me, recording is the best way of retrieving all the important mails and recording is also another means of back up that is if an essential mail has been deleted then through the recording the staff can retrieve the mail and can reply its client instantly. However if there was no record of mail, then the company might face a lot of problems like losing of staff hence lead to loss in organisation and also can lead to bad reputation.

‘ Email is Vulnerability’ according by George N. Root this means that through email, it is extremely easy to extract important information. He further argues that ‘’Email is like a store’’ and forward service where it is not necessary for the receiver to be present at the computer. Because when sending a mail, the message will reside in the receiver’s mailbox until it is read or deleted. Therefore I believe that it is not important for an individual to stay at his place every time to wait for the mail. As when the mail will be received, it will remain in the user’s inbox and file, data, sound, image or video clip also can be sent through email as attachment. Thus multinational and large companies use email and using email, every company should have internet access so most companies have their own servers to provide access to its employees to deal with internal and external business need.

In line with it, using an email both the sender and receiver must have an individual account like yahoo. com or outlook. com but the company I was working, most employees use outlook. com. Because it has security features which can protect your email account from predators compare to other mail. And this also includes protection against junk and phishing website mail. Moreover in outlook mail a scanner will alert you when you have sent something from an untrustworthy sender. So you can disable live links and block senders through the security features. Therefore, having the common email link will be able to help the employees to exchange information about any project to their clients immediately as through common email the employees can receive dates and times of meeting or any sessions and moreover outlook mail enable the employees and recipients as well to receive bulky projects or reports as the capacity of such mail is very high. This is why most companies use outlook mail as a means of communication.

Yet, I am compelled to acknowledge that emails are not always the most effective way of interaction in a company. I believe there are many customers who value face to face contact as they feel more secure. ‘’ Emails could surpass human interaction’’ as Cary Cooper states. This means that many employees misuse email that is they use email for their personal use like chatting with friends or relatives rather than doing their work. Working at SIL, a member of such company states that emails are meant to communicate with clients only and not with relatives. There is often an abuse as one employee from SIL (who preferred to remain anonymous) claims although employees work from their home, they do not necessarily respond to their clients. As such most of the works are pending and deadlines are not met. For example: most emails that are received are from police station and their request is to look for a solution about the damaged pieces connected to a computer. So any member can receive such mail. Hence, due to the fact that most employees are working from home, they delay in replying the clients, despite the urgency of the requests.

‘ Email can lead to a lower level of professionalism’ as said by Laura Acevedo. This means that employees will have tendency to use less formal approach of communications when using emails. That is there will be less personal interaction between clients and employees. Consequently using email regularly will appear unprofessional to current and potential clients. I believe that less face to face interaction between clients and company can lead to conflicts. This is because a client normally wants to know the employees of a company personally so that the client can be sure that he is dealing with a high reputed company. Without knowing the company’s staff personally, a client might not accept the deal with the company as communication is restricted to email only rather than having face to face conversation. Hence this can create barriers between both the company and the clients. In other words excessive use of email is that it can lead to misinterpretations between both the company and the clients as well. This is because while communicating online, a client might not understand something with the email, therefore it will be difficult for the clients to get a valid picture of the company as both are not doing face to face conversation. Thus this will tend to create a misunderstanding between the company and the clients as well. As a result of which, the company might lose customers and also can lead to massive losses.

It is said that ‘ Emails are more prone to security issues’ states by Laurie Swenson that is email can be risked to hacking, spam or virus. It is said that although there is high protection against the security issues but still there are some professional hackers who can easily steal any person’s information. Concerning for the business communication, an email can be sent privately but if anyone wants to decrypt the message then the person can use all the hacking techniques to know about the information. That is any email can be intercepted by hacker therefore sensitive information and messages are vulnerable to hackers or even unsuspecting recipients.

Furthermore spam is a bane for all emailers that are any unsolicited email can be received in the mailbox. For an employee who use email for business communication, spam will frequently happen. Spam is just some annoying email which can interrupt a work processing. But the most harmful security issue is the virus which can occur at any time. The most alarming impact of virus is that it erases all important messages and information in a computer or even in a mailbox. The virus can even infect the computer system and hence this can make the company incur for losses because if the computer system crash, it is impossible to carry out the selling and buying of products through emails as this will handicap both the employees and the clients because most of clients rely heavily on this company. Therefore for a company like SIL, the employers or the managers must take severe action to keep its system safe. Although there is anti-virus software in a company but it can happen in a second and this can spread very fast. Hence I believe that for business communication, it is important that the company should have highly secured anti-virus software or even firewall to combat the virus.

In a nutshell, I still find that email is more effective. This is because we have to keep pace with the latest innovation of technology thus I personally believe that that it is more advantageous to students, teachers and businessmen or even any other person who is in touch with technology so that they will not lag behind. Moreover, personally I believe that emails are more easily available as well as accessible from anywhere and anytime. Hence I would recommend others to keep in touch with technology but to act responsibly in order not to fall in prey to hackers or misuse the technology. Thus, I remain resolute and believe that email is a must and more effective to establish communication in companies.