Learn To Triage Your Email

Don’t let email distract you, focus on your work and you’ll get more done.

When an important customer reaches out, respond right away, even if just to let them know you are working on their request.

Both of these are so important in growing a service-based business, yet irreconcilable. So how do you do both?

One great and under-appreciated skill amongst knowledge workers and office workers is that of monitoring and triaging emails. The ability to watch things flow in, and instantly know what is important and what is not.

The bedrock of most B2B SMB and industrial-focused companies is the service they provide and the relationships they build. So when a customer reaches out, you don’t want them spending minutes, hours, or especially days wondering if the email was received if it's being worked on, and when a possible answer might be incoming. So you need to monitor your email.

However, living in your email will prevent you from actually accomplishing much. You will feel productive as you answer emails, without actually accomplishing work. Most work is done outside of email, yet most people feel their job is their email.

Learning how to monitor regularly, see either important emails, or those from important people, send a quick reply, and return to your work is hard but necessary for higher-level performance at a company.

Here are a few tips to help you develop this skill:

• Turn off notifications. Notifications start you “wondering” about the message, from whom, why, etc. Turn these off.
• Check your email regularly, but not too often. For the industry I have always been in, an urgent email responded to within 15–20 is a very fast response. So I check 2–3 times an hour.
• Create a mental map of what is important. For me, there are a few

1. A customer’s line is down / they are out of part (this is my entire business, so it's important when its failing)
2. An important customer (top 20%) is asking for some non-normal information.
3. There is a quality issue with a part.

• Once you have a mental map of what is important, you need to develop the ability (and this is really the crux of the entire skill), to respond to the email, without letting your mind start to solve the problem. You need to recognize the importance, validate the customer’s desire to know it is being worked on, all without letting your mind be distracted from the current task.
• Reply with a quick 1–2 line email that states you got the request, you are currently working on it, and when you hope to have an answer. Doing this sets the customer’s expectation of good service, and you set your own schedule to allow time to work on the problem

Not doing this can result in a lot of extra customer calls and reach outs as they wonder if you got the email or if you are working on it. When you are in crisis, every minute seems like an hour. Don’t make your customer (or any important email) seem like it's been open for hours. A quick email will settle the environment, and keep you moving on your own schedule.