Fishburn Hedges

01.07.2011 | (1 comment)

I had a frustrating run-in with Hotmail last weekend, which in hindsight might provide a wonderful template for reducing communication ‘overload’ at work. 

I was working on my home PC, conducting some research on the market. I was merrily visiting company websites and sending links to my work email address. And then, out of the blue, Hotmail stopped me in my tracks by barring my account. “We suspect you of sending SPAM”, the on-screen alert announced. “We have therefore locked your account. If you feel there is any reason why this should be lifted, please contact us”.

I might be paraphrasing the above wording slightly, because I read the message through in a rapidly-escalating fit of rage. How dare they suddenly block me, without any warning? Why did they assume my links contained anything dodgy? And what the hell would I be spamming myself? I was furious (I have to admit to sending a rather tart email to the customer service desk as a result). But once I carried my toys back to my pram, I began to think of the benefits that the Hotmail approach was offering.

Hotmail was, clearly, protecting its millions of users from unwanted messages (whether or not these are offering Viagra). It was saving those people countless hours of wading through rubbish in their in-boxes. And it made me think – couldn’t a similar approach have benefits at work?

Just think of the amount of unwanted notes that you receive at work. If you’re in a large organisation, this usually includes messages from departments you have never heard of, offers you’re not interested in or internal bulletins that are pretty irrelevant to your work. In recent years, the increasing use and functionality of intranets has helped to reduce the torrent of such messages, and the advent of social media behind the firewall is also helping, but in many cases the tide of emails remains in full flow.

Could an internal SPAM filter help? Maybe this could be a function through which employees can select the type of emails they do – and don’t – want to receive. Vital notices – as determined by the company’s executives – could automatically override this system, but all other notes would be subject to the user’s stated preference. Many companies have introduced systems like this to customise e-zines and intranet pages, but I haven’t encountered one based on email as a whole. But this could significantly reduce traffic and demonstrate to the people who send such information that they need to rethink the way they engage employees. Simply writing a note and pumping out information is rarely the best way of sparking the reaction they are seeking.

I have no idea whether the idea is practical, or even technically feasible, but it’s cheery thought for a Friday afternoon!

Posted by Paul Sweetman

on 04.07.2011

Peter Sigrist :-
Nice Friday afternoon thoughts Paul. I think you've hit upon two interesting themes. The first is the fight against spam. Apparently, spam is down 82% in the past year, and you appear to have stumbled upon a skirmish in that war (http://mashable.com/2011/07/04/spam-decreased-82percent/). As for ways to reduce spam, I remember a few years ago debates were taking place about charging for sending emails, as this would make spam too expensive. It seems to me that if you gave business units a 'budget' for how much internal email they could send in a year, that would make sure they saved it up for only their most important mail shots. Not sure if this has been tried (I'm sure it has somewhere), but it'd be a simple solution that avoids the need for spam filters.