ANSWERING EMAIL
Steve Cole writes:
We try to answer every email on the day we get it, but that isn't always possible.
Some emails require only short answers and, since we already know those answers, these emails are answered "in real time", more or less when they arrive. (Our email system is set to scan the server for new mail every twenty minutes, so your email may reach us from 1-20 minutes after you send it. Of course, we're sometimes out of the office for some reason, so even if we received it, nobody may have read it until hours later.) If it's a really busy day, mail that would normally get a quick answer gets sent to a file for later instead of answered "today". Worse, it may get left in the in box for tomorrow, and may get lost if tomorrow is a bad day.
Some emails require longer answers or require us to look something up. These may get done the same day (if it's not a busy day) or may get sent to one of the folders for longer email answers (marketing on Monday, customer requests on Wednesday, submissions on Thursday, deals on Friday). Submissions may get looked at on the next Thursday, or we might mumble to ourselves: "Oh, a new {story, ship, scenario}. Leave that in the folder until the next time we're looking for one of those."
A lot of simple and easy things go into the "Customer Request Folder" without getting a reply that day which says "We put it in the Customer Request folder" because that just seems silly. We figure that people will get the note that their request was done within a week anyway. Customer requests that are clearly going to take a lot of time and won't get done next week do get a receipt saying that.
We try to answer every email on the day we get it, but that isn't always possible.
Some emails require only short answers and, since we already know those answers, these emails are answered "in real time", more or less when they arrive. (Our email system is set to scan the server for new mail every twenty minutes, so your email may reach us from 1-20 minutes after you send it. Of course, we're sometimes out of the office for some reason, so even if we received it, nobody may have read it until hours later.) If it's a really busy day, mail that would normally get a quick answer gets sent to a file for later instead of answered "today". Worse, it may get left in the in box for tomorrow, and may get lost if tomorrow is a bad day.
Some emails require longer answers or require us to look something up. These may get done the same day (if it's not a busy day) or may get sent to one of the folders for longer email answers (marketing on Monday, customer requests on Wednesday, submissions on Thursday, deals on Friday). Submissions may get looked at on the next Thursday, or we might mumble to ourselves: "Oh, a new {story, ship, scenario}. Leave that in the folder until the next time we're looking for one of those."
A lot of simple and easy things go into the "Customer Request Folder" without getting a reply that day which says "We put it in the Customer Request folder" because that just seems silly. We figure that people will get the note that their request was done within a week anyway. Customer requests that are clearly going to take a lot of time and won't get done next week do get a receipt saying that.
posted by Federation Commander at 7:14 AM
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