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Jeff Gibbard || Lovable Leader, Professional Speaker, and World's Most Handsome Social Strategist

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My apologies for the delayed response

March 14, 2014 by Jeff Gibbard 6 Comments

“My apologies for the delayed response.”

It’s unsettling how many of my emails start out this way.

I used to be awful with email, simply awful.  A few years ago when email was my mortal enemy, my opening email apology was usually the result of the irresponsible neglect of my email inbox.

Over time, I have gotten much better with this vital communication channel, because my business relies on it more than anything else (yes, even more than social media).

So now when I make that apology, it’s because I’ve had two straight days of back-to-back calls, meetings, strategy writing, and sometimes even a podcast session. By the time 6:00 rolls around, the last thing I want to do is try to achieve inbox 0.  So, three days later I’m, responding to your new business inquiry.

How do I address this situation?

I feel the need to apologize when my response time exceeds my own limits of what is acceptable, but I can’t feasibly move around other aspects of my professional and personal life to make more time for email.

The math just doesn’t add up, there are more emails and less time. What is the solution without singing the sad song of “I’m so busy?”  Should I keep up the apologies, or extend my own expectations for email response time?

I’m open to suggestions.

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Comments

  1. Bernie Carlin says

    March 14, 2014 at 8:59 am

    managing requests for new business with google forms might help. all their relevant details get collected on the form you create, it all dumps to a google spreadsheet, and you can create a personalized auto-response email explaining that you need a few days lead time, but in the meantime they should check out your sweet podcast/any other resources you want to promote.

    with a little bit of javascripting, those forms are powerful. i was able to create a maintenance/IT help desk ticket system with it for work that has pretty solid functionality.

    Reply
    • Jeff Gibbard says

      March 14, 2014 at 11:24 am

      Bernie, totally on board with that and have recently revised my contact forms in that way. Check it: http://truevoicemedia.com/contact-us/ and http://www.jeffgibbard.com/contact/. This problem is with the people that already have my email address and don’t use the form.

      Maybe I need to setup some better GMail filters?

      Reply
      • Bernie Carlin says

        March 14, 2014 at 11:41 am

        i struggle with filters. inbox management on that level isn’t my thing.

        i have my thing setup so that recurring locations (for your purposes, maybe customers) can submit multiple inquiries. they seem to like it, and it keeps the requests more orderly.

        http://www.fcm215.com/support/

        but like you say, it doesn’t stop anyone from just emailing me whenever they feel like it from time to time either.

        Reply
  2. Ben LeDonni says

    March 14, 2014 at 4:54 pm

    Check this out. There’s an accompanying podcast. I love Michael Hyatt. Here’s his suggestion. I use a serious of folders for Do, Delegate, Defer in my tags on Gmail that really help. http://michaelhyatt.com/yes-you-can-stay-on-top-of-email.html

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Marching Towards The “Daddy Post” says:
    March 31, 2015 at 8:03 am

    […] write on this blog constantly, almost everyday (now that I’m back to writing), and it was a single post with just the right title, that caused my monthly traffic to grow more than 300%. I didn’t plan on this post being […]

    Reply
  2. What I learned from strategically turning on my out of office responder says:
    February 17, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    […] I have long struggled with the email. In fact, one of the most popular posts on this blog is about my struggles with email. […]

    Reply

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