Tuesday, March 20, 2007

CMC: The Effectiveness of E-Mail in the Business World

Professional business relationships are often overlooked when it comes to internet mediated relationships within a group. Many studies and articles focus on informal relationships within blogs, online match making sites, and social networking sites like myspace and so on. Not as much effort is given to the study of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) within a formal organization and its effectiveness. More effort should be taken to study communication within groups mediated by a computer or the internet because according to Joe Walther of Cornell, CMC communication is just as effective, if not more than interpersonal information (Griffin).

Due to my own personal lack of informal personal relationships mediated online, I will discuss how my daily interaction with my company through networked e-mail creates strong business relationships.

As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, I work as a retail salesman at Best Buy selling home audio and video products. Anyone who works or has worked in retail sales knows that vertical communication throughout the corporate hierarchy is important between management and departments. Managers cannot be expected to know every little detail about each department because they do not work that department; that’s why there are supervisors to control each department. A supervisor’s job requires specific communication with managers about their department or the store. As one of the supervisors of the Audio Video department, it is very important to communicate effectively with the managers. For example, if I was not satisfied with the way my employees handle certain situations or processes, I would communicate the problem with the managers and try to find a plausible solution.

But the question is how do I communicate specific situations with my managers? I have found that the company e-mail network run through Microsoft Outlook provides me with a formal and efficient way to communicate business with managers and other supervisors. Through our company e-mail network, I can find anyone’s e-mail address within the entire company by selecting the store number and employee last name. If I don’t know the employees name I can search by their company position or job. This makes the communication process much faster than looking in a phone book and contacting someone, who may not have time to talk to you. According to professor Em Griffin of Wheaton College, CMC offers you extended time to artfully craft your message so it is very clear and formal. CMC is asynchronous in that you have time to think about how you will respond to the receiver. The same benefits of CMC cannot be related to interpersonal communication. I have found that I get better results from my managers when I communicate to them via e-mail. I find CMC to be more formal than interpersonal communication because formal communication is what businesses rely on. In fact, I feel that my fellow employees take me more serious when I communicate to them via e-mail.

An article written by Roma Nowak of Information Week provides a survey of a couple hundred business professionals and why they preferred e-mail communication over phone communication. The number one response was response flexibility, which is the ability to respond at your convenience. The second most popular response was the ability to communicate with multiple parties. This brings up another major benefit of e-mail communication. The ability to carbon copy an e-mail to multiple people is much easier and less chaotic than a phone conference or three way call. E-mail to me, appears a more civilized way of handling business relationships. Many companies believe in keeping separate your personal and business life and I feel that text is much less personal than spoken words.

I originally didn’t have an e-mail address at work, but once my managers realized how much more effective my communication could be with an e-mail address, they gave me one. Now my business relationships with my fellow employees are stronger than ever because of my ability to communicate with them, which has gained me trust among them.

References

Griffin, E. (2004). Communication: A First Look At Communication Theory: Sixth Edition

Nowak, R. (2003). E-mail beats the phone in business communication. Retrieved March 21,
2007 from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10000052

No comments: