5 Tips: Fewer Emails Thanks To Screen Captures
Screen Captures
By the end of 2017 269 billion e-mails had been sent worldwide. In numbers: 269,000,000,000! How many of these e-mails come about through queries and explanations? Probably a lot! A lot of time (and therefore money) is spent trying to sort things out. In this post, I want to show how screen captures communicate visually and avoid endless back and forth of e-mails.
1. Shortening The Feedback Loop
It’s easy to add comments or suggestions to a Google Docs document. But how much context do you think is lost in these text comments? Instead, record a video where you go through and explain your comments so the author understands precisely what you mean.
2. Pictures Instead Of Words
You must have heard the adage – ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. Similarly, the text can be replaced by the picture (screen captures) and also communicate the intent vividly to the recipient.
3. Introduction To Programs Or Tools
If you have to keep repeating yourself, much time is lost. Are you regularly asked to introduce new employees to the countless software programs and technologies your company uses? Record a video in which you explain everything step by step and make it available in a central location where everyone can access it at any time – for example, on the company’s intranet.
4. Current Information On Project Results
You have just completed an extensive study and analyzed all the data. Now you want to present the results to your team. You can write a long e-mail, call a meeting, or create a PowerPoint presentation. Or make a video. This works very well for this purpose because viewers can choose when to watch it, and it’s also available for future reference. It also reaches more people than can fit in a conference room.
5. Bug Reporting
In technical support and IT in general, a lot can be achieved with screenshots. Whenever I encounter an error, I take a screenshot for the IT department whenever possible to help diagnose it. Sometimes it’s like, “All right, just do this and that.” And sometimes: “Oh, that’s new – I’ll take a closer look.” Either way, the screenshot shows precisely where the problem is without taking a whole paragraph to describe it.
Not all of these application scenarios can do entirely without e-mail. But the e-mail volume can be reduced considerably. It is pretty unlikely that we will do away with e-mail altogether. But we can do our part to reduce the e-mail overload.
