The Do’s and Don’ts of Giving Guidance by E-Mail

With e-mail now having almost taken over as the universal tool for communicating – this is perhaps an appropriate time to look over the advice and guidance offered by Careers Guidance consultant Marcus Offer who in 2004 published a series of guides of how advisers should use e-mail in their day to day work through the The Higher Education Careers Services Unit.

• Make sure you know what you intend the email medium to be for and make it clear to users. A contract is needed as for face-to-face advice and guidance: what can be done and what can’t. What is email best for? What types of query are better dealt with another way? You need to be clear about this and clear with them. “Email” means many things to many people.
• Decide what/who it is appropriate to deal with by email and what/who you would refer to another medium or resource. Does the e-mail system you have set up mean you can refer people to a web site, a computer program, a local course, a tutor or student services adviser, a counsellor, a book? In which case, you may not need to do everything with the email - it is part of a package, not the whole response.
• Make enquirers clear about the lack of confidentiality if that is relevant to their query. E-mail is about as confidential and secure as a postcard, unless your system has some built-in extra security such as encryption.
• Don’t expect advice and guidance by email to take less time on average than it takes face to face or on the telephone. A common complaint by advisers is that it may sometimes take longer because you try to “cover all the points”, uncertain if you’ve understood precisely what the enquiry was about. Big issues may underlie a simple issue. But some queries can be dispatched in less time than might have been allocated for e.g. a fifteen-minute drop-in session, and when you’ve finished one, you can go on to the next without waiting for the next client to “arrive”.
• Don’t use your personal email address if you can help it and don’t give out your personal address or details. Use an organisational address instead. Apart from getting lots of spam, you, as well as your clients, can sometimes be at risk if you disclose too much.
• How far can you use the system to gather information from the enquirer and “negotiate” with them about the process and their needs? Email sent from a web site can be framed by a simple pre-enquiry questionnaire, for example, so that users can give you more detail on what they are asking about. This will help you to respond more effectively and efficiently, or refer them if necessary, and ensure that they come to you, having worked through some other web-based resources first. Of course, there is a balance to be struck between intrusive longwinded questionnaires and no pre-enquiry information at all. If enquirers “register” in some way, you may ensure that queries are better thought out and hence easier to diagnose and respond to (but you may put some people off altogether). The location of the email access point on the web site may also determine how far users will have worked through some issues and identified some of their own needs before seeking help.
• Allow for the need to probe presenting questions or ask for more information from the enquirer. Will your system allow you to respond to an initial enquiry with a request for clarification or more information, and to exchange several emails until you have agreed what the real issue is?

On opening the email…………..

Don’t respond instantly. The big advantage of email - over telephone, face to face or chat - is that you don’t have to. Take time, make sure you understand the query, consult colleagues or do some research, if necessary, and make sure you’ve answered the question. Make preliminary notes or a “brain map” (which enables you to note all the issues as they occur to you without pre-empting the final order) if necessary. You can “play above your level” in this way – the less experienced can look things up and consult colleagues for help before replying. But keep to the turnaround time you promised.

• Spend some time trying to identify the needs. A short checklist you can work through, based on a model of guidance or action planning (e.g. Where are they now? Where do they want to be? How do they get there? What barriers do there seem to be?) can be a useful framework to ensure you pay attention to all the aspects of the incoming email rather than the one that strikes you first.

• Practise analysing such texts. If you can get access without breaching confidentiality, a useful exercise is to test yourself against emails already answered by your colleagues without first looking at their replies: did they see anything different than you did? How far do you agree with their analysis and why/why not? You might also consider the order in which any problem is presented: what is really important and what is less so? Does the enquirer work up to the real problem or come straight to the point? Some emails may be very short and apparently uncomplicated, others very long and complex. The short ones may require you to expand your thinking about what might lie behind them; the longer ones may require careful focusing before you can answer effectively.

Preparing a response

• Hone your writing skills. Practise writing things informally, but succinctly and clearly. Writing is what you have to be good at, but may not be your strength.

• Test out the results on a colleague - if they don’t understand first time, the chances are that neither will your enquirer. How can you create a warm, friendly atmosphere in a few written words? Try tapping a response to an enquiry occasionally and writing down what you said. Does it sound different from what you would have written otherwise? Does it sound more spontaneous and hence more “genuine”?

• Prepare answers to FAQs and cut and paste to use your time efficiently, but don’t forget the uniqueness of individual needs that can lie behind the most standard presenting question. If in doubt, check it out. Send simple information where you are asked for it, but make the caveats clear, if there are some, and invite the enquirer to send more details if that could make for a different answer. (Note any questions that frequently arise but for which you have no standard response prepared - would it help to develop one, perhaps jointly with a colleague?)

• Check your assumptions constantly. If you can do so without breaching confidentiality, periodically check a sample of queries you’ve replied to with a colleague. Do they see things you don’t? Your assumptions may be about the enquirer: even email can elicit stereotypes - bad spelling, a “foreign” name etc., can cause you to react unconsciously and sometimes irrationally. Your assumptions may also be about the local circumstances: good advice for this area may not be so for the area the enquirer comes from. With email you don’t always know where that is.

• Don’t overwhelm with information. It’s not good practice in face-to-face interviews, and it’s not good practice here either. But it’s the first reaction of the weaker adviser to cut and paste their entire knowledge of the subject into the answer. Better to keep it simple and refer them to where they can get the full details - on-line and by simply clicking on the link you provided in your response, if possible: an on-line reference is more likely to be followed up by an on-line enquirer. It also encourages the user to take action.

• Empathy is possible but different on-line. “Empathic people… construct their messages anticipating what it will be like for the recipient to read it. They write in a style that is both engaging and readily understood. With appropriate use of spacing, paragraph breaks and various keyboard characters …to serve as highlights and dividers, they visually construct the message so that it is easy and pleasing to read. They estimate just how long is too long. Essentially they are good writers who pay attention to the needs of their audience…” (Suler, 2003).

• So is interactivity. Moderate use of embedded brief quotes from the original enquiry, followed by your response to that part of the question, helps to create a more interactive feel, for example, than a more formally laid out reply, however coherent and complete. If your system also makes it clear to users that they can expect a dialogue, if necessary, before a final answer is possible in many cases, then they will expect interaction, and you can engage in it.

• Layout is important. The rules of web page content design may have something to teach us: this is a document someone will be opening, and probably reading, on-line. Will they grasp the most important point first? How can you lay out your page so that they get an overview immediately? This helps to ensure impact and speed of understanding. Use short paragraphs, subheadings, bullet points, bold type, and add live links for any web references if possible. Make sure you explain what the enquirer will get from those links and how exactly the link will answer their question. A huge block of unbroken text can be intimidating.

• Write in plain English. Check your style as well as your spelling before you send it - have you used three words where one will do, or have you used a technical term or acronym that may not be understood? Are your sentences overlong and complex? You may even find it revealing to apply one of the standard readability tests (e.g. at www.timetabler.com/reading.html) to your emails to see if your actual level matches what can be expected of the target group. Your word processor may have such a facility attached.

Afterwards

• 2004 Giving Guidance by Email: an adviser's checklist
  HECSU Research Note