Répondez s’il vous plaît – yeah, that’s right – respond.

All too often in the information-overloaded world we live in – full of twatterbleeping, facebooking, beebopping, txting, online chatting and emailing messages – to say nothing of the more old fashioned forms of communication (like phone calls and face to face meetings), common courtesy appears to be lost.

What am I on about? Well, all too often, people get caught up in the overwhelm and forget that there is an individual human being on the end of some very specific forms of communication – and sometimes that human being is very keen to hear back from you when they have made the effort to communicate.

So that might be a comment on your blog site, an enquiry through your website’s enquiry system, a request for a quote … or a job application.

How often do you hear frustration from friends, family and co-workers about not hearing back? The sheer inconvenience when not hearing back slows them down from making a decision – what product to purchase, which supplier to use, which job to take more seriously.

Unfortunately it happens all too often, and really, it’s just plain rude.

If you are overwhelmed by so many messages you can’t keep up, and you can’t work out which communication is most important – take someone on to help you, or pay a contractor, service person or professional.

Please don’t be one of those people. Make an effort to respond, even if it is purely with a quick acknowledgement that you have received the communication, in whatever form it arrives.

And then take the time to sit down and respond in more detail, in a timely manner.

Always keep in mind that someone has taken the time to write to you – do them the courtesy of making the time in return.

(And if you really, really don’t have any way of managing your communications, take down your enquiry form off your site and hide your email until you have caught up on things. Mmm, didn’t think so.)

Please.

Merci.

Karen