Today we are talking about something that may noy seem super important at first for freight forwarders and other transport professionals but that at the end of a working day can make a lot of difference: emails.
Think about it, how many emails do you get in a day? How many of them are really important? How much time do you spend after answering one to focus again all your attention on your task?
That’s why today we wanted to present 4 tips to manage your emails efficiently without disturbing your work peace and optimize your work as a freight forwarder and offer, in the end, your best services to your clients.
Try them this Summer and let us know the results!
4 tips to reduce emails and optimize your work as a freight forwarder
The best way to manage emails efficiently and reduce the time spent reading and answering them is, simply put, reducing the volume of emails one receives in one day.
Email has changed how we communicate with people but sometimes we abuse it during our working hours and turn a tool designed to help us into something that diminishes our productivity and concentration.
So, how do I reduce my daily emails to optimize my work?
1.- Use your email responsibly
We may be cheating a little bit here, as we include a few tips in this one, but using your email responsibly may not be as easy as it sounds.
- Write short and precise messages and include all the information the other person will need so they know what you ask of them without any confusion. This will avoid multiple more emails asking for explanations and further information.
- Not all emails need an answer. It can seem rude to leave a message unanswered but there are emails that don’t really need our intervention. Be it because the message is not directly for us or because the subject has been already closed.
- Here we should also add use the «answer to all» with caution, and try to send your messages to only those who really need them and must answer.
- Not everything should be talked about by email. This is, precisely, one of the biggest issues. Emails are a way of communicating but they weren’t made for instant conversations like Teams or Slack, more focused on internal conversations and everyday topics so you won’t use your email for everything. Furthermore, if you really need a quick answer or talk about a more complicated subject, the best you can do is talk in person or over the phone (videoconference too, of course) this way it will be easier to get the information you need or solve any doubts.
2.-Don’t check your email every 5 minutes
Being constantly interrupted to read and answer your emails only helps in reducing your productivity. Once our attention deviates it’s hard to focus again on the task at hand with the same level of attention, that’s why you should stablish a timeframe to check your emails.
Dedicate different timeframes during your working hours just to read and answer emails, like first and last thing you do at work and before and after your midday pause… Or you can take this as a kind of Pomodoro tactic, where approximately every two hours of uninterrupted work you dedicate 15 minutes to your inbox and then again two more hours… This will make it easier to concentrate a 100% in your tasks at hand and avoid you losing inspiration or flow because you were interrupted.
3.-Deactivate email notifications
That’s why another key factor to help you optimize your work is to deactivate new email notifications. It may sound contradictory but in reality is a very good way to assure we don’t get distracted every now and then. Furthermore this helps avoid the possible anxiety one gets knowing there unread emails. With this completing our assigned tasks for the day is easier to accomplish and you won’t need to drag them for another day.
4.-Work smarter not harder
Technology is here to help us and we have to use it to our advantage. This means not only use specific functions on your email provider, like organize emails on folders, but also use specific tools designed to help us in our work and reduce the writing, sending and answering of emails.
A freight forwarder’s job relies heavily on the exchange of emails, asking for rates, information of a services, routes, routing orders, etc. A good online cargo management tool will be your best ally in reducing at least a half your daily emails, helping you manage better your work load and time.
Advantages of using an online digital tool for freight forwarders
With a cargo management tool like my.TransGlory.com you can minimize your emails to a half or even less.
Let’s see some examples:
- Quotations: Asking for quotations and rates can produce an average of 4 emails (or even many more). Using a digital cargo management tool you can receive just one. Your confirmation email.
- Routing orders: Here the volume of messages starts to get on the double digits, reaching the 20 or even 40 emails on average. But with my.TransGlory.com those emails can get to just a quarter of that with an average of 5 emails to confirm the different steps like routing confirmation, vessel assignation and sailing confirmation.
Passing from 4 emails to 1 or even 10 to 5 may not seem like a lot, but those are just approximate numbers when managing one service or cargo. Imagine how fast these numbers can grow with each new order!
Other benefits from this kind of free online tools, as we’ve said before, is being able to check arrivals and departures, make your own quotations in the moment and even check the state of your cargo thank to our tracking functionality. Furthermore, you can also book directly from the website, send BLs, download documents and invoices, etc. Everything without getting more emails than necessary.
If you want more information about my.TransGlory.com don’t hesitate to contact our team so they can show you better all our functionalities and how they can adapt to your needs.
