And no one is doing anything about it, or are they? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is cure for email overload. Read on to find out more.

Email overload is the feeling of having an email inbox full of messages piling up and not knowing where to start. The anxiety of being overwhelmed by an unstoppable tsunami of incoming messages leads to the inability to prioritise and manage all the required tasks and kills productivity.

Crisp Blog

The insurmountable issue of email communications

According to Statista, in 2021, some 319.6 billion emails will be sent every day by over 4.6 billion global email users.

• That’s a staggering 69 emails per person, every day
• Equating to 483 emails per person, every week
• Based on a 40-hour working week, that’s at least 12 emails every working hour!

Oh, and it’s only getting worse.

Scientific research has proved that “higher workload stress is associated with higher psychological strain, higher negative emotions, and lower organisational commitment.”

It has to stop, or does it?

There is no getting away from it, as human beings, we have become intrinsically linked to our email accounts over the last 30 years. Businesses the world over are functioning as a result of back and forth email communications. If managed effectively, then emails should be one of the most efficient methods of communication. Currently, in most organisations, this is not the case. Given the unstoppable rise in email volumes, we need to recognise that to support a healthy and productive workforce; we must find more intelligent ways to filter and streamline this mass of communications. 

Down tools with confidence 

Governments and industry bodies acknowledge that a constantly ‘online’ mentality compromises staff well-being. Many bosses expect replies from their teams even at 10 pm – it sounds unreasonable, but we’ve all done it because ‘it’s business critical. In fact – COVID has made this situation even worse. A number of firms have furloughed staff and rely on a skeleton workforce to manage almost the same workload, monitoring other people’s inboxes… doubling or trebling the number of emails! 

This situation cannot continue. Some countries, most notably France, have already imposed ‘Right to Disconnect’ policies, which means that employees can go offline from the moment they finish their agreed shift time. Whilst this is very positive for the individual, it presents another challenge to the business. There is likely to be a twelve-hour period when most of the team are offline, and emails are not monitored or answered. 

We’re not going to stop using email – and we shouldn’t have to. We need to admit that this is a battle that requires something more than just human power. 

Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Inbound communication management, particularly for unstructured data messages, such as email, chat, txt, spreadsheets, pdfs, etc., is the perfect use case for AI. The beauty of AI is that because it learns, the AI is constantly evolving in line with changing business needs. By adding an AI layer to inboxes that immediately screens and automatically diverts all emails to the appropriate resolution or remediation destination can virtually eliminate the need for intensive human intervention and will deliver multiple benefits: 

• A reinvigorated team – empowering them to be more creative, collaborative and develop new business opportunities.
• Improved efficiency and productivity across the business
• Consistent communications between customers and internal teams
• Enhanced business intelligence
• 24/7 by 365 improved customer service
• AI doesn’t sleep or take annual leave
• Guaranteed SLAs
• Huge cost reductions
• Reduced manual errors
• Complete and transparent audit trail
• Better talent attraction

Let’s change the narrative…

Email inboxes with an AI layer…responsible for a rise in productivity the world over. Enabling humans to work smarter, not harder.