Another email fail: You Can't "Reply to All"
by Sabrina Parsons on February 12, 2009
Nielsen, as in the company that does TV ratings and such, has removed the “reply to all” feature from their email client. Read more about it here in this article. Their theory is that removing the “reply to all” feature will force people to really think about who should be copied on the message. IF you want to continue the thread with all involved, you need to actually add their emails back into the message.
Ok. I get it. People run around “replying to all” like crazy and especially if you manage several people this can clutter up your inbox. People use the “reply to all” feature to do some major CYA and often times it’s more about that than it is about actually keeping people in the loop. If people could understand when to do a “reply to all” and learn basic email etiquette I think we would be able to solve a great deal of the email overload problems. But to artificially impose rules which force a one size fits all solution seems shortsighted and not well thought out. Maybe Nielsen should just hire smarter people who can understand email etiquette? 
Sabrina Parsons
CEO, Palo Alto Software
About the author: Sabrina has served as CEO of Palo Alto Software since 2007. She and her husband, Noah, founded a UK software distribution company in 2001 that later was purchased by and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Palo Alto Software. Sabrina is a successful Internet expert, having served as Director of Online Marketing at Commtouch, Senior Producer at Epinions.com, and founder of her own Web consulting company, Lighting Out. She is a graduate of Princeton University.
Sabrina masquerades as MommyCEO (www.mommyceo.org), where she writes a blog about running a business and balancing that with life with her husband and three young sons. When Sabrina is not at work she can be found chasing her kids all over Oregon: biking, hiking, swimming, skiing, and anything outdoors that uses up a lot of little boys' energy. More »
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Sorry man – totally not persuaded! 400 million people are using Microsoft Outlook in 400 million different ways. It should be easy to train basic etiquette in this environment – any many companies out there do – eg http://www.prioritymanagement.com.
BUT TRAINING DOESN’T WORK!
Reason? Because of the design of the software in the first place. It has cognitively patterned these folks to behave in this fashion – and getting rid of the Reply All is a key first step.
This effort includes a strong commitment to community engage- ment. ,
Now we have the proof of the pudding thanks to you. ,
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