Electronic Mediated Communications

The purpose of this memo is to for me to examine how to better evaluate customer emails, instant messages and social media interactions (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and my reactions to them.  For the last 7 years I have worked as the online communication liaison for a small doll company and am the moderator of several Facebook selling and social groups, as well I also have a full time job as an IT Support Specialist.  The majority of my interaction with customers, group members and clients is via electronic mediated communication.   Text can be horribly ambiguous, and as such I have had to work very hard to understand what my customers may or not be saying in their message from their writing alone and be very aware of what my outgoing messages may convey.  Non-visual cues in writing are vital to my day to day work, and being almost hyper aware to these cues has become a huge part of my communication tool box.  I have also had to work very hard at learning how to take a step back and evaluate my perception barriers, especially the IT Support tendency to stereotype their clients as being technology ignorant.   I have, over the years in my current role contracting to Alberta Health Services, built a rapport with clients that has assisted me in being more other-oriented in my communications, but still feel it is a constant work in progress.

I work daily with electronic mediated communication with the many virtual hats I wear.  Email, various forms of instant messengers, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all are part of my daily communications.  Having worked in the professional IT sector for over 15 years, it took me a long time to adjust to the less formal communication style on social media.  Even though I once was a member of several electronic bulletin board system message board systems, an early digital pre-cursor to the social media hubs of Facebook, Reddit and Twitter, I still was very formal with my language.  I was an avid English Literature student and my first years of post-secondary education were towards an English degree.  Throw in a very British cultural upbringing and you have someone who takes the written word very seriously.  Now imagine my reaction to messages like this, “I seen your current doll upload and I on accident purchased 2 dolls is that aloud.”   Or for a buy and sell group I administer, “Y WZ MY AD DELETED?!”  With these messages I have to take a step back and shelve my unfortunate tendency to stereo type them as unintelligent.  I am ashamed to say when first working within the confines of social media I did correct people by using all of their misspelled words in my reply spelled correctly, or pointing out that they were shouting in the case of the second message.  It was, of course the worst way of dealing with things, and

was even ruder than the person shouting at me.  While I had occasional issues in my day to day work with IT clients, I was frequently commended on my manners and my clear and easy to follow instructions to my clients in my emails.  It came to a head when a customer of the doll company called me on it, “You know you come across as hugely judgmental when you answer my messages.”  I was horrified.   I had felt I was educating, but really I was trying to impose my idea of how we should be communicating on customers and group members, rather than adjusting myself to each situation.  I stopped reading the messages I received via social media as casual and began handling it as I should have from the very start, as serious as any dealing I would have in a corporate environment.  That is not to say my communications were extremely formal but I began to examine the messages more closely and looked past the often bad spelling or informal short hand, for the message the person was trying to convey.  I still respond more formally than most on social media, but I am much softer in my approach and I work very hard to use clarifying questions to try and eliminate issues.

Even before taking this course and reading the words of Osmo Wiio, I have always found if a message can be read more than one way, it most definitely will be the more negative interpretation that the person receiving the message decides to pick.  As such, I always read every digital communication I get at least three times, before responding, because often clients are frustrated by the time they have reached me at third level support and if I am really unsure about what I’m reading I get a colleague or friend to be a second set of eyes.   The majority of the time, I am able to respond with clarifying questions or an answer with a request that the sender confirms I have addressed their query or needs correctly.   In the case of my role supporting email at Alberta Health Services, if the initial communication from the client is something I cannot successfully understand and I feel an email will just muddy the waters I will pick up the phone.  Often when I get a trouble ticket, the original words of the client have gone through people, and I get a message that has nothing to do with the original problem at all.  This is when I must be at my most empathetic to the client as I yet again ask them to describe their problem and offer them my sincerest apologies without denigrating the lower level service teams for not asking the correct clarifying questions from the outset. 

I have worked very hard to build trust with my clients at Alberta Health Services, most of my clients however; I have never laid eyes on, as the organization is so large and so spread out.  The core of my communications with my clients has taught me, they want to be heard and respected when they have a problem.  As I mentioned before, by the time a trouble ticket gets to my team, a client has had to deal with at least two other individuals, who either did not understand their issue or were unable to solve it because it was beyond their abilities or system access.  The shift nature of many health workers means my first point of contact is usually via an email, not because I do not want to pick up the phone but because the email is more likely to be responded to when it is convenient to the client which in many cases is in the wee hours of the morning when I am not readily available.  Regardless of this, in all of my initial email communications, I introduce myself, tell them my understanding of their issue, ask any clarifying questions I may have, invite them to respond to the email, or to contact me by my direct line