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Email is wonderful, until it goes wrong
Email
is the business application of the Internet. It is integral to every part
of the business process, including communications within your organisation
and contractual negotiations between the business and customer.
Your ability to compete effectively in today’s markets is enhanced by the use of email where speed of response is paramount. By exchanging emails, even the smallest business can buy and sell goods and services quickly and efficiently.
Using email can ensure your reach and reputation is enhanced beyond your physical presence. Email can also significantly reduce the cost of sale and delivery.
It is now difficult to imagine any successful business without email.
Yet we have arrived at this situation almost by accident. There are very few mechanisms in place that ensure email is controlled. It is probably the ease of use and lack of checks that has been instrumental in its success. When it works, both parties to a commercial transaction are content: one party provides the goods and the other is pleased to pay for what they have received. When everything goes well, everybody is happy
Sometimes, things go wrong
Sometimes things will go badly wrong. For instance, someone might be working from the wrong version of the quotation or tender document. On other occasions, a commitment to do additional work might be overlooked. In these situations you have to be prepared, stay calm, sift the facts from the emotion and respond appropriately. Your aim is to seek a remedy that satisfies the customer whilst you do not loose out, achieving the win-win solution.
Legal action is expensive
Most of us try hard to avoid taking legal action. If such action is necessary, you will spend considerable time, emotion and money on trying to rectify a problem. The longer lawyers are involved, the higher the costs will be and the result is never certain.
Taking legal action can be a risk that is detrimental to the business. There are times when you are obliged to take legal action. This usually occurs when the other person either will not negotiate to resolve the dispute amicably, or has an unrealistic or misconceived sense of the strength of their position.
It is when dealing with these problems, that you can put procedures in place to reinforce your own case: and in so doing, help avert a trip to the lawyer in the first place.
Prevention is best
To help prevent a dispute getting out of control, you need to establish where things went wrong. If you have good evidence to show you were in the wrong, you can back down and address the customer’s problems quickly. Alternatively, if you can show that everything you did was right, then you might persuade your customer where they are wrong.
You can then offer a solution to the problem in such a way that will help resolve the matter without undermining the customer’s self-esteem. Knowing how a lawyer will advise you when dealing with a dispute will help you to consider what you can do to boost your own position.
When it comes to a legal dispute, both sets of lawyers will look for evidence to establish what the facts are. Oral, written and electronic evidence is admissible in a court. The better the evidence, the greater the chance you have of supporting your case.
E-mail and evidence
It
is very easy to enter a contract by an exchange of emails. Suppose two
companies through their employees enter into a contract for the supply
of goods that must be delivered on a precise date in the future. Assume
the goods are delivered late, and the company buying the goods no longer
has a use for them after the deadline for delivery. A dispute arises.
What if one of the employees covers their tracks by amending a relevant
email in their mailbox?
Now, two versions of the same email exist. What do you do?
Depending on the circumstances, you may have to pay for a forensic examiner to authenticate the integrity of your email.
This process is expensive and time consuming. One answer would be to have a suitable software solution in place that offers you an evidential trail that:
- Prevents employees from deleting, cutting and pasting emails without an audit trail of their actions.
- Prevents the administrator from having access to emails without an audit trail of their actions (this protects the administrator and the organisation).
- Archives each email in real time.
- Provides an audit trail for every email and every attachment.
Ensuring your email system has audit trails that provide you with high quality evidence can reduce the number of unpleasant confrontations.
© Stephen Mason & Robert Campbell, 2003 Robert Campbell is Managing Director of ecommnet Limited. Stephen Mason is Chairman of Pario Communications Limited. (www.pariocommunications.co.uk)
Want more information on these issues or solutions ? Compelling reasons to choose Mailstore rather than KVS's Enterprise Vault or EDUCOM's EAS for your email archiving requirements |