As I was reading this, I'm thinking 'there's no insights in this, it's just a lot of questions'.<p>Get to the bottom paragraph, and it's an advert for their product, Zoho SalesInbox.<p>I think it's now time that large blog platforms like Medium, clearly mark at the beginning if a post is promotional fluff or not (Paper press legally have to do this, so why not Digital?).<p>Anyway, back to the subject in hand, I think email gets a bad bashing. Yes it's clearly no longer fit for purpose if your company is a fresh startup with great ideas, and a breakneck agile ethos, but for us mere mortals who are basically chained to a corporate desk in a workplace that's been around for decades with such and ingrained culture that a sandstorm couldn't wipe it, it's the cornerstone of how we work. Here's why:<p>1. Long form requests and file attachments are still commonly sent over email - it's your copy to do with what you want.<p>2. It's easy to sort and search by a defined subject or keyword, and see the threaded conversation in isolation from everything else.<p>3. It's a standard protocol - everything can send an email - this is both a blessing and curse really.<p>4. It's got a chain of custody (of sorts), once it's been read in your inbox, it's basically immutable - no takey-backseys by deleting that bit of the conversation in IM or a forum post.<p>5. In larger organisations it's quite common for people to write full documents in the email body, complete with headers and formatting and even diagrams! Try doing that in Slack :)<p>However, I'd love to see an overhaul of the system. As someone who recently left a role that had death-by-email every day I do agree that too many things are sent over email, and people need to be more judicious with their use of 'reply all' (or even actively trimming/adding people when required). There also needs to be attempts at presenting emails in a new way - the folder+inbox paradigm is no longer optimal.<p>As long as the right tool is used for the right job, I think that IM and Email and Phone all should happily co-exist...<p>After all, you can't build a house with just one hammer.
Email, and making email better, is a topic everyone connected to the internet should care about. I know I do. I'm especially intrigued by how email can be tailored to different needs. Whilst I'm not in sales, I can see the value here. Intrigued to hear others thoughts.