Tell us a bit about Email Meter? Specifically, tell us how it can help team leaders gauge a pulse on employee productivity and engagement?
Email is ubiquitous at work, but it’s still a black box. CRM or helpdesk ticketing solutions replace email for some use cases and have limited built-in KPIs; but the costs, customization and change management are high. And sometimes these solutions are just not a good match for a company’s specific business processes.
Many teams end up building complicated workflows around email and when it’s time to scale that up, they find that their email software doesn’t have built-in analytics. That’s where Email Meter comes in. We can provide analytics and statistics around a team’s email usage, and we will customize these KPIs to make sure they make sense to the company.
Word on the street is that email is dead. What is your take on this?
We think email is still the king. In all seriousness, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. According to a recent study by Radicati, there are more than 3.9 billion email users (more than half of the global population), and almost 300 billion emails sent and received every day. Email is 50 years old (!) and it still keeps growing year after year.
We live in a world where the employee is king. How do you view Email Meter in this context?
Employees spend a lot of time on email. With Email Meter, they can get metrics to improve their productivity. With our tool and service, people are grateful because it’s a way to show to their managers how much time email consumes, how they are performing or just have more self-awareness about how they work.
Can you explain how Email Meter works?
First of all, individual employees or IT managers must grant access to Email Meter. For privacy reasons, we only read metadata that consists of email headers and we don’t have access to the email’s body or attachments.
We have three different avenues that consumers can take to check out what we offer: Email Meter Basic, which gives a small taste of the product, Email Meter Premium, which is an out of the box platform that you can use on an individual level and a team level and Email Meter Enterprise, which allows customers to have a fully customized platform for businesses and leaders that seek more flexibility or advanced metrics.
Can you give me some examples of how companies use Email Meter?
The most popular use cases focus on client-facing teams and managing their mailboxes like [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc.
For example: Are we replying to all [email protected] inquiries on time? What is our [email protected] response time? Are we complying with any Service Level Agreements (SLA) we have with our customers? How many [email protected] inquiries do we get during the weekends? How many emails do we get outside business hours? How much time are these emails waiting to be answered? Do we need to staff more people? These are typical questions that Email Meter helps answer. However, the most interesting answers come from specific workflows that companies have built on top of the email.
For example, how many errors are we getting from manually entered orders? And how much time are we spending fixing those errors? And which agent was responsible for the largest percentage of those fixes so that I can implement a bonus system? Email Meter answers all of those questions and more.
Where does Email Meter sit within the technology stack relative to other enterprise technologies? What technologies does it connect to?
Email Meter sits right on top of a company’s Email platform and currently is only available for Google G Suite. Our product is unique in the sense that, it connects to your email system in a seamless and secure way that doesn’t involve exchanging passwords or installing any kind of software.
Email Meter’s data is stored in Google BigQuery and customers access it via custom-built Data Studio dashboards. Some customers that are already running other Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or any other tool capable of connecting to BigQuery, prefer to connect directly to our data source and make their own dashboards.
What advice would you have for a business leader looking to boost employee productivity and engagement?
Short and sweet: similar to how you can’t improve what you can’t measure – you can’t coach if you don’t know where the issues lie.
What are your predictions for the future of work in 2020?
You probably have heard quotes like “Data is the new oil” or “In God we trust, everyone else must bring data.” Truth is, nowadays we live in a world where almost everything can be measured and quantified. And within a company, many strategic decisions are made by the upper ranks based on that data.
We foresee the democratization of access to data so that all employees can make informed decisions on their day to day tasks. Email is just a piece of this data and that’s where Email Meter can help organizations perform better than their competitors.
This Is How I Work
How do you inspire your people to work with technology?
My team is so advanced with using technology in different ways. I often feel like they are the ones constantly inspiring me to try new things!
One word that best describes how you work.
Positively.
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
I would have to say G Suite! It’s a total game-changer. Everything I could ever need is all there in one place. It’s so easy to collaborate, share work, intuitive and allows you to expand easily on the system for any gaps you feel it has.
What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
Calendar blocking! There was an article I read in The New York Times that mentioned that it takes an average of 25 minutes after being distracted to go back to your original task at hand (and I’m already an easily distracted person!).
Calendar blocking has really helped me to maintain focus, concentrate on the tasks or meetings to attend during the blocked off time. I usually create a list of what I need to get done and will send it to myself via email to fill out on my calendar what I need to do with each time block.
What are you currently reading?
I am a TOTAL Simon Sinek freak! In the past month, I have read two of his newer books, Leaders Eat Last and The Infinite Game. Another book I absolutely LOVED that I read over the holiday break in December was Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, truly inspiring.
The next two books on my list to finish in the next month or so are How Champions Think and Extreme Ownership. Other ways I get more current events information is reading The Economist online, Morning Brew email newsletters, and TLDR email newsletters.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“I can sit here and try and give you everything you want, or I can push you to make it in life to become someone great. No one gets anywhere without suffering, failing and messing up thousands of times. So brush yourself off, wipe your face and get back to it. I know you will find a way.” #dadadvice
Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
Always being that cheesy positive person in the room keeping energy high, but at the same time relentlessly pushing everyone to be the best versions of themselves personally and professionally.
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