Writing into silence
Bene Diction posted fairly recently about large organisations' response to email inquiries. Or rather, non-response.
In that post, I commented about sending an email to my church through a contact form on their website. I'd just recently decided to start attending their services regularly and in the course of surfing the church's website, found they have a Young Adults Pastor. But the website has no mention of any Young Adults Fellowship or any other activities involving young adults.
So I emailed the church, using the feedback form on their website, asking specifically for more information about the young adults ministry. I stated that I'm twenty-six years old and new to the church. I also enquired about receiving counselling, although I didn't say what for.
And I left both my email address as well as my mobile phone number so that they would be able to get in touch with me easily.
Guess what? I never received a reply to my email. I half-joked to Messy Christian that we might not want churches to be run like corporations, but we certainly want them to be as efficient as corporations...
Anyway, about a month later, I decided to conduct an 'experiment'. I sent another email to the church through their website contact form, saying, "Hi. I want to become a Christian. Can you tell me how? What do I have to do?"
I got a call the very next day from one of the pastors! Then I had to explain about my actual message and tell the pastor that I was in fact already a Christian and... um... oops *blushes* After I explained myself, the pastor said she'd not received the first message. Hmmm.
This incident reminded me of the time I emailed another church way back in Sept last year. I said I'd been surfing their website coz I wanted to drop by for Sunday service, and noticed that the sermons had not been updated since Oct 2002. I recommended using blog software to upload sermons, as it would be easy to use and would automatically archive sermons by date as well as topic (category), making it easy for people who wanted to search the database for information. I provided a short list of blogs by pastors so that they could see what this blogging thing was all about, and told them how I believed posting sermons online could be a valuable resource not only for Christians, but also non-believers who may be exploring the faith or "accidentally" led to the church's webpage through a search engine.
I never heard back from the church. Since then, only one new sermon has been added to the archive... dated Jan 4 this year. Things like that (non-updated church websites) really frustrate me.
Tonight, I was thinking about the Real Live Preacher's book deal. And I realised that yet again, one of my emails has gone unanswered.
The Preacher recommended readers who would like to get hold of the book to pre-order it from a San Antonio bookstore called Viva!. Now, since I do not stay in the good ol' US of A (which may come as a shock to some Americans out there), and the store's website had no information about overseas shipping, I emailed them to ask if they would ship to Malaysia, and, if so, what their rates would be like. It's been about a month now, and I haven't received an answer. I guess they can do without my business. *shrugs*
Then there was a camp speaker last year who asked me to email him when we got back to the city, so that we could talk more about the issue I'd discussed with him at camp and he could put me in touch with the appropriate people. I did, and never heard back from him.
Recently I accidentally got double-subscribed to his weekly devotional mailing list because I'm now using a different email address, so I unsubscribed from my old email address. He mistakenly thought I was leaving the list altogether, and wrote to ask why. I replied, attaching the old email just in case he hadn't received it the first time. Well, it's been a week now, and still no response.
It's really very irritating to have email go unanswered, especially if it is an inquiry about something. I tell myself, "They must be busy," but it still irks me, even if I know that has to be true.
That's why I try to reply almost every email I get that requires or merits an answer -- even if the answer's just a "thank you". I try to be a Gal Who Answers Her Email. (As opposed to one who doesn't, of course. ;))
Sometimes I forget, or really am too busy, or procrastinate, or am just plain disorganised, so I don't get to it. But mostly I try, and when people don't reply me, I try to remember I've never been 100% perfect either. But if you're one of those people who owes me an email... be careful that I don't suddenly decide to 'experiment' on you too! *grin*