Start your reply with…

In times of „Blinklist“ I would also like to provide the service of a summary of this post. The Youtube link at the end of the article shows very well what I’m getting at, or what our future can be if we stop thinking about answers ourselves, or let ourselves be influenced by suggestions.

One of the biggest problems in the fight against phishing mails is and remains the workload, which forces many to quickly process emails during a meeting, for example.

All the training and knowledge is gone if you can’t take the time to apply it. And I am still of the opinion that most people know what they have to pay attention to, but they don’t have the time to apply it.

In my view, management is also called upon here, because in my view the workload can certainly be seen as a kind of risk appetite for the company.

Multitasking is and remains a challenge for a person with only one „processor“, with the difference that a computer is optimized to quickly switch between individual tasks – without overlooking anything.

Away from meetings, when answering emails, the first hurdle for some may already be the introduction of the answer.

This is where things have changed in recent months. Various services offer appropriate support in the form of suggestions.

Sorry, only had a German screenshot here but this should be easy to translate.

It can be assumed that the service, which has access to the contents of the message, also tries to interpret, categorize and if necessary further evaluate them.

Personally, this raises several questions for me:

1. Could the suggestions already have a suggestive effect on my response?
   
   I think yes. Everyone who has children knows the „But it’s important that you take the medicine…you want to get better, don’t you?“ What should a child answer to that except to accept the situation?
   
   I don’t think someone who is convinced they’ve read a bad proposal is going to just respond with „Good idea!“, but there are a variety of factors that affect a decision.
   
   One might be reading in the corner of your eye statements like
   „Good plan!“ or „Good proposal.“
   
   It’s a bit like good social engineering, many small details add up to a big picture – often completely subconscious, which influence our decision making far more than we first realize. That’s exactly why they work so well when used sophisticated.
   
   
2. How complex is the decision taking process behind it, which leads to the three suggestions?
   
   I noticed that most of the reply suggestions are in a positive direction.
   „Good idea“, „Good plan“, „Good suggestion“, „Thank you, get well soon!“ etc“.
   
   I wonder: What has to happen to get suggestions like:
   
   + „Definitely don’t do that“
   + „Are you really sure?“
   + „Not a Good Idea!“
   + „I completely disagree“
   + „come up?“
   
   Could it happen in the next step that in a discussion, for example, on the topic of „Should we now commission E5?“
   the automatic answers come from the marketing department of a large software company?
   
   
3. Will my selected answer be delivered back to the system to train it similar to Captcha?
   
   If so and if we are only talking about the selected answer. This information, together with the topic of discussion, can already be used to get a pretty good picture of the current state of the decision-making process in a company.
   In a sales team, this information would be worth its weight in gold, because why should they accommodate the customer when they already know that he has actually already decided?
   
   This is also quite easy to transfer to other topics, as these suggestions are now offered in a variety of services.
   
   
4. Could it even be considered rude if I just click on a button instead of thinking of a personal answer?
   
   I actually ask myself this question more often at the moment.
   I must confess, to come back to the time factor, sometimes a short, „Well done“, or „yes, do that“ is enough. But I always have the feeling that I have not answered the question with the for me very important duty of care or politeness.
   
   My fear is that such answers will increase in the future.
   
   Once I sent a screenshot of all three answers as an answer and connected it with a smily, I wrote the recipient should choose one answer „they all fit“ 😉
   
   
5. What is the next step? Are these suggestions only a first step towards …
   
   I must admit, I’m glad that the answers are at least currently still offered in text form. In the future, we may see only three emojis here, or is the ice already broken?
   
   
   
   
6. As I told at the beginning this is a great example about the topic I wanted to adress with this post. Have fun 🙂
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXzJR7K0wK0