In the midst of a website redesign project, I sent an email to the client outlining several issues I was currently grappling with in the design and some of my feedback on some of the client’s feedback on previous design iterations. This email outlined the problems and suggested solutions and sought client feedback on these issues. No images or comps were provided, mainly because I wasn’t comfortable with the state the design was currently in. I naturally cc’d my supervisor, who is also managing this project.
The manager was at first upset and worried. They construed my email remarks as suggesting that I was entirely opposed to the client’s feedback, and they worried that without images to show what I was talking about, the client would get confused, and they now wanted all communication with the client to be cleared with them first.
After hearing the manager explain their concerns, I saw where they were coming from and could indeed see how my email message could be improperly interpreted or confusing. I then explained where my email was coming from. This definitely helped the manager see I was not sending this message off half-cocked. But to ensure that the message was more clearly conveyed and that no damage was done, we had a conference call with the client to go over the issues detailed in my email. It turns out the client took my email the way I intended (whew!)
The big lesson from this experience:
Emails still leave room for miscommunication where verbal or in-person communication can reduce those possibilities. After talking with the manager, we resolved our differences in what they percieved and what I actually meant in the email and the conference call with the client made sure that the proper message was communicated. The more humans involved, the more possibility for communication issues.