The Worst Part of an E-mail RFP? No E-mail!

So on Monday, I sent an RFP out to half a dozen e-mail service providers. By Tuesday, all but one had gotten back to me. By phone.

Of these five, only one vendor left their personal e-mail contact information. Now, I don’t know about you, but in my book, phone tag is about the most inefficient communications method out there. None of the candidates’ messages indicated when they could be reached via vox. And I’ve called every single one of them back and spoken with…their voicemail systems.

Is this an overly grumpy reaction to what you’ve got to admit is a pretty old skool communications method? (I’ve never claimed to be a phone person.) But you really would think ESP sales departments might avail themselves from time to time of the channel they are, after all, selling: e-mail.