On average, an employee goes through about 124 emails per day, which means 620 emails per week. A regular person spends about 11 hours of their work week to sort out through everything (even if some of these are not important). As a result, up to 28% of a regular person’s work week is wasted on dealing with emails! 

Furthermore, even the activity of checking the Inbox (which we tend to do quite often throughout the day) makes a person lose focus on the main task. It was even proven that a regular person needs 23 minutes to get back to a task after they were interrupted. 

As such, even though the activity of reading & answering emails is tedious, it consumes huge chunks of productive time that could be spent otherwise. 

Luckily, Google understood the need to automate repetitive tasks and managed to come up with several tools that make the process more efficient. 

Email Prioritization Made Easy

With the new Gmail, you won’t need Post Its to remind you about that important email you should’ve answered or followed up with.  Gmail now has an integrated “nudge tool” that reminds you of forgotten emails the seem important. 

The good news is that you don’t need to do any extra settings for this to work. The entire tool is powered by machine learning and it takes under consideration things like frequent contacts and others. So, you’ll only be reminded about the emails that are identified as important.

There’s also a Snooze option that allows you to hide and pause an email or conversation until you are ready to give it your full attention. 

Easier to Write an Email

Sometimes it takes a bit to get the creative juices flowing, especially when you need to write an email to a customer or a superior. 

The new Gmail has a feature called Smart Compose, which acts as an auto-fill software using the most common phrases and words that show up in your emails. There’s also a Smart Reply feature that lets you send a quick reply by simply pressing a button at the bottom of the window.

Both features are powered by machine learning, so they will be different from one account to another.

Answer Emails Offline

How many times did you find yourself with time on your hands but now Internet access?

Well, from now on, if you go to mail.google.com in your Chrome browser, you should be able to see the latest synchronized view of your emails and work on them as needed. Once you go online again, everything will be synchronized with the live version.

No More Interruptions

Google tries to reduce interruptions by adding tools directly into the Gmail window. For now, you have access to Tasks, Google Calendar, and Keep. So, if you want to make a note, put an appointment in the calendar, or register a task while reading the emails, now you can.

No More Sketchy Emails

We’ve all heard about disastrous outcomes just because Joe in Supplies clicked on a link he received via email from an unknown sender.

Well, from now on, when an email looks spammy or it triggers one of the many security filters Google has in place, the user will see a big, red alert sign that explains why it’s not a good idea to go any further with that email.

If you enable this feature and find that emails from your own organisation are being flagged with warnings, then you should look at ensuring your DNS email verification settings are in place and are correct. 

Wrap Up

The new version of Gmail, with the tools mentioned above, is available for everyone, but you can get this and more if you subscribe to one of the available G Suite packages. For instance, a feature that’s new and only available to G Suite users is controlling which devices get to access corporate information. 

This feature (called G Suite Endpoint Verification) allows only approved devices to access the G Suite account. As a result, the security risks are reduced to a minimum, as many problems ensue from personal devices used by staff to access company information at the office or from a remote location.

To learn more, give us a call or send us an email today! Our specialists are happy to provide you with more information and tips!