How to Recover from an Email Crash – An Email Template

By Helene Segura, M.A. Ed., CPO® | April 25, 2019 |

In my last blog post, we discussed the triaging steps to take in order to know how to recover from an email crash.

After going through the steps I mentioned, you might realize that there are some folks who you probably should have already heard from. If you haven’t heard from them, chances are their email is somewhere in a black hole. So, to play it safe, you should probably touch base with them.

In my case, I took the following steps:

*It was 1099 time, so I went through the list of companies I should’ve received 1099’s from.

*I scrolled through my Sent folder to see who I’ve been in communication with in the previous four weeks.

*I was involved with two projects that had deadlines in the upcoming two weeks.

I notified each person who made it onto one of the aforementioned lists. Using my email search function, I quickly pulled up our last email communication, and then replied to our last communication in order to include the thread in my update message.

If you’re not sure what to say, feel free to use my template below and adjust as necessary for your needs:

Howdy!

If you’ve emailed me any information, questions or requests since Wednesday, January 30, 2019, at 5:00 P.M. CT, I have not received it. Please resend your email!

Below is the last email I received from you. I haven’t received anything since then.

If you need to know what’s happening, here it is:

The company that hosts and manages my website decided to move my website to another hosting server. The moment they did this, my incoming email stopped functioning. My incoming email did not become functional again until Saturday afternoon.

The good news is that whatever information your email contained is either still on your server because your email couldn’t be sent, or it’s on my server but unretrievable because of the technical glitch. So your email didn’t fall into the wrong hands; it’s just invisible. Phew.

I know that when you work with me, you’re doing so because you’re working on ways to improve efficiency. This, obviously, does not help with that objective, so I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you.

Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

Believe it or not, not a single recipient of my update email chastised me for sending it. Instead, they either verified that what I’d included was indeed the last email they sent, or they forwarded the email I’d missed. And every single one expressed their empathy and understanding about a lousy situation.

Hopefully you never experience an email outage. But if you do, you now have the email template tools you need to plow through it.

About Helene Segura, M.A. Ed., CPO®

As The Inefficiency Assassin™, Time Management Fixer Helene Segura empowers professionals on the go with the tools to slay lost time. Personal inefficiency at work leads to increased stress levels, lower morale, higher absenteeism, more turnover – and rising spending on employee health care and hiring. Why not improve productivity, decrease stress levels, and increase profits instead?The author of four books – two of which were Amazon best-sellers – Helene Segura has been the featured organization expert in more than 200 media interviews. She has coached hundreds of clients to productivity success and performance improvement by applying neuroscience and behavioral modification techniques to wipe out destructive, time-wasting habits.Helene turns time management on its head by sharing both client case studies and pop culture examples to teach her mind-bending framework for decreasing interruptions, distractions and procrastination so that companies can spend more time generating revenue.

Leave a Comment