I have a seasoned and largely successful internet team working out of a few centrally located stores. For the most part, I'm happy with their performance. However, I've noticed a slow decline in email quality in some of my staff over the last several months. Nothing egregious, rather the absence of that extra little bit of oomph that makes an email stand out.

So the talk I've been having is this: sending emails to iLead customers is like emailing God (feel free insert your deity / belief system of choice.)

Most emails go unanswered. When responses do come, they are often terse, cryptic, or after the fact. The whole process sometimes feels like a waste of time. There are days when you wonder whether you're driving yourself crazy by attempting to communicate with an imaginary entity. It is undeniably an unfair and one-sided form of communication.

But... if God were to double-click one of your emails... how important would it be to you that the content of that message represented you at your absolute best? How important would it be that what you wrote was passionate, meaningful, heartfelt? Would you rather that God read the authentic song of your soul, or "Dear God, it's been about a month since you sent that tornado our way. I'm still trying to get in touch with you. We've got some great prayers happening this week only - please send a sign ASAP!"

The irony is that it actually FEELS better to craft that compelling email while believing, against the odds, that it will be thoughtfully appreciated by a conscientious customer. It's like exercising - put in your time and feel the emotional benefits. It's only when we short-change ourselves that the experience becomes oppressive.

Anyhow, a lot of rhetoric. A little improvement. We'll see.

Anyone else at the dealer level run into anything similar? What do you do?