It goes without saying that you don’t want an unqualified stranger processing your email. When it comes down to handing over your email to a third party, you want to be sure that the individual (or organization) is the right one for the job. While your goal is the hand-off relatively simple tasks, this still means that you’re going to have another set of eyes looking at your documents and making decisions about what stays and what goes—or, at the very least, what gets immediately deleted and what gets passed on to you.
It makes sense, then, to take the necessary time to find the right individual or organization to help you with email processing. There are a number of ways to approach the problem—and the right solution is going to be different for every company or organization. The most important thing is that you choose something that makes you and your employees feel comfortable and that the solution matches your needs in terms of size and scope. For personal email pre-filtering, for example, you might find it easy (and economical) to hire a single freelancer who can work specifically with you to set up ground rules and criteria for the perusal of email. For a larger operation, you might want to choose a company or organization that has the manpower and resources necessary to screen emails on a larger scale.
Whatever solution you choose, be sure that you are clear about your expectations and needs right from the start. Remember that you’re handing over a vital part of your business’ line of communication, so it’s important that your method for screening out unnecessary emails has to match your company’s level of maturity and professionalism. Additionally, it can be important to consider to what extent an outside email processor should be allowed to participate in operations. It might be possible for this person to actually answer some of your emails (especially if they are repetitive or form-oriented) or take it upon him or herself to forward messages to more appropriate recipients. The way you use additional email screening is up to you.
