The end of the e-mail has long been written down. Despite new communication tools like Slack, it asserts itself - especially in German offices. Last year alone - without spam - more than 848 billion emails were sent. That was a new record. By comparison, ten years ago, there were only 217 billion e-mails. Sven Engesser, Professor of Communication Science at the Dresden University of Technology, explains why this form of communication will last forever.
SPIEGEL: Germans write more e-mails than ever before. How is it that a communication tool from the eighties still has such high growth rates?
Engesser: Above all, this has to do with the fact that the transition from printed post to e-mail has still not been completed. Even after decades, many new e-mails are still being added, because many companies and authorities are only now switching from analogue to digital media.
SPIEGEL: But there are now much more effective forms of communication.
Engesser: Imagine it like an ecosystem: the individual channels, such as e-mail, WhatsApp or groupware, such as teams or slack, are like animal species that share a living space. New species are added and may displace others - but if a species occupies a niche particularly successfully, it will stick there as well. That's why there are still postcards. In the case of team communication, the e-mail is certainly in decline because it is cumbersome to set up and maintain e-mail distribution lists. But in the individual communication and the customer approach that is different. Since team programs are no competition.
SPIEGEL: Where is the e-mail particularly successful?
Engesser: Unrivaled, the e-mail will be in their function for a long time as a kind of name badge on the Internet. Even for team programs like Slack or Microsoft Teams you need an e-mail address to register at all.
At financial service providers and social media too; Only the local registration and the subsequent confirmation e-mails contribute to the increased volume of e-mail. And formal requests to government agencies or companies will remain a permanent niche for e-mail - at least until administrations get to the point of making a real quantum leap toward digitization.
And for formal requests to government agencies or companies, email will have a lasting niche - at least until administrations get to the point of making a real quantum leap toward digitization.
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SPIEGEL: Do e-mails also have an emotional component?
Engesser: That depends on how you socialized. Those who grew up with the e-mail may even have a private e-mail address with a meaningful name that has become part of their own identity. For millennials and later born, that is certainly less important. Today, e-mails sometimes play the role that used to be a letter: a post on a team page is far more non-binding. E-mails, on the other hand, have a greater formality and are more binding. It increasingly signals: Now comes an important message.
SPIEGEL: Which communication channels will shape our everyday professional life in the future?
Engesser: That depends on social and economic factors. Who optimizes work processes, and we try all in everyday life, uses what most colleagues use: e-mail or WhatsApp. Everyone has an e-mail address; but with team tools you first have to find out what your contact person has. The more parallel offers there are, the more confusing the communication becomes. Three to four sophisticated groupware deals side by side are then more inefficient than the email, which may not have that much, but which everyone has. Who manages to establish a standard that wins. At the moment, the Team Tools seems to be a duel between Microsoft Teams and Slack.
SPIEGEL: Which communication tool do you think is the best?
Engesser: That depends on the context. The best thing is still to ask employees what features they actually need in everyday life. Just because something is new and hip and shines with many features, it does not necessarily have to be of greater benefit in everyday life. Some things are done faster on the old way.