Maria Arpa
An interesting miscommunication happened. Someone I know invited me by email to look at their blog. The blog title and topic was unrelated to my work or my life but as I knew the person and haven’t seen them for years I clicked on it, gave it a cursory glance and seeing it was a topic unrelated to my work, I closed it and generally had some good feelings towards the person but took no action.
A few days later another email inviting me to look at the same blog post came and seeing no unsubscribe button, I wrote personally to the person taking care to ask politely to remove me from the mailing list and asking them not to take it personally.
Within an hour I received 2 different emails in quick succession telling me that my email had come over badly and that it had been taken personally and that I hadn’t understood the potential for us to do business and that I would be struck off that person’s list of contacts.
On the one hand I could see that I could have contacted the person and taken a much more personal approach, on the other hand I wouldn’t have expected an ‘unsubscribe’ request to generate such a negative reaction.
I’m guessing that this person had put so much heart and soul into creating their blog that they found the rejection difficult to process.
However, I wonder if that person had waited 24 hours before sending their replies, would they have communicated differently and seen the opportunity to reconnect?
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