Who do you cc?

Exploring the nuances and pitfalls of a modern dilemma
 
We kid you not: Five minutes before sitting down to pen this article, we were confronted with an actual live example. It went like this: 
 
Late last night, a client emailed us, cc’ing two of his colleagues. Just now, before we got a chance to reply, that same client sent us a little postscript to last night’s email… in which he didn’t cc his colleagues.
 
This cast an ominous pall over an otherwise innocuous email. What happened to the colleagues? Did the postscript contain some super-sensitive information that the others weren’t supposed to see, yet we were? Was it simply an oversight on the part of the sender? That is, did he just forget to cc those other two people? 
 
And then, how do we—and how would you—reply, given the new scenario? 
 
Modern problems
 
As you can see, this doesn’t happen in phone calls. Email has its own unique rules, both written and unwritten, and shorthand. 
 
As per that client we just told you about, here’s how we responded: As tersely as possible! We basically wrote, “Sure, sounds interesting—and is there a reason the others, from last night, weren’t cc’ed?” This way, 1) we didn’t load up the client with lots of info that would be kept from his colleagues in case it were a simple oversight, and 2) we quickly called his attention to the cc-lapse, to get it resolved ASAP. 
 
If you were curious, he just wrote back. It was an oversight. As we’d guessed. But you really need to make sure. 
 
Boy can it bite you
 
Here’s another example-cum-cautionary tale. An ad-agency client of ours recently sent us an update about an upcoming teleconference. The email was sent to us, and various members of the ad-agency team. But, in this one email, they’d also cc’ed their client. For lots of ad agencies, this wouldn’t really matter at all. But this particular ad agency is very sensitive about letting its clients know just who on their team is, and isn’t, internal to the agency. So that “@copelcommunications.com” email address stood out like a sore thumb among all those “@sensitive-ad-agency.com” recipients. 
 
We didn’t do anything in this case. What could we do? The cat was out of the bag. 
 
Personally, we don’t think it caused much damage. (Then again, we never asked, LOL!) 
 
Victims ourselves
 
Just in case you think we’re merely witnesses to the missteps of others, allow us to happily disabuse you. 
 
We recently sent a weekly update email to a client of ours; per procedure, we send it to the company principal and several key lieutenants. In this instance, the principal replied-all to our weekly update with some interesting thoughts. And so then we replied-all with our thoughts—at which point we got our knuckles gently rapped by the principal: “That last comment of yours wasn’t appropriate for everyone who was cc’ed.” And of course, this note from the principal was sent just to us, cc’ing just the top lieutenant, and no one else. 
 
We apologized for the protocol lapse. And we’ve been extra careful ever since. 
 
So what do you do?
 
There are a few good rules of thumb you can apply to avoid cc embarrassment. Here goes: 
 
1. Don’t bcc. We’re hard-pressed to think of a single time—aside from, say, sending out a newsletter—that you’d want to use bcc in a business email. Nowadays, it feels under-handed. 

2. Address last. We always like to compose an email before we add any recipients to it! This, conveniently, prevents you from accidentally hitting “Send” before the missive is done—simply because it can’t go anywhere! So add the addresses last. This also gives you the benefit of knowing exactly what you’ve already said in the email (as opposed to trying to think ahead to what you’re about to say), and so you have an indisputable perspective of who should, and shouldn’t read it. 

3. Err on the side of fewer cc’s. Here’s one of our favorite email phrases; feel free to borrow it: “As you can see, we’ve addressed this email only to you, but please feel free to share it with others on your team as you deem appropriate.” What a lifesaver that one is!

4. Censor. We know a certain company that really hated working with a certain vendor of theirs, but the vendor was so important to them, that they found him irreplaceable. One of the seniors at the company once complained, in email, to one of his reports, that this vendor “was a real prima donna and a pain in the butt to work with,” and so on and so on, really venting in detail and pulling no punches. You know exactly what happened next: That email—which got buried in a far longer thread, where it almost lay hidden—found its way back to that exact same vendor. The vendor read it. He fumed. The company exec was egg-faced and had to apologize and back-pedal. The relationship soured even more. It was, in short, a mess. It was, even shorter, avoidable. That’s the point of our “Censor” rule: Don’t put anything, anything in an email that you wouldn’t mind seeing on the six o’clock news. If it’s more sensitive than that and yet still must be covered, use the magic phrase: “Let’s discuss by phone.” 
 
An ongoing challenge
 
In business, you send and receive scores of emails daily. It’s like signaling for a lane-change in your car: Something you do a lot, but each time, it’s risky. 
 
You might be surprised to learn this, but a lot of what we do here at Copel Communications lives in the world of email: Of course, we correspond that way with our clients and vendors, but we also “ghost email” a lot for clients, to help them communicate optimally to their clients and prospects. We do it a lot. And we pay attention to those pesky cc’s, too. 
 
Need help with your next communications challenge? Contact us.We’d be happy to put our experience to work for you. 

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