What Do You Do When You Send an Email to the Wrong Person?
Stupid Auto-Fill! These email programs try and make our lives simpler by filling in the names of recipients once we start typing. I’m not sure about you, but there have been a couple of times that has made my life very complicated by having an email sent to the wrong person!
What do you do when that happens? Do you ignore that it happened, acknowledge it, hide, quit, or something else?
Saving Changes...
Re-send the email to the right recipient, copy the wrong recipient, and apologize for the mistake. I get those all the time, there are three other persons in my company who share my first name. There is no reason to make a big deal out of it.
Unless of course the email was confidential. And worse, you sent it outside the company and not to a colleague. Then you're screwed. I recommend proactively talking to HR or Communications or whoever before they find out from someone else and you get the axe. Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Jennifer, I am so glad to hear that someone other than me does this. Almost always, I do exactly what Julien advises. Saving Changes...
My gosh, sending an email to the wrong person is a terrible experience. In my work, I have many clients and I once sent an email to "Adeline", but because of the "auto-complete" in my office email (Lotus Notes), it filled in the address of ANOTHER Adeline.
The worst thing was, the recipient was another client of mine, so the information intended for the original Adeline was leaked out! I had to call the recipient and apologize, then asked her to kindly delete the email.
Once the email goes out, there's nothing much you can do, really. Just ask nicely that the recipient deletes the email and hope he or she is true to his or her word :) Saving Changes...
rajini mandulaManager Agile program management| Publicis SapientHyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
First of all I would resend the mail to the right person and send a mail to the wrong person apologizing for sending the mail and request the person to delete the mail. Also, report the incident to senior management and accept the fault and apologize. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I contact the person who got the email by mistake and apologise, then send it to the right person. Normally there is no problem, unless, as Julien says, you included confidential information.
I've been sent emails to the wrong Elizabeth before and I always reply to the sender pointing out that they have copied in the wrong person, just in case they didn't realise. Saving Changes...
