Increase corporate email efficiency and prevent “reply-all” email storms with this new maximum-email-chain-length feature!

The Issue:

One of the many issues with email is that it’s possible to end up in a super-long chain of multi-participant back-and-forth emails where nothing actually gets resolved.

Although this is possible in any communication medium, the (relatively) long delay between emails makes it possible for this situation to drag over many days.

Proposal:

This idea is simple: once an email chain has a sufficient number of replies (say, 20 in total), no further replies are allowed.

Instead, a link at the bottom of the email chain will allow the user to schedule a group video chat to resolve the issue under discussion.

***Fig. 1:*** *After 20 emails, the user sees that further replies are FORBIDDEN. They’ll need to schedule a follow-up chat, instead of emailing back-and-forth.*

Conclusion:

This should greatly increase email efficiency, thus freeing up additional time for employees to become experts at FreeCell and Minesweeper.

PROS: Would prevent the annoying “reply all” email storms that sometimes happen when someone CCs too many people on a message (e.g. the “please unsubscribe me!” and “stop replying-all!!” reply-alls).

CONS: This system could still be bypassed by a determined user who would be willing to spend the 15 seconds to compose a new message with the same list of recipients (thus restarting the “20 emails” limit).