This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email.
That you firmly believe this approach just means you haven't worked in a govt. dept. or any kind of position where your response represents the response of the organization (or a sub-set thereof). In such circumstances, emails that are open-ended (responses risk being misunderstood), ambiguously phrased (responses will be twisted to server the author's needs) or controversial (any response paints the organization in a negative light) are often best ignored. If your question is ambiguous, a busy boss or colleague does not owe you an answer or vice versa.
Sometimes people respond out of anger or frustration. You could respond in kind, and escalate the battle, or simply wait and let the individual calm down. Not responding is a very useful technique when conflicts arise between team members or in the management chain.
I would rather ignore an angry abusive email from an upset colleague who is having a rough time in life, than respond in kind and escalate it into an HR battle. Of course if the behaviour continues, there would be no choice, but most people are rather contrite and apologetic after a brief outburst and it's much better for everyone to just pretend that it never happened. People make mistakes after all.
Sweeping stuff under the rug helps in the short term but not the long term in my opinion. Compassionately responding to an abusive Email (even just saying, "I can understand why you were so angry...") might be the very response that person needs to dissipate their anger or re-evaluate how they communicate with people and that helps everyone they interact with after you. Sure, things can get messy too and some discussions are easier offline, but I think there's merit to completing conversations even if they're difficult.
> This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email.
I haven't worked in a govt. dept but I work in a situation where my response represents me being in business or not.
I'm dealing with 30,000+ people who email me all sorts of questions, with varying degrees of niceness. Some people are cool, others are over the top passive aggressive. I get very open ended questions, tons of "it doesn't work" with no details, etc.. My job is to guide those emails into a resolution.
If I treat anyone poorly (saying bad things or ignoring them) then I'll quickly be out of business because I don't have a monopoly. I take customer support very seriously. It's not even what I do full time either (although I'm always on call), it's just a side effect of running an online course business.
You could say instead of having 1 colleague I have 30,000+ all of which who have their own personalities and struggles, none of which were filtered through HR. I once had someone get pretty rude for no reason and then after a few emails we fixed the problem. The next morning he wrote a ~1,000 word essay to apologize because his father died recently and he drank a 12 pack of beer when he initially contacted me.
I always go down the kindness route and after answering over 5,000+ emails and questions I've honestly never had a negative experience where either party left the conversation upset.
I understand your premise. Customer support through email is much like customer support in person. I spent six years doing in-person customer support while working through university. But email is a lot more than just a medium for handling customer support, I do hope you realize that. For instance, you can hire or fire a person over email, sign or terminate a contract, promote or demote, change organizational structure, among others. It's a powerful tool. Certainly when responding to clients, early is best, even if only to say "I'll look into it right away."
That you firmly believe this approach just means you haven't worked in a govt. dept. or any kind of position where your response represents the response of the organization (or a sub-set thereof). In such circumstances, emails that are open-ended (responses risk being misunderstood), ambiguously phrased (responses will be twisted to server the author's needs) or controversial (any response paints the organization in a negative light) are often best ignored. If your question is ambiguous, a busy boss or colleague does not owe you an answer or vice versa.
Sometimes people respond out of anger or frustration. You could respond in kind, and escalate the battle, or simply wait and let the individual calm down. Not responding is a very useful technique when conflicts arise between team members or in the management chain.
I would rather ignore an angry abusive email from an upset colleague who is having a rough time in life, than respond in kind and escalate it into an HR battle. Of course if the behaviour continues, there would be no choice, but most people are rather contrite and apologetic after a brief outburst and it's much better for everyone to just pretend that it never happened. People make mistakes after all.