Those of us who work up a sweat over crafting a succinct and clear email can now take a breath; Crystal is a new platform that comes with a bold promise: to aid you in writing a clear, succinct email that will be appreciated by the recipient. Or, as the service itself phrases it: bring about the end of miscommunication.
Crystal is currently in beta, and has an open waiting list for anyone wishing to give the service a try. We delved in and got to grips with our own psychology to see if Crystal makes good on its promise to revolutionise how well we communicate.
Firstly, let’s answer the burning question: Crystal functions by plugging in to social networks – namely LinkedIn – and analysing a user’s co-workers for behaviours and patterns in written content. Crystal analyses posts and personal information and assigns behavioural traits to users; for example, if Jack frequently posts concise, frank statements on social media, Crystal will quantify this and assign a relevant personality profile to Jack: likely that Jack will be unmoved by long, expressively worded emails and would prefer short affirmative statements. The more data Crystal is able to analyse, the more accurate the service becomes – or so Crystal states.
Crystal will further coach a user through writing an email to such a recipient, marking up text it identifies as problematic or likely to be unappreciated. The email coach is a paid feature of the site, which is available to new users for free for 14 days from sign-up. Crystal’s basic feature set – examining colleagues outside of a user’s specific work place, an email coach, email templates, and a Gmail plugin is available for $19.99 per month. Master and Enterprise editions offer relationship views, team management, and advanced tools for $49 and $99 per month, respectively.
To better illustrate how Crystal works, as well as to evaluate how accurate the personality profile and email coach is, let’s walk through using it on someone familiar – yours truly.
Crystal begins with signing in through LinkedIn, which collates your connections and indexes them at the top of any search results. To review a person’s specific personality – and how to write an amicable email to them – a basic search begins. To search for myself, I added my name, in addition to my location and place of study – Crystal then plugs into LinkedIn’s graph and performs a search.
Once you’ve selected the specific person you wish to view, Crystal begins to collate posts and assigns a patterned personality profile to the said individual. If there is enough data for the service to make a character judgement, as is the case with my own profile, Crystal will then provide profile through the below screen:
Here is where our real review begins; Crystal provides a list of guidelines – as above – detailing how best to go about approaching the individual you’ve looked up. It’s easy to become defensive when looking at one’s own personality profile, though for the purposes of science, I’ll attempt to outline most neutrally what I felt of Crystal’s recommendations in a self-reflexive process.
The above screenshot depicts Crystal’s analysis of my personality: that I am very social, outgoing, empathetic, and goal driven, but stressed by structure, followed by advice for contacting me: to open with a few jokes, emphasise the future, not to ask too many questions, and not to trust me to follow specific verbal instructions.
Despite Crystal’s 82% accuracy confidence, I’m not entirely convinced the above is an accurate statement, though it does function as an decent rough guideline. Crucially, I slightly disagree with the personality synopsis: I’m a social individual, but I’m not as outgoing as the description might suggest. I enjoy details and welcome as many of them as possible in communication, though admittedly I chafe quickly under a rigorous structure and I feel I output my best work while enjoying creative freedom.
I largely agree with the communication assessment, as well: I usually welcome emails that open with a joke or play on words, and enjoy hearing future ramifications – positive or negative. Further, in an initial email, I don’t welcome many questions, and would prefer to invite queries rather than have them asked of me in the first message of correspondence. However, I disagree with the assessment that I’d not follow specific verbal instructions; I’d usually welcome the detail and use it to best complete whatever task was needed of me.
From that short self-reflexive piece, it’s evident to me that while Crystal isn’t – for want of a better phrase – crystal clear, the service does provide a generally accurate assessment that provides enough accurate information to inform a well-written an inviting email. In practice, the service is actually quite invaluable, and offers step-by-step guidance on providing empathetic emails that clearly communicate their content to a recipient.
Crystal’s email assistant – which also directly plugs into Gmail through a Chrome extension – uses the personality profile of an individual to assist in developing a written message. The email assistant itself will offer a quick guide to composing a written message, and will correct phrases that it feels will not resonate with its intended recipient.
Overall, Crystal is a useful utility that offers a somewhat fascinating insight into co-workers, friends, family, or potential contacts. For enterprise or for the ardent empathetic communicator, Crystal is very much a great addition to an email arsenal which renders creating well-written, empathetic and concise content that much more simple.
There’s much to be refined and added; Crystal will likely need to expand beyond LinkedIn to successfully graph and profile every intent recipient you’d wish to look up, and personality profiles could still be greatly refined, but the overall concept is well executed and is decidedly useful. In an age where words are precious and the good intent behind them even more so, Crystal helps provide a clear-cut method of successfully crafting correspondence in business or in private life.
7/10.
PS – This is not an invitation to send any unsolicited emails unless you’ve tickets to an advance screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Follow Bryan on Twitter: @bryansmith1138
