Text messages and emails allow the recipient to handle them on their terms. You can pick them up when you are not doing something else, you can re-read them, you can lookup information, you can put thought on a reply. A phone call will interrupt whatever the recipient is doing and put them on the spot.
emails definitely have a purpose and i often request an email when i know there is information that will need to be referenced more than once.
but just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a phone call can clear things up in seconds that might have taken an hour to type effectively, days to respond to, and still might not get the actual answer you’re looking for.
between work colleagues, sure, but if it’s a government office or just a business, there’s no way i’m going through all the channels online. i’ve had many cases where a bureaucracy would have crushed my request, but because i got through to a living being, the matter was cleared up in minutes.
Text messages and emails allow the recipient to handle them on their terms. You can pick them up when you are not doing something else, you can re-read them, you can lookup information, you can put thought on a reply. A phone call will interrupt whatever the recipient is doing and put them on the spot.
emails definitely have a purpose and i often request an email when i know there is information that will need to be referenced more than once.
but just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a phone call can clear things up in seconds that might have taken an hour to type effectively, days to respond to, and still might not get the actual answer you’re looking for.
And in cases like that, its appropriate to text first to agree upon a time for that phone call.
between work colleagues, sure, but if it’s a government office or just a business, there’s no way i’m going through all the channels online. i’ve had many cases where a bureaucracy would have crushed my request, but because i got through to a living being, the matter was cleared up in minutes.