This is shortcut (potentially) by simply presenting one of the alternatives in a simple yes/no question.
“Hey, Her, you wanna go to Leo’s Tomorrow night?”
If the answer is “yes”, mission accomplished. If the answer is “no”, you can ask about Maldives, or you can assert executive authority and decide Maldives is the alternative.
Of course, the answer could be neither “yes” nor “no”, but at least the form of the question was more focused.
True! And learning to deal with her helped me at work. I started only asking one question, preferably YES/NO, per email.
Or the classic “If I don’t hear from you by 4:45 Friday, i’m going to email the client that we’re going to host their annual users’ meeting at Leo’s.”
I think they meant that you should ask Mary about the Q1 projected spend, not them.
I knew someone was going to say this, but I was too lazy to work on the wording.
OP here. I got 3 of 4 questions answered now. Only took… two weeks.
I am not confident about this shit at all. Not my trigger to pull though.
Yep. Email is really not a very effective communication method unless both parties are equally motivated to hold up their respective ends of the conversation.
This was exactly the problem I had every day when trying to get useful details from customers in an IT service desk function; they report a problem but don’t give enough details for investigation to begin - so we’d reply to ask several questions in a numbered list, as near as possible to the top of the message, so they don’t miss it.
They’d answer the first question, then ramble on about how urgent it was that we should fix the problem.
We’d reply to say we needed the answers to the other questions, and get…nothing, or worse, they would open a new ticket asking for the same help, but without volunteering any useful information about the actual problem. We didn’t have sufficient resources to be chasing after them by phone, but that’s what we had to do, so we fell behind.
You’d think a form field submission would be standard for helpdesk issues, but I can’t recall that I’ve ever seen one. THIS FIELD REQUIRES A RESPONSE. Do you suppose it would work?
Next step is adapt that system for emails. Third time you don’t respond to my specific questions, you get locked out of your machine and have to request a reset.
^100% But phone is worse with these non communicators. And you don’t have a record.
In my business I like having a record of what was asked and answered. I refer to it myself as in, “Oh yeah, I have to look at that too”.
A phone conversation does not give you that.
I’m trying to write up requirements to massage our data to fit their data. And send it to them. Then I’ll automate it.
I get responses “Well, if you think that data will help”
As a data guy, and DB designer, this is… awful. That’s not how it works. OK?. YOU tell me WHAT you need and I will provide it. It’s simple.
I know it sounds like a scam. It’s not. It’s a company with… I shall say ‘presence’.
I see stupid people.
We figured it would be best to get them to fill out a form that asks for all the information necessary to get started on helping them with their problem.
We set up the forms. We couldn’t build much validation into them just because of the nature of the possible answers. What we got back was ticket submissions like this:
Customer name: John
Order number: There is a computer problem
Product number: IT issue
Computer ID: IT IS VERY URGENT
Describe the problem: Please can you help ASAP!!!
Oh my God.
I don’t think it’s phones, I have had “Rules for communicating with normies” since before smart phones were a thing:
I send bullet pointed lists. No more than 4 questions. A professional should be able to reply to that.
What I do with such a list if I’m asked is reply inline to each question with my answer in a different color than the original email. I add the answer right under the question. It’s easy to see and pick out. It’s not hard.
I can’t agree with that. It makes the email chain impossible to follow.
This would be great. But often can’t be done.
Should is a dangerous word.
You’d think a working professional could keep a simple coffee station clean or learn how not to drag meetings out yet here we are.
At the end of the day, human beings are just weird. There are practices and tricks we can use but some people, by choice or by natural inclination, are just not going to respond properly to business communications.
ETA: and this by far predates smartphones or COVID. I wouldn’t be surprised if those exacerbated existing traits, especially when they forced more people to work remotely, but we were getting ‘training’ on proper business emails 20 years ago due to the same lack of quality people have been complaining about in the thread. The more things change…
It’s often the only way, if the other person is capable of answering multiple questions I use numbered lists, but is often the case that they are not.
That’s why I say try, sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.
They stop answering before you get to the end of the necessary questions.
Email just isn’t the solution for this sort of dialogue. When we recently moved house, there were lists of questions our solicitor needed us to answer - they had a portal where we had to log in and answer them - and it was not possible to submit the form until every answer was filled out (I think it did allow the form to be partially filled and it would save that partial progress, but it would send reminders to go back and complete it)
For the example you give it’s not, you need to talk it out.
But in many cases, you need answers to 4 or 5 questions and it really can be done via email, I’ve seen it done.
But you need an interlocutor that’s used to thinking in a certain way.
I do it a lot. But there are some folks that see ‘Shiny!!!’ And only answer 2 of 4 questions. These folks don’t do better over the phone. And I want a record.
And I would prefer that they don’t communicate as if they where passing notes in 8th grade algebra class. "Thanks! I’ll get back to you after I send this to the data team!! 
"
Ya mean the team that I’ve asked for direct communication to? That data team? Three days go by for a simple question, and I have to ask again, and again, and again.
I was told they would talk to me. I get 
In this case, what I have is either an overworked or clueless person. I think both.
You need communicators who are invested in the conversation at both ends - if one end is trying to work the problem and the other end just wants to hand it off and be done, it is just a recipe for frustration.
I think that plays some part, but there are people who simply are not trained to think when writing, if you talk to them you find out what you need pretty easily, but written communication is their nemesis.