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On the other hand, if there is still some uncertainty about the details of the message, it can lead to a long and winding chain of emails or texts, one that could have been done much faster in a quick phone call. I schedule technicians for a large company and I much, MUCH prefer the phone over emails or texts.

In my experience, people who have communication problems will inevitably fail at communication, regardless of the medium. You can call them all you want and leave voicemails, and still get no response, or slow response, or retarded response.

This exactly.
It's especially annoying when a short reply is all that is needed. Like if a parent asks to reschedule, and then takes 3 days to tell me if they prefer lesson time x or y. In that time I could have scheduled multiple things in those time slots.




Also agree with this. Playing phone tag is much more excruciating than writing a short email or text whenever it's convenient.

I am in agreement with AZN and malkin. Pianist lady, so true too! If I have a cancellation and am trying to schedule a makeup lesson (which IS A COURTESY), i provide a time limit to reply, as I was frustrated by those who reply days later, when it's too late to plan makeup lessons.

And if that tech doesn't show up, how do you prove he had been scheduled? How does one provide a record of a phone call? Text messages can't be refuted.

True. Voicemail could work if people knew how to leave specific information, but most often they leave no information "Please call me" without any mention of the problem, or they leave a long rambling incoherent or unintelligible message without offering any useful content.

At work, if a parent leaves a message stating what their issue is, I can start working on a solution before I speak to them. If they just say "please call me" any work on the solution must wait until I am able to reach them on the phone, usually 4-5 attempts later. It wastes my time and it delays the solution to the problem. Few people are able to state 1. what they need and 2. when they are likely to be available to take my return call.

My wife is one of those people who will need to exchange several SMS’s to get to the actual point. I’ve noticed this is the way her and her female friends communicate amongst each other, so I’ve always assumed it’s a gender issue.

If I asked a reschedule I’d probably write “[son’s full name] can’t make this week’s lesson, can we reschedule? He’s available Tuesday-Thursday from 3:30 onwards; any weekday between 8-8:30am, and any time on weekends. Other times may be possible if needed. If possible please let me know a time”.

My wife’s approach would be (1st sms) “can we re-schedule?”. 2nd message: “what times are available?” (3) “he has another class on at that time. Can you make it this Wednesday afternoon?” (4) “can you make any other time?”

Exactly! I don't do much teaching now so I don't have quite the same situation, but I certainly do lots of accompanying, much of which involves organising rehearsals with young instrumentalists and singers, so similar parent communication issues. It’s the asynchronous thing that makes text and email work so well for me. It’s changed my life, actually. I can answer them all together when I have a spare half hour, and organise schedules more efficiently.

A few other positives are:

[1] Many of the parents I need to communicate with are not fluent English speakers and it can be quite difficult to understand them on the phone. Also, if I’ve emailed them they then have a written record of the appointment, and we’re not relying on them writing it down accurately from the spoken word.

[2] I pretty well don’t answer my phone any more, if I can possibly avoid it. I have such problems with junk calls and even though I’m on our “do not call” register this hasn’t stopped the flow. If I don’t recognise the caller ID as being a friend, relative or one of my few regular students, I just let it go to voicemail. If I was trying to organise everything by phone calls I’d have to start answering the phone again and I’m not sure I could go back to that.

[3] Most of the calls I get around competition/exam time will be asking me things which are already written somewhere on the printed material they have already received but obviously not read. I am not going back to the days when I patiently dictated the address of the rehearsal venue over the phone, spelling the names of streets etc when it’s all printed there in the program. I do however have a “rehearsal details” copy/paste paragraph all ready and can just zap it into a text or email. Too easy.

And Mariner, what you describe is not a gender thing, in my experience. I (female) certainly get to the point in my business communications. Amongst family and friends, anything goes.

Couldn't agree more. If people actually like phone tag, then go for it. But I'm finished with it.

What a strange assumption! You're implying that females can't get to the point and men can?

I think it's more likely that your wife is engaging in social rather then transactional discourse with her friends. In social situations it is normal to exchange greetings first and approach decision making as a democratic, turn-taking activity, rather than have one party listing their desired criteria first.
Discourse analysis is an interesting topic. You may want to read up further before making sexist comments.
As a female with little tjme my own transactional messages are as succinct and efficient as possible.

A perfect example of a recent message I left with a specialist: "I would like to reschedule my appointment with Dr. _____.
I then leave all my info -- name, birth date, phone #s, etc.
I continue with "I am available any day after 2:00 PM. Please leave an available appointment time on my home phone."

What reply do I get? "This is Dr. _____ office calling. Please call us back at _________. ARRGGHHH. And so the dance begins.............

Please don't assume such a thing.

I read an important book about concise business writing: Business Writing: What Works, What Won't. Note the name of the author: Wilma Davidson. In other words, a woman. And she's not the only woman -- far from it -- who knows how to get to the point, and who does so.

Also, take a look at this recent thread and ask yourself if the OP (a male, by the way) ever got to the point in his 50,000+ words there.

I get so many spam phone calls I don't answer numbers I don't recognize. I do return all voice mails, they're hardly ever spam.

Something I've run into, mostly with email because text wasn't as popular until recently, is that voice directions can be less positive than written. I noticed this to some extent with US subordinates, and then much more so when I worked in Europe and most of my employees were local nationals.

If I told someone what I wanted orally, they felt much more free to question it. "Are you sure that's what you want? Because this could happen." or, because I was the boss, "uh, Chef, your other idea was good too, maybe we should try that?" A lot of times it kept us from doing something dumb. However, if I put it in writing, sometimes they would think well that's dumb, but he must want it, and they'd shrug and do it.

I wonder how we did it for the first fifty years we were in business. I do understand the point though. Actually it would be kind of ironic to point to the permanent record and see all the texts that were lost in cyberspace for two days, or the emails that came in overnight and ask for someone "tomorrow" (is that "tomorrow" TODAY or is it really the next day), the emails that have an unnecessarily large or animated signature and wind up in the spam folder, the emails that bounce for no apparent reason, or the clients who respond with this-or-that questions with one-word answers such as "yes"... Happens almost daily.

I'm not provided with a smartphone, so I'm reduced to texting the old fashioned way: press the ABC key three times for "C", etc. Maybe in the next century we'll get smartphones.

Bless you Brahms4. I wish more people were aware of the difference between interactional and transactional discourse.

What about T9 mode? You enter 74266 and the phone is smart enough to guess that you wanted "piano" not "pgamm".