I wrote an email and all I got was a phonecall

April 12, 2006 on 10:24 am | In Computing |

Currently I am busy gathering information to finally get a Swiss drivers’ licence. For this purpose I searched the web for a place where I can do the mandatory first aid class. A timetable showed that there is gonna be a class in Oberdorf soon and there was an email address listed as contact. Hence I wrote an email asking for further information and didn’t get to read anything for the next couple days. One evening as I get home my mom left a note for me saying that the contact called and told the class is cancelled. In other words, this woman looked up my number in the phonebook first (it wasn’t provided in the mail, I only gave gave my name and location) rather than hitting the reply button. Furthermore, if she had sent me an email, I would have directly received it at any time while she would have had to call again if nobody had been home. Why do things the easy way when you can have it the hard way?

Well, that’s what I got to feel again last evening when the teacher called where I’d like to take driving lessons. I wrote an email asking for a howto about the required steps to get a drivers’ licence since the official site of the MFK is lousy and their FAQ only covers a few aspects. He said “I thought I’m giving you a quick call rather than writing back without even knowing if I really tell you what you wanted to know.” Well, I guess that makes one point for him. However, in the following minutes he ran me through the various steps of this complicated process and I had to ask back repeatedly as he skipped back and forth. Evidently everything was clear to him (no surprise since he’s working on the job for decades) but as a newbie on the phone you’re lost. If he had typed his answers into an email neatly ordered I would have understood immediately. If he had published this text on his website, too, potential customers would be happy about this kind of service and he wouldn’t have to answer the same questions by phone again.

I prefer not to be called because I honestly believe that email is the better medium if written well. However, this encounter just shows how deeply ingrained communication habits are. Obviously you can’t exspect somebody doing business over the phone for decades to write emails all of a sudden, even when they have a website. Welcome to the new millenium.