I totally agree. I had it a few times in which someone calls me, rips me out of my thoughs, we discuss something, hang up and I have nothing retained from what we talked about. Or, even better, someone says something on a call and I do that and then they never said anything about that.
Even worse, I can’t listen to the conversation in 1-2 weeks because that is the time I could actually work on it and remember every detail that we talked about.
Now I am strictly going with emails. Sure they can call me and we talk about the feasibility or discuss possible solutions but any request for implementation has to happen either over an email of which I then create a ticket/issue or they create one directly themselves.
That way I can prove that what I implemented was based on what was requested and if that was wrong then the request wasn’t clear enough.
What I like to do is if I get a request from someone to do something while we are on a call, I politely ask them to send me an email so that I don’t forget about it when I get to working on it in a few hours/days. Conversely, if it’s a request that I’m asking, then I’ll send them a follow-up up email about the topics discussed (again mainly for me, but also beneficial for the recipient).
It’s super important to have that paper trail not only to CYA, but also so future conversations can be made from it. If while I’m working on something and I think of a potentially crucial idea, it’s good to be able to pull up that email and reply all so that the background and context is already there. I HATE having to repeat myself and give the whole spiel all over again – just super inefficient. Plus, many times people get added to the email chain so it helps them get caught up to speed too.
Bottom line, phone call and face to face conversations are just as important as email correspondence.
I totally agree. I had it a few times in which someone calls me, rips me out of my thoughs, we discuss something, hang up and I have nothing retained from what we talked about. Or, even better, someone says something on a call and I do that and then they never said anything about that.
Even worse, I can’t listen to the conversation in 1-2 weeks because that is the time I could actually work on it and remember every detail that we talked about.
Now I am strictly going with emails. Sure they can call me and we talk about the feasibility or discuss possible solutions but any request for implementation has to happen either over an email of which I then create a ticket/issue or they create one directly themselves.
That way I can prove that what I implemented was based on what was requested and if that was wrong then the request wasn’t clear enough.
Yes, this.
What I like to do is if I get a request from someone to do something while we are on a call, I politely ask them to send me an email so that I don’t forget about it when I get to working on it in a few hours/days. Conversely, if it’s a request that I’m asking, then I’ll send them a follow-up up email about the topics discussed (again mainly for me, but also beneficial for the recipient).
It’s super important to have that paper trail not only to CYA, but also so future conversations can be made from it. If while I’m working on something and I think of a potentially crucial idea, it’s good to be able to pull up that email and reply all so that the background and context is already there. I HATE having to repeat myself and give the whole spiel all over again – just super inefficient. Plus, many times people get added to the email chain so it helps them get caught up to speed too.
Bottom line, phone call and face to face conversations are just as important as email correspondence.