Comment by jonathanlydall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathanlydall | Hacker News Reader

This is actually important for all professional communication (maybe with an exception of marketing), if you want the best chance of getting what you want from the person you're communicating with, get to the point within the very first sentence, even if it's just a high-level summary, you then have the person's complete attention and can elaborate further.

If you don't get to the point quickly, people might think it doesn't really apply/matter to them and ignore it.

This became very obvious to me when my day job for a few years was responding to customer service requests over email for World of Warcraft. I would often find myself skimming all the useless (quite literally) pretext as quickly as possible scanning for what their actual problem was.

Stereotypical example of a poor email from a customer:

> Last night I finished the raid with my guild where we downed the Lich King. Then this morning I went to school where my friends and I also talked about WoW, then when I got home, everything seemed normal, I turned on my computer, logged on and entered my password, but it didn't work, then I went to the website and used the password reset, then I tried to log on and it said my account was locked, then I checked my email, and it said my account is locked and I need to contact Blizzard...

At which point I stop reading and I'm thinking "finally, I see why he's emailing us".

To be fair, these emails are often from adolescents who understandingly do not yet have the experience to do effective communication (which is actually an additional interesting aspect of customer service for a computer game compared to services which are only taken up by adults, but I digress).

I now work as a software developer for a startup and often have to interact directly with clients, and when I communicate with them, I always make sure to have my desired "call to action" (even if only summarised) within the first sentence.

Absolutely. I once did a "how to communicate effectively for executives" course and the guy who ran it said his advice for anyone from a scientific/technical background was to write the long thoughtful email explaining everything. Cut and paste the last paragraph with your conclusion to the top. Make any minor changes in wording you need. Add (preferably within the first 2 sentences) any action you want the person to take or something saying you don't expect them to do anything you're just telling them some information you think they will find useful and (hopefully) why.

His point was that technical people tend to want to produce an argument with all the information etc and then get to the conclusion. Business people typically will read the first paragraph and sigh because they don't know what the email is expecting them to do[1]. Then they go on to doing something else and tell themselves they'll come back to it when they have time.

[1] Especially not knowing whether the email is just for general information or there is a specific action the recipient needs to take.

> technical people tend to want to produce an argument with all the information etc

Yes, I was thinking after my comment I should bring this up too, you’ve said it possibly better than I would have.

Just a quibble,

In a business situation, with a motivated person, state the action you want quickly and then give whatever needed details.

In a business situation, with an unmotivated person, state the problem quickly and then the action needed for solution (or the reason this is the needed action and then the action, etc).

In a story telling situation, you can draw out the scene setting 'till when you state the problem until the final result is suitably dramatic ("For just a second, the mist parts and the rust-red scaly snout of a red dragon can be")

That why I can't get the author's idea D&D helps with business questions. As a DM, I describe the environment neutrally and don't give my players action bullet points 'cause it's their job to come up with those (and if I do their job for them, they lose out).

I think his point is a priority-first ordering, rather than either a general-to-specific or a specific-to-general ordering. Most people do one of the latter two.

> At which point I stop reading and I'm thinking "finally, I see why he's emailing us".

I never like to discourage 'too much' information because frankly 'end users' don't know what they need to tell us in support (that is kind of what our job is right?). I'd much prefer the above than just 'it won't let me log in' - where there maybe context that I'd want.

I spend more time asking follow up questions (without being able to provide even a modicum of solution) in many cases, I try to couch my 'questions answering questions' reply with why I am asking (more typing and explaining) when users don't give me chapter and verse, even if it is mostly 'puff'.

> I now work as a software developer for a startup and often have to interact directly with clients, and when I communicate with them, I always make sure have my desired "call to action" (even if only summarised) within the first sentence.

But that is after they have emailed you right? You cannot summarize anything until you actually have them tell you what is wrong, no matter how long takes them. So yes summarize in the first sentence is always useful and if you don't kow the solution (yet) it never hurts to admit that and say something like, 'but we can try X or see what Y is doing as that will help me understand the issue in more detail' etc.

Customer Support is hard work sometimes, now try doing it with someone who doesn't speak your language very well ;)

The problem is all too often users have no clue what is useful information. Mechanics hear a lot about the color of the car making a funny noise, but nothing about where the noise seems to come from or when it is heard, nor do they get told when the last time the transmission oil was changed even though that might be a useful clue.

> I never like to discourage 'too much' information because frankly 'end users' don't know what they need to tell us in support (that is kind of what our job is right?). I'd much prefer the above than just 'it won't let me log in' - where there maybe context that I'd want.

I agree that more information is sometimes better, but elaborate only after stating the core issue. For example, if you're emailing a provider about being overbilled. Start your email with "I'm writing to you because I have been overbilled and would please like this addressed", then you lay out your case with all the facts that you think could be relevant. But don't start with a whole bunch of facts because the service agent won't yet be in the correct context to know which facts are relevant until after they know what problem you're trying to have solved.

> But that is after they have emailed you right? You cannot summarize anything until you actually have them tell you what is wrong, no matter how long takes them. So yes summarize in the first sentence is always useful and if you don't kow the solution (yet) it never hurts to admit that and say something like, 'but we can try X or see what Y is doing as that will help me understand the issue in more detail' etc.

Sorry, I wasn't entirely clear, but for this part I was not referring to responses to customer service requests, but more for proactive reach outs initiated from our side towards trying to ensure customer retention and (at the moment) we're more of a B2B product so we feel this is worth doing.

As "random" reach outs by a supplier are not always appreciated, we always try to offer something of value/relevance when doing so, with the first sentence being something like "Hi <person name>, We've recently done <something to our product which we feel is relevant to you>, I was wanting to check if this would be useful to you?". I can then perhaps elaborate further on the potentially useful thing to them and also close by stating that I would be happy to do a video call to go through it in more detail if they would like.

What's particularly noteworthy here is that I did a "call to action" which would be low effort on their part, namely to "please at least reply to let me know if this is useful" in the very first sentence. This is actually a bit of a psychological trick where because the recipient has been directly asked to do something in particular, they're more likely to continue reading towards doing this and engage.

Once we started it on our side, I also started to notice that I see this trick very often to my own inbox from completely cold contact direct marketers, their first sentence often ends with something to the effect of "would <time and date> work for you for us to discuss further?", I don't engage with these completely cold contacts, but I see exactly what they're trying to do.

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