Author Topic: Email that just says "Thanks"  (Read 617 times)

Offline lowspark

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Email that just says "Thanks"
« on: December 18, 2018, 11:47:25 am »
I was just perusing one of those 50 things you should know about... articles, this one about etiquette.
One of the rules:
If all you have to say in your email reply is “Thanks!” refrain from sending it. You’re just clogging an inbox.

Do you agree with this? I think that it depends on the situation.

In my job, I have a lot of internal customers who send me questions or requests for work, sometimes via email. When I answer the question or return the completed work, again, via email, I'd like some kind of response. Firstly, I'd like to know the email has been received, but I'd also like to know if the answer was useful, if the work was what they needed, etc.

I have some customers who don't reply and it bugs me. I don't know if they even opened my email, meaning my work was at least received and maybe appreciated. I have a colleague who sits next to me and does a similar job and she has the same complaint.

We both feel that even a simple "Thank you" email is better than no response.

What's your take on this?
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Offline STiG

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2018, 12:16:53 pm »
I'm with you; a simple 'Thanks!' lets me know that you read my email, acknowledged the information and feel it is complete.  The question no longer takes any brain space (Did they get my email?  Was the information what they needed?  Do they need anything more from me?)  Yes, the absence of any reply implies all of that but I'd rather get the one word email and delete it than be left hanging.

Offline Lynn2000

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2018, 12:27:30 pm »
lowspark, I agree with you in that it depends on the situation. For professional stuff, or even personal but informational stuff (like you've sent someone directions to your house), I think it's quite important to send an acknowledgment that you received the information. Email systems are better than they used to be, but it's far from rare that an email will not go through the system, or will go into someone's junk mail, or maybe you the sender saved it as a draft by accident. We send things out into the void and we have no idea if they were received unless someone takes a second to send a quick acknowledgment.

As a separate issue, I do think it's important to show appreciation for someone's effort. I suppose some people don't care about that (either giving or receiving appreciation), so they wouldn't buy that argument. That's more of a "politeness" issue and I know some people aren't swayed by that.

In my job I don't really deal with "too much email" situations. I did have one person, who was the equivalent of my boss in another department, say that he didn't want to be included on emails between me and his team members, because a lot of it was us trying to find a time and place to meet or fine details about the work that he didn't concern himself with. So we took him off that list. My boss, on the other hand, always wants to be copied even if she doesn't read the email very closely, because if she received it she can always go back and read over the details if a problem develops later.

I feel like it's a bit like you're saying, "I'm so important, I get so much email, I don't need your petty stuff clogging my inbox." It seems a bit arrogant, you know? On the other hand you should follow your boss's directions and your corporate culture, but absent other information, I would default to sending an acknowledgment of information.

Offline lmnop

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #3 on: December 19, 2018, 11:41:47 am »
I'm with the article and I'm with the other person's boss. I got 47 emails yesterday. That's not counting subscription newsletters, meeting invitations, straight up spam, etc. It's actual emails that I had to read. And, it is basically Christmas slow down here already so that's hardly any. I was out of the office for the entire day so wasn't even getting the normal back and forth on work that is in progress. Though, we've moved most of the quick Q&A stuff to IM now thank goodness. I've never had an interoffice email go astray unless the attachments were too large and then you get a bounce back. External, I'm more likely to follow up and less likely to be annoyed by one. But, internal, it is really not necessary.

(And, I've been the person cc'd on an endless chain of people going back and forth on something that doesn't have anything to do with me, and it really is annoying. That's the kind of situation that IM was built for.) I know it's important to the people it's important to. But it does feel like spam when it doesn't concern you. Or like an accidental reply all which are very annoying.

Offline Jem

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2018, 12:38:36 pm »
I don't send emails without substance, personally. I might say, "Thank you - I appreciate your work on this. I'll follow up next week." But the back and forth drives me crazy, especially when someone is simply doing their job in sending an email, there is a reply of "thank you," and then another reply of "no problem!" followed by yet another reply of a smiley face. Just...….please don't.

Also, in many places all emails must be indexed, both outgoing and incoming. It can add work to send pointless emails.
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Offline Amara

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2018, 12:51:02 pm »
Interesting question. My answer is that it depends. To outside people, no or at most rarely. To work colleagues, it depends on how crazy with work I know they are or if I feel they could use an expression of gratitude or if they really helped me. And it's not always the same answer. I'm good at judging each situation each time so I go with the flow. At work I am determined to make other people's jobs easier if I can so that requires subtle understandings of how these different jobs ebb and flow at various times.
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Offline MrTango

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #6 on: December 21, 2018, 10:29:44 pm »
Nah, go ahead and send it to me.  I'll use your reply against you several months down the road when you claim to have never gotten my email to begin with.

I literally just had this happen to me today at work: A customer tried to throw me under the bus, claiming that I'd never sent them information that they'd asked for back in July.  When I produced their email that said "Thanks" with my original email (containing all that information) below, my boss lost all sympathy for them and told them that their failure to keep track of their email was not our problem.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2018, 10:31:27 pm by MrTango »
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Offline Lynn2000

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2018, 10:07:32 am »
Yes! Again, for certain work things or informational stuff--a quick reply is confirmation that you got the email and it answered at least most of your questions, the attachment opened correctly, etc..

We had a student worker leave our office to go elsewhere for a summer internship, with the promise to return in the fall. Fall comes, and there's no sign of this guy. Personally I would have poked him with an email right away, but my boss is very non-confrontational and to be honest, we were glad if he DIDN'T return because of some issues we'd had with him, so we didn't reach out to him ourselves. Another month goes by and suddenly this guy saunters into our office, like everything is perfectly normal. My boss and I are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we thought you didn't work here anymore!" And he's like, "I sent you an email saying I'd be back on this date." And we were like, "Did anyone reply to that email?" He says no. I'm like, "Well, I don't know what happened, but one of us would have definitely replied to an email like that." He investigated and found out he'd saved the email as a draft, instead of sending it. (Of course if we had emailed him the first day he didn't show up as expected, this all would have come out sooner!)

We have a policy that we always reply to emails like, "I'll be out sick today," or whatever--so try to check back later and see if someone replied, and if they didn't, try to contact us again. Of course if you are super-ill don't strain yourself, but so many times an email will go ONLY to someone who isn't working that day, or they get the phone number wrong and leave a voicemail on some unrelated account, or things like that. All we can do is say, "We WILL reply if we hear from you, so if we don't reply, we didn't get the message."

But, I have definitely learned, from the old forum, that back-and-forths are unnecessary and annoying--like the first "Thanks!" is good in my opinion, but I just stop there, and I don't reply, "No problem!" and so on.

I think with stuff like email, both people have to work a little harder to be clear communicators. If I send someone info and I don't hear back, I may need to follow up to see if they got it. And if they did get it, it would be better for them to indicate that to me right away--or if they didn't get it by an expected date, they need to reach out and let me know that. If something critical is missed, then you get this blaming going back and forth--"You should have told me you didn't get it!" "Well, you should have followed up to see if I got it!"
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Offline JXB1000

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #8 on: December 27, 2018, 10:46:44 am »
I can see the need for confirmation in some cases, but mostly I'd prefer not to receive these.  I get 1000+ emails a week.   To me these are "politeness spam". No real value and they clog up my email, but no real harm.

It's more annoying when it's a co-worker communicating on common work issues, thus more volume. Especially the rare one that does it for every single message.  Arrrgh. I work with one of those.   He does this out of habit like a human read-receipt. Receive email, send thanks. Read/digest email, send substantive answer.  Sigh. Seriously annoying.  For the less common conversations, I'd rather the person didn't but accept some do.

Also I manage some discussion lists with 600+ members each, where I often furnish information. So you can imagine when I post an announcement and then the "thanks" start rolling in.  I do REALLY wish people would not respond in that context.

It's interesting to me that some people feel so passionately about this.  On other forums (not here), this topic has arisen, and inevitably someone in favor trots out the comment: well, *I* was raised to be polite.

But here it's just an interesting discussion.

Offline GloryAndCrumpets

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #9 on: December 28, 2018, 10:35:09 am »
I can see the need for confirmation in some cases, but mostly I'd prefer not to receive these.  I get 1000+ emails a week.   To me these are "politeness spam". No real value and they clog up my email, but no real harm.

It's more annoying when it's a co-worker communicating on common work issues, thus more volume. Especially the rare one that does it for every single message.  Arrrgh. I work with one of those.   He does this out of habit like a human read-receipt. Receive email, send thanks. Read/digest email, send substantive answer.  Sigh. Seriously annoying.  For the less common conversations, I'd rather the person didn't but accept some do.

Also I manage some discussion lists with 600+ members each, where I often furnish information. So you can imagine when I post an announcement and then the "thanks" start rolling in.  I do REALLY wish people would not respond in that context.

It's interesting to me that some people feel so passionately about this.  On other forums (not here), this topic has arisen, and inevitably someone in favor trots out the comment: well, *I* was raised to be polite.

But here it's just an interesting discussion.

Re: the bolded- would it be possible to say something? For instance, when you send out an email with information, just include a brief line about "To save my inbox from complete destruction, please don't reply unless you have additional questions"?

Offline Lynn2000

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #10 on: December 29, 2018, 11:36:34 pm »
Yeah, it's so hard to know sometimes. You really need to understand what the "culture" of the situation is. In some ways a discussion list is a bit like "reply-all"--you might want to say "thanks" to one person privately for their efforts, but the nature of the beast is you say it so everyone can see it. And sometimes then other people feel like, "Oh, I'm going to look rude if I don't chime in." And then you get like 50 people posting "thanks" where everyone can see it. I can see how that would be non-ideal.

It's not "polite" to totally go against the grain and hold everyone up. You know, like it's not polite to stop your car in the middle of the road and say "thanks!" to the person who let you go first at the corner--it's unexpected and can cause an accident or at least block others from proceeding. If someone is gonna be like, "But I was being polite!" um no, you weren't.

That's in situations where the correct action seems obvious, or has been clearly stated. The problem is that in many situations it's not really obvious/clear. One could try stating at the end of a message, "Please don't reply unless you have questions," as suggested, or maybe chat casually with the biggest offender and try to say something. I'm a fan of the "confidential complaint"--like you're chatting with Randy Reply-All and you're like, "Man, I hate it when Carol/someone hits 'reply all' on the messages. It really clogs up everyone's inbox, especially as others feel like they have to respond." There's a slight chance Randy will recognize his own behavior and restrain himself in the future.

Offline Carol1412

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #11 on: December 31, 2018, 01:42:59 pm »
I do not want responses that are just "Thank you!". It either re-opens a ticket that I just closed or worse - opens a new ticket. Duplicate work is not appreciated, since we get hundreds of emails a day.

Offline maksi

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2019, 05:05:47 pm »
I'd prefer to be too polite than too abrupt, and you never know how the recipient is going to feel about. And when in the receiving end? In most cases, it's one click to delete and doesn't really take the same amount of time to deal with that the other emails I need to go through.

With the exception of mass emails etc. where it's not really about me specifically, no one has done anything specifically for me to thank them for.
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Offline Lynn2000

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #13 on: January 02, 2019, 07:46:26 pm »
I do not want responses that are just "Thank you!". It either re-opens a ticket that I just closed or worse - opens a new ticket. Duplicate work is not appreciated, since we get hundreds of emails a day.

To me, a ticketing situation (like we have with our IT department at work) is a situation where it should be common sense that you do NOT reply just to say "thanks." Or rather, I think it says clearly in their last email, "We consider your ticket to be closed. Please reply to this email only if you have additional issues," or something like that. So I read that and was like, "Okay, replying with 'thanks' is not something they expect or want, then. Good to know."

Of course, that requires people to READ instructions, and we all know some people are not going to do that...

I think the impulse to show politeness or appreciation is at least better than the opposite, and if you have a situation where it really messes something up, hopefully adding instructions or speaking directly to severe offenders will be enough to reduce the problem to a manageable level. I do think learning the appropriate response for a situation (especially if you are getting something wrong because you aren't reading stated instructions) is an important skill to gain in a professional environment, but one that some people just need extra direction with, especially if they have never been in a high-volume-email situation before. Unless directly told, I really don't think I could be expected to just know that some other person gets so many emails that my acknowledgment would be considered irritating. Just let me know that, and I'll do my best to comply.

Offline STiG

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Re: Email that just says "Thanks"
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2019, 07:27:09 am »
I'm one of the ones who emails a 'Thanks'.  I would never send it to a ticketing system!  I have sent it to one of our IT people when I have been dealing with an individual on a particular issue because those emails are outside of the ticketing system.

I don't always send 'Thanks' - if it was a routine request and the person did their routine job, for example.  but anything above and beyond gets a 'Thanks' unless I'm asked not to send it.