Why We Pick Up the Phone Instead of Sending an Email
Phone calls used to be the default in this industry, but most project communication has moved to email and text. We’ve found that picking up the phone still solves a lot of problems and reduces back-and-forth considerably.
On most project questions, the call is what gets us to a clear scope fastest, and a clear scope is what makes the rest of the project go.
Email Asks One Question. The Call Asks the Right One.
A request that reads “I need an abstract on this lease” carries at least four hidden questions inside it: what the lease is on, what the buyer is using the result for, runsheet or full abstract, what the timeline looks like. Sorting them by email can take days. Sorting them by phone takes a couple of minutes.
The lingo gap between landmen and abstractors is real and natural. Different parts of the same process develop different terminology, and the phone call closes the gap immediately.
Calling first signals that we want to get the scope right at the front of the project, while there’s still time to shape it.
Responsiveness as an Operational Choice
When a call or email comes in late in the day, the default here is to deal with it before the day ends. The reason is straightforward: putting it off until tomorrow guarantees that tomorrow starts behind.
This is a habit. The work is in building it into how the day actually runs. What gets opened first, what doesn’t get left for later, what gets a five-minute call before the office closes — those choices separate a responsive operation from one that just uses the word.
The marginal cost of a five-minute call before leaving the office is small. The cost of a project that lost a day waiting on our reply is much larger.
The marginal cost of a five-minute call before leaving the office is small. The cost of a project that lost a day waiting on our reply is much larger.
Inside the Office, the Same Principle
Routine production tasks like collecting recent filings, requesting copies of specific documents, and posting them back into the workflow fit naturally into shorter time blocks. Folding those tasks into senior team members’ days keeps the people doing focused production work from getting pulled out of their files.
The reason is leverage. The team produces the most value when they’re working files, and reserving the small tasks for the people whose hours are already getting interrupted by phone calls and scope conversations puts everyone in the right seat.
Reputation Is Mostly Behavioral
In a fragmented vendor market, reputation moves through small, repeatable signals: a call returned the same day, a question answered the same hour, a scope conversation that lasts five minutes instead of two days. Over time, those signals are how clients choose between vendors who, on paper, do the same thing.
One of our standing client relationships started with an inbound recognizing our work. Our reply was an invitation to call. The work that followed has been steady ever since.
One of our standing client relationships started with an inbound recognizing our work. Our reply was an invitation to call. The work that followed has been steady ever since.
Our Approach
We use email for what it’s good for: documenting scope, sharing files, capturing decisions in writing. We use the phone for what email can’t do well: clarifying a fuzzy request, surfacing a constraint a client didn’t realize they had, answering a question that the wrong written reply would only complicate.
Every order routes through a person before it reaches a researcher. That person clarifies the scope, often by phone, and only then writes the formal scope of work the team executes against.
The five-minute call before a project starts is the cheapest thing we do. It also prevents the most expensive mistakes downstream.
The five-minute call before a project starts is the cheapest thing we do. It also prevents the most expensive mistakes downstream.
Picking up the phone is a small choice. In our experience, it’s also the choice that determines whether projects move on schedule or get stuck on a question that nobody got around to clarifying in writing. If you’ve got a project currently sitting in an email thread, or if you’d rather start with a quick call than an order form, reach out. We’ll pick up.