5 Tips To Encourage Offshore to Acknowledge Emails

Posted On: December 8, 2015

Sometimes getting acknowledgement of emails from offshore Indian teams can be problematic. If you are facing this problem, here are a few tips that can help you get the acknowledgements you seek:

5 Tips To Encourage Offshore to Acknowledge Emails

5 Tips To Encourage Offshore to Acknowledge Email Requests

Close the email with this statement “Kindly respond to this email within 24 hours to let us know how you will proceed.” (Replace 24 hours with any time limit you prefer to set.)
Call the offshore representative within an hour (or within in hour of them starting their shift) of sending the email and get a verbal response.
Assure the request is in the agenda of the next meeting (if the request can wait so long to be answered).
If you are not emailing the highest ranking person on the team, copy in the highest ranking team member, followed by a phone call to that person if a quicker response is needed.
If you have the team member’s instant messaging (IM) id or mobile number, text them. WhatsApp is another option. The benefit of WhatsApp is that texting is free back and forth. Typically, in India incoming texts are free but outgoing are a per-text charge. Also, international texts or texts to mobile on roaming incur additional charges.

While some of these tips seem counter intuitive, demanding or micromanaging from an American sense, keep in mind that sometimes it is true that emails don’t get delivered or email delivery gets delayed. We often believe email is always instantaneous, but it’s not true. After living in India for almost five years, emails have gotten lost or delivery has been delayed by minutes, hours or even days! While it seems impossible, somehow it happens occasionally.

Jennifer Kumar helps onsite teams communicate more effectively with Indian offshore counterparts. Let’s talk about how to get your team to Work more Effectively with Development Teams from India.

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