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In Japan it's customary to first introduce yourself in emails with boilerplate, and then make small talk about the season if its someone you email infrequently,
by dudeinjapan 4y ago
In Japan it's customary to first introduce yourself in emails with boilerplate, and then make small talk about the season if its someone you email infrequently, then close with more boilerplate.
The "boilerplate" means you begin every reply in a thread with "This is George Jetson at Spacely Sprockets. Thank you for your patronage." even if it's crystal clear from the From: line who is sending the mail.
The message about the seasons will read something like: "Recently the leaves are showing their first autumn hues. The night temperature may become cold soon, so please take care." This is done only on the first message in a thread.
My company here in Japan uses Slack, and it has done wonders to reduce the amount of boilerplate internally, but you still see it sometimes even on Slack esp. from the older generation.
- Thlom 4y agoAha, so that’s why our Japanese partners often start their emails with introducing themselves. Haven’t seen the seasonal boilerplate though.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoYeah, it's really awkward/funny here when global SaaS companies send marketing mails like "Hey ____, Could you use some help with _____?", especially if they are Google Translated to Japanese.
- ForHackernews 4y agoThat sounds...nice. I get really sick of spam messages from account reps that sounds like it could be written by a bot. Human communication should be for humans. If you want to talk to a robot, don't email me, call our API.
- 6stringmerc 4y agoTrust me, it works wonders in corporate US inter company business. I have been a subcontractor and prime, and have it down to an art in about 3 sentences + specifics about the request or response timeline. Being polite isn’t difficult, with practice, and manners are free. The response turnaround times from subs was noticeably faster for me time and time again than my sterile do-this-list type no time to bother with trying little bits of nice…
- riggsdk 4y agoWhenever I receive an email that is worded like that but is written in my native language it immediately raises a red flag because no one around here communicates that way. In 99/100 cases the email is spam/phishing attempt.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoIn Japan, receiving a mail that is NOT like that is a red flag :)
- vidanay 4y agoI have a FB friend that starts every single one of his FB posts with "Dear Friends..." (We're both American)