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Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't

Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't respond to email here. It's my automatic response when I need information from a business to check their website for the email address and shoot them a quick email. What happens in Vietnam when I do this: silence... Unless the business happens to be run or managed be a foreigner too. All local businesses do list their email address on their website, they just don't seem to respond to it. The majority of inter-business messaging happens on Zalo, with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as alternatives. It's an annoying thing for me to transition to, it just feels wrong. My business email accounts are a permanent record of my business dealings. I can search and find anything I need there in seconds even if it was years ago in a different business than I work on now. Chat apps are not a good replacement.

aurareturn 3y ago
It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers. They don't have a laptop. Therefore, quick messages is the preferred way over writing formal, formatted, long emails.
- petre 3y ago
  So we need something like XMPP that is as easy to set up as WhatsApp or Messenger and still uses an e-mail like address? I think a way to deal with spam is to issue a proof of work challenge to the sender.
- esperent 3y ago
  > It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers Do you really think that people who work in offices in developing countries don't have computers? For sure there are many people here for whom their phone is their only computer. But those are not the people I am emailing. Besides, for it's development level, Vietnam is a well educated and fairly high tech country, especially in the cities. According to this site, PC ownership is similar to Greece at around 10 per hundred people, but I am sure if you could filter by just the large cities it would come out as much higher: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers-per-capita-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers...
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    Well, how else can you explain why you don't get replies via email in Vietnam and most businesses prefer to use chat? Why don't you take a crack at explaining it.
    - esperent 3y ago
      It's because they still use Zalo and FB Messenger on their laptops, not because they don't have laptops.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  I wrote short emails. Am I doing it wrong?
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    Yes. In Vietnam.

aurareturn 3y ago

It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers. They don't have a laptop. Therefore, quick messages is the preferred way over writing formal, formatted, long emails.

petre 3y ago
So we need something like XMPP that is as easy to set up as WhatsApp or Messenger and still uses an e-mail like address? I think a way to deal with spam is to issue a proof of work challenge to the sender.
esperent 3y ago
> It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers Do you really think that people who work in offices in developing countries don't have computers? For sure there are many people here for whom their phone is their only computer. But those are not the people I am emailing. Besides, for it's development level, Vietnam is a well educated and fairly high tech country, especially in the cities. According to this site, PC ownership is similar to Greece at around 10 per hundred people, but I am sure if you could filter by just the large cities it would come out as much higher: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers-per-capita-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers...
- aurareturn 3y ago
  Well, how else can you explain why you don't get replies via email in Vietnam and most businesses prefer to use chat? Why don't you take a crack at explaining it.
  - esperent 3y ago
    It's because they still use Zalo and FB Messenger on their laptops, not because they don't have laptops.
GoblinSlayer 3y ago
I wrote short emails. Am I doing it wrong?
- aurareturn 3y ago
  Yes. In Vietnam.