0

I usually say something like

Hi, 

Any update on xyz?

Thanks.

Is this good enough to use for professional emails?

I'm talking about sending email to people/department in a completely different company not within the same office.

John
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
    I think it won't hurt to make it a little more polite. – maksimov Nov 30 '19 at 10:10
  • It depends on a number of factors. Country? Are you their client? How frequently do you communicate? Etc. – Stephan Branczyk Nov 30 '19 at 10:13
  • The questions @StephanBranczyk mentions are important. And I agree re: being more polite. When I prepare an email like this, I try to at least mention/thank them for something they recently helped me with and/or mention why I'm following up. An example might be: "Hi SoandSo, Thanks again for your help with x last week. Do you happen to have an update on the y? As you know, the holiday travel season is coming up, and we're trying to wrap up z before too many folks are out of the office. Thank you!" Tailor to your needs, obviously! – A.fm. Nov 30 '19 at 13:21

2 Answers2

1

Is this good enough to use for professional emails?

I know you said this is a different company - but it still heavily, heavily depends on the context.

I've sent similar emails to this to bump existing support requests that aren't answered or resolved within the contractual time - that's fine, as you're (rightly) requesting an update on something that should have been answered a while ago.

However, there's also scenarios where that wouldn't be ok. To give an example at the other end of the spectrum - if I'd emailed someone from another company asking a more general question, or effectively requesting a favour after bumping into them at a work event / conference / etc., and emailed this a couple of hours after sending that request, then no, it's not at all appropriate. In that case (if you really want to write this sort of message at all) you should firstly wait a generous amount of time, and then reply with something much gentler, eg.:

Hi Ben,

Hope you're doing well. I was just wondering if you'd had a chance to take a look into x at all? No problem if not, I completely understand things are rather busy your end at the moment!

Community
  • 1
berry120
  • 34,738
  • 20
  • 90
  • 127
1

Depends on the culture. For example lets compare Germany and USA.

Germans are known for efficiency and getting straight to the point. Your example is quite the normal here. You need update, you ask for it. There is nothing rude in requesting information on something job related. Everything else around the question that doesn't directly contribute to the topic is time wasting and chit-chatting.

In USA, from what I have read, there's much more chit-chat involved. People tend to wrap the primary intention of the mail into asking how the recipient is, give a context what led up to asking the primary question, ask it, and then ending it with again some lengthy thank you, excuses for bothering and so on.

Examine similar mails that you receive and try to do it in the same way.

Chapz
  • 1,761
  • 1
  • 13
  • 17