You said only reply with exactly what they ask? Got it.

You said only reply with exactly what they ask? Got it.

We worked logistics for big retailers; one client perfected the art of passive-aggressive brevity — emails that looked like sticky notes: “Update?” “Where?” “Status.” Then they’d escalate to angry emojis when we didn’t peel their intentions from halftones. Manager set a rule that read like a weird QA test: answer exactly the question asked, nothing added, nothing volunteered.

So we did. Three artifacts from the ensuing experiment: a subject line that said “Status?”, an email body that contained exactly “Status: last scanned 14:02 at Dock 3. In transit. ETA 18:22.” and a polite auto-reply when the ask was ambiguous: “Please specify order number, SKU, or tracking number.” The result was immediate and surgical — the client started sending full sentences and real identifiers because vague requests returned precise, literal silence. It’s like training an NPC to only respond to the correct quest phrase; if you yell “?” it does not hand you the loot.

Manager got the win (the internet approves: “Good to see a manager/higher up backs up the compliance”), behavior improved, and we stopped being psychic. The takeaway: if you insist on communicating like a cryptic note taped to a mystery box, expect answers formatted like a receipt. Got it.