How to Send a Holding Email When You Do Not Have the Answer Yet

A customer asks whether their order can be changed. A client asks what the extra work will cost. A tenant asks when the boiler will be fixed. You do not know yet. You need to ask the courier, price the job, wait for the engineer to call back. You leave the email until you do know, which is tomorrow. By then there is a second email from them that starts "any update?". The gap was not the problem. The silence in the gap was. A holding email closes it in four lines and takes 30 seconds.

Why silence reads as being ignored

From your side, the delay is you doing the work. From theirs, nothing has happened. They cannot see you on the phone to the supplier. The email left their outbox and vanished. After about four working hours the doubt starts: did it arrive, did they read it, are they avoiding me. By the next morning they have written again, usually shorter and cooler. Now you have two emails to answer and the second one is annoyed.

The holding email is not the answer. It is the proof that the answer is coming. It changes the delay from "ignored" to "being handled" and it does that with no new information at all.

The four lines

1. I have your email. One line. "Thanks, I have this." They stop wondering whether it arrived.
2. Here is what I know. Even if it is only that you have read it and understood the question. If you know part of the answer, give the part.
3. Here is what I am doing. Who you have asked, what you are checking. "I have asked the courier to trace it" tells them the delay is real work.
4. You will hear from me by. A day and a time. Not "as soon as possible", which means nothing and is the phrase most associated with never hearing back.

That is the whole email. No apology for not having the answer, because not having it yet is not a failure. No guess dressed up as an answer, because the guess is the thing they will hold you to.

Three examples

The tenant one contains an apology because there is something to apologise for: no heating. The other two do not. Match the apology to the harm, not to the delay. Our guide to replying to an angry tenant covers what to do when the holding email arrives too late.

The one mistake

A holding email with a time in it is a promise. Miss the time and you are worse off than if you had sent nothing, because now you have ignored them twice. The time has to be one you can keep even if the courier does not call back. The trick is that the promise is to be in touch by then, not to have the answer by then. If 2pm arrives and the warehouse has not replied, you send a second holding email at 1.55: "Still waiting on the warehouse, I have chased them, you will hear from me by 5." That is still keeping your word. Silence at 2pm is not.

If you find yourself sending a third holding email, stop and phone them. Three emails saying "not yet" reads as a process. A call reads as a person. Our guide to telling a client about a delay covers what to say when the answer itself is bad news.

Where the 30 seconds goes

The reason holding emails do not get sent is not that they are hard. It is that they feel like an admission and they arrive at the worst moment: the question has just come in, you are about to go and find the answer and stopping to write anything feels like a detour. This is what ReciteMail is for. You snip the customer's email off the screen and say "holding email, checking with the warehouse, back to them by two". The draft comes back in your own voice with their order number and their question in it. Copy, paste, send, go and find the answer. When you have it, snip the same email again and say the answer. The second draft is the real reply. This 40 second video shows the flow. It runs on your PC, never connects to your inbox and nothing sends without you.

The other habit that helps is a rule for yourself: any email that needs more than ten minutes of work before you can answer it gets a holding email first. Not "should get". Gets. Then the ten minutes can take a day and nobody notices. If you already have a backlog of unanswered questions, our guide to apologising for a late reply is where to start.

Common questions

What is a holding email?

A short reply sent before you have the answer. It confirms you have the email, says what you know so far, what you are doing to get the answer and when the person will hear from you. It stops the silence being read as being ignored and it stops the "any update?" chase arriving.

How long should a holding email be?

Four lines. One to confirm you have it, one for what you know, one for what you are doing and one with the day and time they will hear from you. Anything longer starts to look like the answer and gets read as one.

Should I apologise in a holding email?

Only if there is something to apologise for beyond the delay, such as a customer without heating or a missed delivery. Not having the answer yet is not a failure and apologising for it makes the email feel weaker than it is.

What if I miss the time I gave in the holding email?

Send a second holding email just before the time, saying you are still waiting, what you have done to chase it and a new time. The promise was to be in touch by then, not to have the answer. If you get to a third one, phone instead.

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