As a developer who occasionally gets pulled in to help with urgent support issues, I dread bare hello messages. It gives me too much time to imagine a down site or some other critical event. Asking the question up front spares me a lot of stress.
You should essentially never do syn/ack IRL. If you don't know precisely what the recipient is doing, you do not know what they are doing, it could be important. Always lead with info to help them prioritize things. Ideally in the first ~5 words, because that's all they may see in the notification.
(this is also IMO why phone calls are terrible. they're the equivalent of "hello" over a channel that has no other message, so everything must be assumed to be maximum urgency or you might miss something truly critical)
