One thing that email is not the best tool for is back-and-forth dialog. Once an email thread got to be a certain length or spans some number of days, it becomes difficult to follow. The increased roundtrip latency is also unfortunate.
Although the alternative to that is not necessarily voice calls. Text chats would have been great, but which platform do you use? Everyone has got their own instant messaging systems these days.
There is also the perception that voice calls have a reduced likelihood of leaving a record, which is why some people are only reachable by phone.
But how do you organize and recall the transient discussion that happened on a call? Hint: an email summary, or some kind of summary document. And the latter also works with long email chains.
My personal experience is that emails and written documents are how things actually get done, but sometimes we have to go through voice calls and in-person meetings in order to get that far.
Those voice interactions felt like some sort of psychological barrier that couldn't be bypassed any other way, at least initially, but once I have opened up a non-voice channel, that's what we tend to use going forward.
Although the alternative to that is not necessarily voice calls. Text chats would have been great, but which platform do you use? Everyone has got their own instant messaging systems these days.
There is also the perception that voice calls have a reduced likelihood of leaving a record, which is why some people are only reachable by phone.