You know what really grinds my gears? When people send emails making requests, and expect those requests to be completed within only a couple hours.
Email is not for stuff you need done right away. When you send an email, you should be prepared for at least up to 24 hour response time. Sending an email at 10:00 AM in regards to a task you want done at 11:00 AM is insane behavior. I get hundreds of emails a day, and most of them are junk. I'm not whipping out my phone every time to look at each one (and honestly email notifications are usually muted because of just how frequent they are). If it's a time-sensitive matter, text. If it's a really time-sensitive matter (IE, you need it done like right away), call.
When I get focused on a task, I'm focused on that task. With few exceptions, it gets 100% of my attention until it is either completed or I have reached a reasonable stopping point. If I were to drop what I'm doing every time my phone goes DING I'd never get anything done. Indeed, this is often the pattern I see from people who send emails like this. They are constantly letting themselves be pulled in ten different directions by every stupid email that comes through, and, as a consequence, never get anything done.
Email is the digital equivalent of sending a letter. Such a simple concept, now so bastardized and twisted into such a monstrosity of un-productivity.
Let me make this abundantly clear: Emails are for things you want seen at some point in the near future, but don't need a response on right away.
On this note, there is no such thing as an Urgent or High Importance! email. If something is truly urgent or high importance, CALL. When my phone rings, (assuming I don't immediately recognize it as a scam), I pick it up. I digress, but it drives me up a wall how cagey and anxious people are about simple phone calls now. It's like you slapped them in the face. Look, I know we all get the occasional (or more than occasional) spam call, but adopting a zero-tolerance policy to phone calls is not the solution. I like talking on the phone because I get people's tone, their inflections, their little pauses, etc, all of which help to cut down on chances for miscommunication in a way that text does not. This is doubly important when dealing with urgent matters.
A phone call is a conversation. That means you get my attention for the duration. An email (or even a text for that matter), is a task. I'll get to it when I get to it.
Further digressing, I hate how more and more companies seem to be doing away with having an actual customer service line. Now they just have some bullshit ticket portal (or worse, an AI chatbot), that will send your request to the circular file. Maybe someone's looking at it, maybe not. We wouldn't want a business having to actually employ people to run a call center, would we? mUh prOfIt mArgIns. Won't somebody think of the billionaires? Look, I know calling into customer support was never a fun experience, especially when it was outsourced, but at least you got to talk to a real person. With online support tickets, you're just chucking your concern out into the digital aether, hoping, praying, somebody will actually follow up. And the first reply is virtually guaranteed to be from a useless template "hAVe yOu tRiEd rEbOotIng?". Ugh. Just let me call a fucking number. I'll sit on hold. I want help today, not next week.
In order of importance: Call > Text (or DM) > Email.