Why switch to the phone?

1. It's faster for discussion

   Rather than sending multiple back & forth emails to reach a conclusion, just have a very quick chat. (You can still add a summary of the chat to the end of the email conversation for posterity).

2. It avoids anger

   If there is a difficult discussion to be had, it is very unwise to do it in email. Black & white text looks far more aggressive than you really intend it (only 20% of human communication is conveyed in text - no facial signals, no hand gestures, no tonal suggestion), and will aggrevate the situation. It's also all there in writing, so people can dwell on it for a long time.

How to build a call list

In essence, you assign a label to all conversations that you want to phone someone about, and when you're ready (e.g. in the office, next to a phone), you bring up the list and start.

If you use the Context Label Type (see Preferences), you might create C/Call or C/Phone (the "do something when near the phone" context). Alternatively you could create a phone Status, S/ToCall (which is good, but might conflict with S/Waiting On - where you're waiting on them, but also want to call them). So you can just use a regular label.

Summarizing the call

This is the important bit! After the call is complete, jot a reply into the Gmail conversation that caused it (either Reply to Self or reply to you and your contact) with a brief record of the conclusions reached. It's good practice for you to both have an actionable agreement, and to have a long term record stored in one place.