
Why my company doesn't send automated email from a 'noreply' address - pardner
http://pardner.com/2012/04/why-my-company-doesnt-send-email-from-a-noreply-address/
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kylemaxwell
Seth Godin has recommended this approach for years, and it's the only one that
makes sense to me. If you get more responses than you can handle, then either
(a) something is really broken and you need to fix that, or (b) you have huge
demand and need to figure out how to get the resources you need to manage it.
That might be as simple as sending them all to a tracking system, or it might
be as complicated as getting a real support staff. Either way, the status quo
will lose users, especially if your competition starts listening.

Come to think of it, this is really just an application of the principles in
the Cluetrain Manifesto.

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the_bear
My company sends transactional email from a real address as well, but there
are some problems with this approach. As the post mentions, we get a ton of
email intended for other people (like if we send "John Doe assigned you a
task" and the person responds to us thinking John Doe will get it) and
sometimes there's very sensitive or embarrassing information in the replies.
I'm never quite sure how to deal with this because if I forward it on to the
intended recipient, then they know I just read their personal email.

This is mostly just a problem of perception. I know that it's not my fault
that I read an email which was sent to me, and I know that I can be trusted
with the sensitive information. The problem is that my customers might not
trust me as much as I trust myself, so by forwarding this mail on, I raise
unjustified concerns about our security and trustworthiness.

On the other hand, one out of every hundred replies actually are meant for us,
and our customers love the fact that it's so easy to reach us. That's why we
don't use no-reply addresses, but it's not as easy of a decision as some
people seem to think.

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kylemaxwell
It's probably dependent on the type of site, then. If you're doing CRM, then
that's very different than, say, updates on an order I just placed at an
online merchant.

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the_bear
Yeah, this is only a problem if you're sending a notification on behalf of
another user, like if tasks/events/contacts/leads are assigned by one user to
another. I'm considering fixing this by auto-forwarding any replies, but then
that has the same problem as a no-reply address in the event that a user
actually does want to reach us.

There's also another problem which is that _tons_ of people have auto-replies
for every single email they receive (not just when they're out of the office).
I filter them all out, but I'm always concerned that there could be a false
positive.

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jefe78
This cost Netflix my business today.

-I have ZERO desire to know what my friends are watching.

-I unsubscribed from receiving promotional emails.

-I received said promotional email.

-I clicked the link to unsubscribe.

-Said link was broken.

-I sent a response to the address that emailed me.

-They sent back an automated response.

-I cancelled my service.

While I enjoy Netflix, they're shoddy email policy was more than I felt like
dealing with today. Another company that is on the verge of losing my business
is Porter airlines up here in Canada.

All of this to say; thank you for forwarding responses to your support email.

EDIT: In addition to the fact that they manage to NOT send me emails regarding
billing me. Is that too much to ask? Yet they pester me if for some reason the
transaction doesn't go through. So long Netflix!

~~~
shaggyfrog
Yikes. Perhaps Netflix should hook up their Chaos Monkey with an e-mail
account.

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wiredd
This article is spot on advice for most startups. At an early stage, you
really want as much feedback as possible, and if you're fortunate enough to
become overwhelmed with responses, you can start automating how you handle
them or splitting the responses into classes that you treat differently.

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chrislloyd
At Minefold a lot of users are kids and so they often reply to our emails from
team@minefold.com with something like "Thanks!" If we get time, sometimes
we'll reply with a "you're welcome". It's the little things that help build
relationships with your customers.

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kellyreid
its just SO EASY to set up a redirect that puts questions to the right
responder. there's no excuse for "donotreply" address; just change the name
and forward it to your VA/exec ass't, let them route it.

its such an easy win, i'm surprised its not more widespread

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mistercow
I don't see why you wouldn't still call the address "noreply@" and then
forward it to support. That way you're making it clear that this isn't really
the standard route of communication while taking care of the customers who
miss the clue.

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_pdeschen
Because you want frictionless feedback with your customer. The less friction
the more feedback.

Have this address forwarded to your ticket system.

That's a no brainer.

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mistercow
It doesn't seem to me that calling the address "noreply@" adds friction. It
does seem to me that calling it "mail@" encourages your customers to put
messages into a bin that has to be manually sorted by a person/team with
limited resources, which may potentially increase friction.

It goes without saying though that regardless of the name, you should still
have somebody checking the inbox.

~~~
_pdeschen
noreply@ adds friction because it doesn't invite to communicate. I don't know
about you but I, for myself, want to communicate with my customer to get
feedback as fast as possible. 2 real life example:

* I once sent a email to my customers about an upcoming maintenance window informing them that our platform would not be available for a certain time period. I got one customer quickly replying "next time, please let us know 1 week ahead" Point noted. Now I send my maintenance notice 1 week ahead. Happy customer.

* We have this automatic billing system which sends an invoice through email following payment. I had a customer once replying saying "Hey. That amount should be x+y instead of just x". Point noted. Shit happens and I wanna know.

Yes those customers could have reached us through our website or something but
my point is, why not offer them the chance to hit reply? It's so close!

Also, If you don't have a good ticket system to skim through those incoming
replies quickly, maybe you should get one. It pays back rapidly.

Your milage may vary.

[edit: formatting]

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benwr
My university lets users choose up to two email aliases. I have
"donotreply@vt.edu" and occasionally get (sometimes quite funny) email that I
try to forward to the rightful recipient.

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vacri
We have a donotreply address. We use it on automated emails to our own staff,
as a reminder that it's not going to go anywhere.

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joejohnson
This company clearly doesn't operate at scale if it's feasible for their
Support team to hand filter email replies.

~~~
pardner
We have a rather high threshold for pain if it leads to better customer
service and relationships. (Eg, what's feasible depends on the perceived
benefit.)

