
No company should ever have a noreply email address - ryanwaggoner
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/no-company-should-ever-have-a-noreply-email-address/
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spolsky
That's a nice theory, in the abstract.

In the concrete... replying to email costs money... a lot of money. First of
all, just wading through the out of office, change of address, and bounces
probably costs 10-20 cents each. But answering a real customer email with a
real person probably costs $5-$20 depending on the kind of company you are.

Now, there are many businesses (like Zappos) for whom it is worth it, and
there are businesses (like Facebook) for whom it is not. If you have a million
customers and you make about $2 off of each one, well, replying to their email
is going to blow any hope you ever had of profiting from them. Customers who
like to have penpal relationships with companies are costly customers. Some
places might think that losing those customers is no big deal, especially if
they have other, well-established ways of getting in touch. For example, the
phone company. They're usually a monopoly or a duopoly. They might send out
millions of emails to fulfill some legal requirement to notify you that from
now on the APR on late fees has gone up. They literally do not need to talk to
you about this. They really don't. Anyone that would reply to such a message
is suddenly going to become an unprofitable customer. They're monopolies or
near-monopolies so they don't care.

Don't get me wrong... ALL my email replies work... anything that Fog Creek
every sends out and anything that I ever send out to the 60,000 people on my
mailing list... I get every single bounce and delete them all by hand.

But that's me. The "one size fits all" belief that EVERY company needs to read
ALL their email sounds good in theory but it's obvious that plenty of
businesses are making a business decision not to send from real email
addresses and they're not always doing it out of stupidity.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Some good points, but I think you're exaggerating.

 _First of all, just wading through the out of office, change of address, and
bounces probably costs 10-20 cents each._

Just like spam, if it's costing you 10-20 cents to filter out these emails,
you're doing it wrong. A well-trained bayesian system would probably correctly
identify 99.9% of these emails. Sure, you might miss .1%, but you're missing
100% now.

 _But answering a real customer email with a real person probably costs $5-$20
depending on the kind of company you are._

And if this is the case, you're also doing it wrong. First of all, probably
less than 1% of people are going to respond to these emails, especially things
like order and shipping confirmations. Of those that do respond (and assuming
you've already filtered out-of-office, bounces, etc), you can probably put the
rest into one of three buckets:

    
    
      1. Emails where no response is required
      2. Emails where a simple canned response is sufficient
      3. Emails that require some kind of action or lenghty response
    

I'm willing to bet that the majority of emails would fall into bucket #2. The
best way to handle this would be a system where the CS agents can see the
email and select a pre-defined response with a single click. This is going to
cost you almost nothing. Again, bayesian systems would help with suggested
responses. Canned responses aren't ideal, but they're better than nothing, and
they come from an actual human being who can deal with further messages if
needed.

Responses to emails in category #3 are where you're right: it would cost $5 -
20 to handle. However, _these are customers who need real customer service_.
Your proposed alternative is to bounce their messages and leave them
frustrated. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid.

Finally, even if Facebook does make $2 / customer, losing a customer costs
them more than $2.

PS - Your point about monopolies and legally-required notifications is a good
one, though more as an example of why government-sponsored monopolies and
arduous regulations are bad ideas.

~~~
benatkin
It's also a case of a good problem to have, but a real problem nonetheless.

This is where people _must_ be able to come up with a solution.

It requires getting comfortable with tags and pasting canned responses. There
are many people for whom tools like TypeIt4Me increase email productivity by
100%. This could translate into thousands of dollars a month.

------
Xurinos
And if you absolutely must stop your customers from responding to you, do not
use a domain name that does not fit the RFC standard for useless domains, or
you may inadvertently be setting yourself up for trouble:

[http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/03/they_told...](http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/03/they_told_you_not_to_reply.html)

~~~
lukev
I was a bit shocked when I got to the last line...

"Instead, he blogs about the most interesting ones. Companies embarrassed by
having their e-mails posted online can get him to pull the entries from his
blog for a small payment."

Blackmail for a good cause is still blackmail.

~~~
Xurinos
Yep. On the bright side, he is admitting he received the emails and is willing
to pull them down. noreply.com is currently held by a domain sitter. Are they
capturing emails behind the scenes? What other domain names are foolishly used
for redirecting email?

Further, while there might be blackmail involved here, could those companies
be sued for fraud for misrepresenting their identities to be this guy? Is
"ignorance" a defense?

------
njharman
Then why not a facebook account, a twitter account, an sms account, a 24/7
too-free number, a ever other form of communication?

It is very not cut and dried. It very much depends on the habits and needs of
companies customers. And it very much depends on the nature of the company.
Steel mill, taco cart two companies I'm not gonna begrudge not having email.

Finally it is far worse to do something poorly rather than not at all. If I
can't find an email or get a bounce back I'll be miffed. If my emails aren't
handled timely and well I be upset and developed a much poorer view of the
company.

If you take on replying to customers you had better be committed to doing it
excellently and have a clear understanding of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

------
devmonk
Nice post!

"Unless you’re Google or Paypal, whose business models seem built around the
idea of hating customer service"

Wow, I think that is a little harsh. I'd be the first to say that Google's
lack of a feedback loop in their search interface as well as the myriad of
other places where a _prominent_ feedback entry point could be attached is
well within the top 10 things that they do wrong. But, they monitor what users
do on their site and do their best to provide good service, so I'd say,
"Google tries to handle customer service without communicating with the
customer."

------
JoeAltmaier
Go further: company email should be from an actual human being, not from The
Company. Anonymizing company statements makes it way to easy to be
insensitive.

I've spent years deleting Official Company Email that has no name on it. It
can't possibly be important if nobody said it.

~~~
Xurinos
Nah, some things are okay automated, such as the warning that your flight
appointment is in one day.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I guess I object on principle: how do I know this email was authentic? Tho I
can't think of a reason anybody wants me to miss my flight enough to mislead
me about it.

Anyway, now I have that email, and I need to change my flight. Would it kill
them to have a reply address I could actually use to accomplish that?

~~~
Xurinos
> Would it kill them to have a reply address I could actually use to
> accomplish that?

I think that was Ryan's point -- with which I agree.

Admittedly, changing a flight might need a bit more back-and-forth than an
e-mail exchange (they should provide their phone number in the email, and
IIRC, airlines I have worked with do provide it). But you may have other
reasons you need to reply, such as a quick clarification.

