

The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail - bebeastie
http://blaketech.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/the-wrong-way-to-personalize-welcome-e-mail/
A perfect example of how not to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail.
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nopassrecover
Weak overreaction.

First, is it really that big a deal you got an email that looked like it was
from someone personally but may have been automated (in fact you never proved
that it was automated)?

Second, are you really that bothered that a company whose product is helpdesk
ticketing software uses helpdesk ticketing software to manage customer
correspondence?

Third, are you really that bothered by the informality of a web company?

The only mistake I saw here was using staff that are probably outsourced and
certainly not native English speakers to handle sales questions.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"First, is it really that big a deal you got an email that looked like it
> was from someone personally but may have been automated"_

That by itself is not the big deal - plenty of emails are automated yet
written in a personal manner (Dear Mr. Smith, etc etc) - but this one was
deliberately deceptive. It purported to have looked at the customer's website,
when it all likelihood nothing of the sort happened.

That's what left a bad taste in my mouth from the whole thing - it's scummy
and misleading, hardly something you'd want to project onto your potential
customers.

~~~
davidu
It probably works well for a majority of their signups. More smart than
scummy, imho.

I don't disagree with the sincerity issue, but again, it only appears
insincere to you.

~~~
potatolicious
Oh it's not about insincerity - I think we're all very used to "we mean it but
we don't" doublespeak from companies nowadays.

It's about the fact that they practically lied in their communication about
what they have done - sure, this isn't especially scandalous, but it is low.

If they had some canned stuff like "we're sure you're doing great things, and
would love to work with you individually to tailor our product to your
needs... yadi yada" that'd be a-ok.

But they had a bot pretend that they actually visited my site and looked at my
company's offerings... that's pretty lame.

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robk
Uh, the company is originally Danish and I believe most of the staff are still
in fact Danes. Her grammar was poor but understandable. I'm not sure why this
guy gets so rage-filled when the email is innocuous when read coming from the
mouth of a non-native speaker of English.

Calling a response to any sort of support mail a "ticket" is pretty common as
well and certainly not worthy of offense.

~~~
Splines
Fair enough (sort of), but if I were to start a business in a language that
I'm not a native in, I wouldn't try supporting those people using non-native
speakers. The languages and idioms of cultures differ greatly around the
globe, and sometimes you may need to tweak your site to meet the expectations
of your customers.

Then again, I don't run a business, so the costs of localizing customer
support and "fit and finish" for Zendesk may be justified by the benefit.

------
nfnaaron
Pretending to have looked at a site, especially if the pretending is
automated, is disrespectful, I agree.

The Grand Finale was pretty weak though. I have no idea what ICE Webinar is,
and whether it relates to the poster's business. That's a separate issue. But
to choose poor (OK, really poor) grammar as the Grand Finale is ungracious.
There are many non-native speakers working on the web and in cube farms; cut
them the same slack you'd mostly get if you were walking around in their
country.

------
petercooper
Great post, bebeastie. I thought your post was really top quality and you
raised some interesting points in it. I especially appreciated your insights
near the end of the post.

~~~
hussong
Not sure why you're being downvoted, I read this as a really smart prank on
OP. It actually just made my day.

~~~
petercooper
Humor, even when apropos, has a rocky ride on HN. There are plenty of people
keen to avoid the site going down a meme-heavy Reddit path and who vote down
all but the geekiest humor (even though constantly voting up posts by tech
community trolls is seemingly OK <g>).

------
MWinther
I reacted to the "sharing the inbox" statement... One would hope they'd have a
more efficient structure than that for their ticket handling, I'd say.

------
metachris
why all the hate?

------
ahoyhere
ZenDesk's tools are horrible - they have a sheen of good visual design on the
sales site, and then the tool itself is like being tortured to death by a
screaming hamster.

Not surprised they're using gutter tactics like faux personal emails.

