Hacker News Reader

As American, unless it's in-person, and contextually appropriate, I always get real pod-people vibes when I get messages like this from my employer.

I recently picked up a book written in this style. It's been nails on a chalkboard for me.

I think the big issue is that it attempts to conform to the structure of a casual conversation, while eschewing established norms for casually written textual content.

I know what a comment on the internet looks like, or an IM chat, and that's roughly what a casual email should look like.

Writing a 'proper' email, and peppering in smarmy sidebars just feels sleazy, reduces the information density of the text, and makes me cringe enough to put whatever I'm reading on the backburner.

One of the things I love about working with FOSS is getting to know the humans behind it. And some of the technologies and services I care most about are those where I understand the people behind them and share their values.

Lines like the first one of those two don't work with me at all; they're targeting an audience that isn't me, and they do very much provoke the "uh-huh, what are you selling" reaction.

But I do want to see the humans and the humanity in a business. I do want to see a face and a personality and a set of values, rather than just noreply@example.com. If I share those values, I'm going to be much more enthusiastic about the business, and if I don't, I may be less so.

It's possible to create a cookie-cutter talking-about-the-weather-and-the-pandemic pseudo-personality that's kinda uncanny-valley human-ish, but doesn't take any chances. But that's not going to create that same resonance.

So the question then becomes, do you want to be faceless or pseudo-faceless and try to appeal to everyone, or do you want to be yourself, stop hiding the fact that your business has humans in it, and appeal very strongly to people who care about what you care about?

None of our opinions matter though. We are not the target market usually. If the change in tone drives more business then it works.

Now you could make the argument that ethically this mimicry (I like that term you used) is morally wrong.

Its interesting because when you go to a coffee shop and they act friendly and helpful we like it and dont think about if they genuinely are our friends.

I think if the tone is paired with overall user friendly practices by the company (for example not charging me at the end of a free trial) then the tone is appreciated.

Coffee shop employees can act overly friendly but never say things like "So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now...", instead they use very short sentences and almost all of them have an utilitarian purpose like asking about your order; and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

Until you start getting incessantly upsold to a 'vente' or upsold to add a bagel.

I thought a friendly "no, that's okay, thank you" and a smile was enough but there was once a national brand franchise coffee shop that badgered me enough during the checkout experience, and on frequent enough visits when I'd get off the train and walk in for a cup of joe along the way to the office that I stopped going.

"I'm just trying to help you get a deal on your coffee".

Friendly, polite, chipper...probably pressured by a GM to upsell but I feel once a customer has politely turned down an upsell, maybe one more "are you sure?" and then after that just give a person some grace and let them buy what they've asked for.

Agreed. Some of the examples were cringe worthy.

Since the user is receiving an email they have shown some intent. To continue the example: its the barista being nice and suggesting add ons with a big tip jar right in front.

Now, this is also not the only strategy out there, even for the same group of users. Before committing to a strategy like this you should do user research to understand your users, run A?B tests, and make sure it plugs into your overall brand strategy.

IMHO a business that puts the business first will always come off as fake and unattractive to users (so companies will succeed until a competitor comes along who treats them better).

A business that puts its users first and business goals as secondary to that, thrive and when the business shows a value and its actually backed up with past actions, its effective.

> Perhaps American culture is more receptive to this

As an American I don't think people like corporations feigning social intimacy either.

But it happens all the time (according to my tiny sample size). A tong time ago, I was in an American coffee shop (probably Starbucks, I guess), and they asked for my name. I found that very strange and weird. You would neither be able to spell or pronouce it, so let's just go with James.

This trend is beginning in Denmark as well, and I don't like it. It'd be easier for everyone if you just assign me a number and announce that when my drink is ready.

I also encountered store greeters, which was the most bizarre thing ever.

> But it happens all the time

Doesn't mean people like it. I think there's also a difference between a low-level employee being friendly personally to me because it's their job and also it's just polite, vs some marketing employee being "friendly" to the 500k people on their mailing list.

It's also always worth noting, is the case with many countries, the US is very diverse. People in NYC probably think very differently about this vs. people in L.A. or Boise, Montana.

Boise’s in Idaho!

the real point of the store greeters is to limit shoplifting -- they hang around the entrance watching people and may check people's receipts against what they are taking out of the store.

making them say hi and act friendly to everyone is just a way of camouflaging this and making it seem less hostile.

you’re right about the goal, but not the mechanism. shoplifting is curtailed because greeting induces a sense of familiarity between the potential thief and greeter, thereby reducing the veil of anonymity, raising senses of guilt, reciprocity, and duty, while lowering the perception of potential success. it’s not foolproof of course, but helps at the margins. random receipt checks don’t do much other than impede flow.

The usefulness of having a greeter to limit shoplifting has been reduced drastically as many stores have implemented policies where regular employees are prohibited from preventing a shoplifter from leaving, due to liability issues if the employee gets injured in an altercation. This has led to a situation where shoplifters would brazenly walk out of the store with armful of merchandise, knowing that they won't be stopped.

Coffee shops ask for your name so they can write it on the cup to make sure you get the right order at the pickup counter. It's a quality control measure. I guess they could ask you to think up a random number instead, but some people would find that mildly offputting I think .

Some places will just give you an order number, which usually increases sequentially, and has the side-benefit that you have a vague measure of how far your order is from being completed. Although, having the person's name is also nice, because people tend to be good at recognizing when their name is called.

Replacing names with numbers? How dystopian!

This is of course a joke, I am a fan of the number system. The honour system also works fine here in Australia, they just call out the order and you go and take it after a tiny delay to see if the guy who was there first goes for it.

Perfect,your order is #56

You don't have to ask for a number, just give them one.

You'd need a ticketing system so people even remember what their number is. And for what upside when names work fine?

There's potential overlap using names when it's busy. This happened to me once and my name isn't particularly common.

> ticketing system

Receipt.

Yes, precisely. Even my local (definitely not very high-tech) fish-and-chip shop can manage to print a number at the top of the receipt, and then call that number out when your food is ready.

Starbucks ask you for a name to make the process seem more personal and friendly. Apparently they started doing this in 2012; it was met with quite some head-scratching in the UK at the time. The other big coffee chains here do not do this, to the best of my knowledge.

Names work fine if your name is easily pronounced. Otherwise you end up making up a name just for Starbucks which takes away from their personalisation thing

Taking away a corporation's personalisation thing sounds like a good idea.

It's definitely a good idea, but it's not clear why the corporation would want that.

It works fine for McDonalds. They just print the number in a huge typeface on the receipt. They don’t have to pretend to care, and I don’t have to mess around spelling my name out.

The world is moving on from paper receipts, though. For regular Starbucks customers, payment by phone is routine, and there's normally no paper receipt.

Do names work fine when 3 John's walk in in a row?

That is indeed what most places do: the names are a more recent thing. Of course, now you need to keep the paper receipt with the number on it, or a plastic number card that might or might not be returned to the counter, then train yourself to listen for an arbitrary number, even though your brain is already quite adept at hearing your name. For most people, most of the time, the first name is an upgrade. For edge cases, unfortunately, it's worse.

One restaurant I love approaches the problem by giving out name cards (brightly-colored paper, so disposable or cheaply replaceable) rather than numbers on the receipt, but the names are of famous personalities. I've been Dolly Parton, I've been Arnold Schwarzenegger, I've been Jackie Robinson, etc. They're fun because unlike numbers, they're easy to remember and can provoke conversation in a group, or fond thoughts when alone. Bravo to Twisted Root Burger Co for this approach!

There are lots of people in the US who dislike this kind of stuff, but overall, it must be the case that more people like it (or at least are neutral). Otherwise the companies wouldn't bother with it, right?

Personally I don't like it, although I've never seen asking for your name lumped in with the false politeness. It is pretty widespread over here. People are more likely to pick up on hearing their name, rather than a number, right? Nobody can spell my weird name, but they just put a phonetically similar more common one on the cup and I've learned to listen for that.

Store greeters are a pretty strange trend.

I'm used to it now but when I first encountered the practice of food service staff asking for my name, I did find it very strange and not a little uncomfortable (it felt like an invasion of my privacy). It also has some serious downsides for foreigners/tourists/immigrants who:

(1) may not speak English (analogous scenario: imagine going to a Starbucks in Japan and having the cashier repeatedly ask for your name in Japanese, and you don't speak Japanese);

(2) have names that aren't easily pronounced/spelled in English ("Name?" "Zbigniew" "How do you spell that?" "Zed bee eye gee...." "Wait, what's zed?" "Last letter of alphabet" "Oh you mean zee" "No, zed");

(3) feel embarrassed about the whole interaction, which leads to them inventing a fake name, which in turn makes them feel dirty. (Zbigniew gives his name as "Zach" to the Starbucks employee although he has never used this name in his life -- it's not the name his parents gave him)

(4) then has said name confused with 3 other Zachs also waiting for their tall lattes.

It's almost like someone forgot to think through the UI/UX of this system with respect to internationalization.

When traveling in a foreign country its not uncommon to invent a name on the local language to make interacting with locals easier.

Even when not traveling, for people with 'unusual' names it's not uncommon to use a more easily recognisable 'cafe name' to get around this issue.

Yes, many people with such names have so-called "Starbucks" names, and some are quite creative and funny -- I mean, there are people who use "Barack Hussein" as their Starbucks name. Ordinary names like Bob or Sue are common too.

I understand why Starbucks does it. It's part of their corporate culture and marketing. I've no strong aversion to it -- as I said I'm used to it now and it is what it is. But I just wanted to highlight some of the downsides for people with unusual names, even though as you say it's no big deal to find a workaround.

And there exist more universal systems that aren't dependent on a barista's ability to spell or pronounce an arbitrary name, and that doesn't require the customer to reveal or invent a name.

p.s. English names are not exempt from this. Imagine going to a non-English-speaking country and having a name like Cecil or Xavier (which Americans pronounce Ex-zavier).

I do this, but I have certainly encountered some awkwardness if I transition into being a “regular”, and the baristas start to make small talk...

I'm not sure that it is that common. I mean, wouldn't it seem strange to take on the moniker of Takeshi while travelling in Japan, or Juan in Mexico, or Alexei in Moscow just to be able to order at Starbucks?

p.s. I should add the caveat that Starbucks baristas in Japan do not ask for names. It's culturally inappropriate there so Starbucks doesn't implement their names policy in Japan.

I mean, like many people on this board, I have a “Starbucks name” that I use because my real name is hard to pronounce. If I moved to a non-English speaking country, I’d probably adopt a local “Starbucks name”

> I'm not sure that it is that common

Anecdotal evidence to the contrary: I'm in the UK and have known a few people from parts of Africa over the years, they've all had made up simple short names because they tired of people but being able to deal with their real names (either not being able to pronounce it, or making a big thing if it sounding strange). And it wasn't just a short nick-name based on their name that they use generally: their friends from the region would call them something different. Likewise a polish fellow in one of my current circles does the same (though I don't know any of his wider social network so don't know if this simpler name is used more generally).

It may be a regional thing (partly because some languages use sounds like "clicks" that we don't, so have difficulty replicating): I've encountered numerous people from the middle & far East and they haven't done this.

Yes I agree this is common for folks who live in the country long term. But I wonder, for tourists though? And a tourist going to a country with a non-Indo European language?

It’s hard for me to imagine an Aloysius adopting a Chinese name while visiting China for a few days say. Would he use a derived nickname like Loy? I wonder.

I don't make up an entirely new name, but I do mispronounce my own name differently in different countries to make life easier for everybody. I also know several person that either uses their middle names or shortened versions of their 'real' name when traveling in English speaking countries.

White, British here. Name has syllables that aren't expressed in Turkic alphabets, so in Turkey and parts of the middle east it's sometimes easier for people to call me Selim or Said instead of Steve.

If you're spending proper time somewhere it makes sense to make it easier for people to communicate with you. If you don't they'll just use a name they can say to refer to you anyway.

> store greeters

This must have been Walmart. I always figured they had greeters because the small town Protestant church from my childhood had greeters.

The Church had doormen since the beginning, in the West the office of the doorman was the lowest of the Minor Orders until when Paul VI reformed Lower Orders in 1972.

Not surprising that the Temple of Mammon also has doormen. Heh.

Happened to me in one of those definitely hipsterish places, I told them no and that it was bizzare, then barista told me: "all-right I'll call you Joe". My guess is that he already had a couple of John Does waiting or what.

UK comedian Dave Gorman did a section on this: he claims that his coffee shop, I assume Starbucks, stopped doing a particular drink he liked - maybe caramel macchiato? - so he heard someone in front ask for that drink, then said his name was "caramel macchiato" just to mess with them. They'd call the order as "caramel macchiato" and, he seemingly hoped, get trouble from the other customers who had been refused that drink ... cute.

Aside: I always assumed the whole 'spell your name wrong' thing that Starbucks did was a marketing thing - they certainly got a lot of social media posts out of it!

> I always assumed the whole 'spell your name wrong' thing that Starbucks did was a marketing thing - they certainly got a lot of social media posts out of it!

Not everything is a conspiracy. Take the average starbucks barista, add in a shop full of customers expecting the line to move quickly, and you end up with a "This looks good enough, fuck it" attitude to writing the name on the cup. Customers that get upset about their name being spelled wrong really need to relax.

I think this solution from Dave Gorman is perfect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTaEeTRHDE&feature=youtu.be...

Just tell them your name is Big Dick. They always bring your order immediately by foot without name calling.

Us nerdy engineers hate this stuff no matter where we're from. But from what I can gather at places I've worked at, most customers are neutral to positive about it. Some REALLY like it, believe it or not.

Tech companies are often stupid, but not THAT stupid. Most of the strategies in this article do improve open and conversion rate.

Agreed. If they wanted HN conversions the title would be 'Lessons learned from onboarding emails written in Rust'

That's American business culture. You are expected to be fake happy.

It is exhausting.

To be fair to the article writer, I too write for non-technical audiences with the idea that they are sitting next to me and we are having a friendly conversation. It helps the writer's block.

I fight this fake happiness with every fiber of my being by being polite, professional and genuinely happy when something actually makes me happy. Otherwise perfectly content being perfectly content :)

Faking it as another person said is exhausting and draining and I ain't got time for that.

These opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer, the bottled water industry, and certainly not the cat sitting behind me.

While friendliness and happiness can be positive, I think in sales it's often emotional warfare, for example with door-to-door sales. A vacuum cleaner salesman will try to manufacture a personal connection with strategic taps on the shoulder, asking about the kids/grandkids and the spouse, but ultimately this is so that rejection becomes emotionally difficult for the untrained and unprepared customer.

I see these emails the same way as I see cheesy, slimy door-to-door vacuum cleaner salespeople.

There's a difference in intent which isn't obvious from the atonal text medium. Humans are pretty good at spotting fake in person. Thus the desire to shake a hand and look in the eye. Over email, I think many people have developed a decent sense for it, but it's much harder to distinguish the two.

> Humans are pretty good at spotting fake in person

I doubt it. People can be really really talented at being convincing but fake.

Define "pretty good" how you'd like, but to me both statements can be true.

Aren't you expected to be fake happy in all portions of American culture? I am American so cannot meaningfully comment on other cultures, but it I suppose it could be true for every culture as well.

People just like being around happy people.

I just assumed this was an American thing; as a Brit, I find it so cringey it almost hurts, and I'm embarrassed on their behalf.

I wonder actually, if anyone here customises their emails based on the mark's home region?

It's not uniquely American, its bog-standard "startup trying to establish a parasocial relationship".

This is a great insight, our users are mostly american and they are pretty receptive to cheesy lines. I personally smile even though I know it's automated, just appreciate the creativity i guess? But I hadn't really thought about how these would sound for european readers. Will definitely keep that in mind

I'm American and agree with the GP 110%. If I get an email like that, not only do I delete it, but I'm less likely to read your future emails.

I think it is a California-centric "it's all good" vibe. Not all of America has California culture.

California native (east bay) checking in. These fake ass, liposuction, collagen injected carnival exhibit emails are bullshit. You should delete them and the companies from your life.

LOL. Thanks for writing that.

I am American and these kinds of things are hard eye rolls to me

I do not think this is ‘American thing’. I think this is unique for ‘hipster start ups’ (not sure how to define them, but I can recognize one when I see one).

For me, messages like this resonate like ‘we are cool and do not use us if you need us to run your business’.

I think the tone of your communications has to hit a middle ground because I also have a sort of visceral reaction to emails that are too formal:

Dear sir, According to your previous request please refer to the following link to access your download.

Our team thanks you for your kind attention.

Yours warmly, blah blah blah

Somewhere in the (subjective) middle is an email that reads like you know i am a non-litigious human but not your best buddy.

I think these kind of lines only resonates within marketing people. At the end of the day, they are trying to sell palabra, that should be another platform for white-hat spamming everybody could live without; for sending the kind of emails that (for a developer) has a time-to-live in the inbox equal to the time it takes to drag the mouse to the delete button.

Could you give a counter example of a well written, successful mass mail in your eyes that you loved to read?

The last mass email I received that was successful (got me to do something) I didn't actually read. The subject line was something like "50% off sale through the weekend" which was literally the only information I needed.

Is there such a thing? Either I go out of my way for something or I don't. An email is just annoying.

Yep. We say "too polite to be honest" but "too friendly to be honest" works for me too.