Why my company doesn't send automated email from a 'noreply' address | Hacker News Reader

Why my company doesn't send automated email from a 'noreply' address

pardner.com

18 pointspardner24 comments

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.

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.

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.

That makes sense. If my app was dealing with, say, medical records info, we would assuredly not want to forward mis-replies... in that case it would make more sense to use an auto responder that might say something like "To protect the security of your personal info ..."

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.

We get some of that as well. It's not enough that it's a problem yet, so we just handle it manually, but I've imagined routing it automatically. E.g., if 99/100 of replies to email type X are to John Doe, I'd probably just automatically forward all of it to John Doe. Or make John the Reply-To address, like LinkedIn does with invitation emails.

For now, you could just fake the auto-forwarder and see if people like it. E.g., forward the message on with the kind of From line and automatic header that you'd use on an auto-forwarder.

If people are trying to use email like this, maybe you should implement a "reply to this email to message John Doe" feature.

Mailgun offers custom inboxes and other features that makes it easy to do this. It might not make sense for you, but just giving some feedback!

Why isn't John Doe's email address in the Reply-To field (or From:, for that matter)?

Because in our app, if there are bounce-backs or deliverability issues we want them to come to us, not to our user who is trying to send an email blast.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't bounces sent back to the "FROM" of the envelope? The mail server does not care much about the "From:"-email-header and much less about "Reply-To".

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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]

I wouldn't do that because a) serving customers is the point of the business, and b) I want to make it as easy as possible for people to give feedback.

And, from the customer side of it, there's c) when a company thinks it's ok to email me but won't accept email in return, I think they're kinda dickish.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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