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Comment by mech4bg | Hacker News Reader

If you're going to do this (and a _lot_ of startups seem to do this now), then it's critical to actually respond to people when they react to your email.

I've had a number of startups (OrderAhead, Instacart) email me shortly after I've signed up with a 'personalized' message. I've had issues or questions so I've followed up with them straight away - only to get no reply.

That, in a nutshell, is a perfect way to destroy retention. If you're going to do stuff like this, it's critical to follow through. My opinion of a company is strongly tied to how well and how quickly they respond to customer feedback.

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James from Bugsnag here. We make sure to reply to people asap, we've set up Help Scout (https://www.helpscout.net) to manage the replies to these emails, so even if I'm out of the office, my co-founder can jump on and reply.

Our target is to reply within 10 minutes, unless we are asleep :)

Ian from Segment.io here and +1, we've also just started using HelpScout to handle having lots of messages going to all four of us. It was the nicest solution we found for keeping the personal touch still, since they don't add weird support crap to your emails.

Also the graphs for response time as fun to monitor. Accidentally let one request go over night the other day and really messed up my average ;p

Chris from Vero here. This is the method we use. Essentially, setup a group mailbox that everyone can respond to.

I use chrish@getvero.com instead of chris@getvero.com to send the emails. 'chrish' goes to the entire team.

I remember seeing HelloFax do this way back in May 2012 (at least, as far as I can remember!) and it was very effective.

James, you're doing much better than me! I've been slipping on my reply times recently to up to 2 days which totally sucks.

One thing I started doing is taking an hour of zero-distraction time every morning to fire off responses to emails that come in to support.

Unfortunately we don't have anyone handling customer responses full time, but we're getting to where we should. Responses to emails are a blessing and a curse, but I wouldn't trade em for the world.

Thanks for mentioning Helpscout! Amazing product.

I wrote a bit about this, and how – as an email marketing company – I figured it's okay to send emails "as if you're a human" but only as long as you reply like a human: https://www.userfox.com/blog/the-joel-at-buffer-feature/

If you don't reply, you shatter the trust from that email you think someone wrote you.

for what its worth, I believe Buffer were the guys that pioneered this, and email marketing companies (like ourselves) just turned it into a feature.

Couldn't agree more. We take this to heart with matchist (http://matchist.com/talent) and always respond to feedback/questions that come through from our personalized emails.

I can't emphasize enough just how useful the feedback that comes from these types of emails is.

" then it's critical to actually respond to people when they react to your email."

This.

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