Say no to no-reply emails

You're dead to me if you do this.

The best source of customer feedback for me has been setting a real email as the reply-to for all communication sent to any customer for any reason. It turns out customers want to talk to you, and adding a single line of text saying something like “for any questions, simply reply to this email” in the opening part of the email is enough of a trigger for them to do that.

There are plenty of reasons why this is an excellent idea:

1. Easy for the customer as everyone knows how to use email

2. Easy for you as you get to reply asynchronously

3. The conversation is contextual and related to the the subect of the original email

4. Easy to keep track when you’re “done” with the service request

5. It’s an open invitation for feedback

6. You get a direct line to the customer without an intermediary tool which sends notifications and then requires logging to an app to respond, making communication quick

7. An IFTTT or Zapier integration to record the outcome works well

Thinking about my personal experience from the other side (when I’m the customer), how annoying is it when you get an email from, say Air Canada or a hotel, and want to know more and hit the reply button, only to find out that it’s a no-reply email? I don’t know about you but for me a hair goes grey. At the very least, let them reply to the email and let some automation create a service ticket.

Most of the time I get issues related to the purchase (e.g., what time do I need to get their to get a good seat?) but you also get general feedback from people who just care deeply about something. I’ve gotten UX, content and feature ideas from people which have been implemented and proven to be valuable. Some of them have jobs in the UX space and just offer up ideas because they’re wired to do so.

I also experiment with the prompt in the email to something like, “What does the app not do that you’d like it to do?” which solicits a different type of feedback which has nothing to do with the specific transaction.

All in all, this has proven to be an easy and powerful way of speaking directly with customers and has resulted in a better product.