[connortomas]

I think it's possible to scale a personal approach to support.

Maybe, as Quibb grows, Sandi doesn't actually manually send each message. Maybe she sets up an autoresponder with a default welcome message. However, it's still possible to send automated messages in a personal way. Instead of the email coming from [e-mail], or even [e-mail] (better), maybe Sandi continues to have the welcome emails sent from her personal company email. Maybe she continues to use a tone in that default message that suggests approachability. As you scale, there are always tricks you can use to make customers firmly believe you care.

Also worth considering: sure, Facebook don't personally interact with every new user, but you can be damn sure that they take a more personal approach when dealing with advertisers.

[bpatrianakos]

What you're describing and what the author describes isn't noreply email. A noreply message is a one-way communication that doesn't warrant a response and if it gets one will be sent to a low priority inbox. I'm 100% for your idea but what I take exception to is the idea that noreply emails are somehow wrong or bad. They're not. They're quite useful. This is where scale comes in. At a certain point you just can't accept replies to every email you send out because you somehow have to filter them so they get the attention of the proper person or department. There's lots of room for personalized auto responders and all that but somestimes one-way really does need to be one way. That doesn't mean bouncing replies if you get them nor does it mean literally naming the email address "noreply@". It just means drawing a line somewhere so that users know that you really do care about them but for you to be able to serve them as well, as quickly, and as efficiently as possible, they need to be in contact with such and such email or read the knowledge base articles at X URL. In the end I think that will make everyone happy.

[connortomas]

Well, yeah, noreply emails are useful for the business, and I understand that. They're not very useful for the customer, though.

Customers want to feel as though there's a real person they can contact directly. They don't want to feel as though they'll simply be shunted endlessly from department from department. My opinion is that the customer shouldn't need to learn how your company is structured simply to make a one-off complaint or ask a question. The onus should be on the company to receive the support query and then pass it along to somebody who can answer it.

I'm aware this a less obviously scaleable approach to support. For some companies, it's not really tenable. In many cases, the value of a single customer may be so low that providing good support isn't worth it... it may be more valuable to simply ignore that customer until they leave. But for companies in which every customer is valuable, or could be valuable (Mailchimp, for example, or Zendesk), this kind of "inefficient" customer-centric support makes sense.