We all know those dreadful emails we get from bigger companies. Regardless of whether they politely confirm a booking, a shopping order, or just send the monthly receipt for some online service you or you’re company is using.

Those emails tend to have one thing in common. They go out of their way to tell you to not respond to that email, whether by the good old, passive aggressive NOREPLY@company.com, or by including a nice and long footer.

I don’t know about you, but those emails have been bugging me ever since I first started using ICQ (ie a long time ago).

Why?

An email is your one chance to talk to a customer. You can tell them nice things, you can let them know of necessary things. But it doesn’t get any more personal than this one email.

Whatever emotion it stirs in your customer, you will never know, because you make them jump through hoops to reach a human in your company to talk about it.

When you send emails from your application with a no-reply email address, what is it you’re afraid of? Do you not want to hear from a frustrated customer? Do you not want to be flooded with support requests?

If those are your fear, you need to rethink your relationship to your customers.

Now think about the alternative scenario. An email from a company invites you to respond if you have any questions, if you find that your invoice is wrong, if you’re not happy with a purchase.

That email reaches a human being or even just the support system where it will be taken care of.

This little detail allows you to build relationship, and that’s what a business is all about.

Our build emails, and all emails we send during a customer’s lifetime, are sent from a normal email address. If you respond to any of them, they will reach our support system or even our email inboxes directly.

We’ll notice frustration on failing builds and we can see if we can help fix them in any way. We can help our customers with billing issues, and we can answer any question they might have. It’s our one chance to talk to our customers and, most importantly, it’s their chance to voice any issues they have.

As a business, go out of your way to give your customers any means to reach someone in your company. You can start by encouraging your customers to respond to any email your system sends.