The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
To Mail or Not To Mail?
Monday - December 11, 2006 04:16 PM in
When I turned my laptop on this AM after a normal weekend, I had 954 new e-mails in my junk folder and another 40 or so that slipped through and into my normal mailbox. Over 100 more have arrived so far today.
Since so much of our business relies on inviting Vocalabs panelists to participate in surveys on short notice, we have been very careful NOT to broadcast e-mails in a way that might flag us as spammers. Not totally successful (AOL seems the most aggressive in whatever formula they use to block spam, but will listen and "clear" the blockage.). But at least one major potential account's system chose to block us despite the appeals from employees of this company, and seems to have no procedure in place to fix the problem. In this case, I literally have to e-mail to the home address of a contact and have her forward my mails so to bypass the company spam filter.
So I was not particularly surprised when a business associate reported that after some time, the pendulum has swung and that his business is finding snail mail more effective at broadcasting a sales message than e-mail.
I can't help but wonder how many legit communications never get delivered because the cure for the spam epidemic can be so broadly applied by webmasters with no clue as to how to give legitimate messages a way through.
And I hold little hope for snail mail to recover it's prominence since we have moved past the era when we expect our communications to take time into demanding near instantaneous responses.
All I know is that whoever figures out the solution (Like spammers being used to detect roadside explosives in Iraq maybe?) will be my hero for a very long time.
Posted by Rick Rappe
So I was not particularly surprised when a business associate reported that after some time, the pendulum has swung and that his business is finding snail mail more effective at broadcasting a sales message than e-mail.
I can't help but wonder how many legit communications never get delivered because the cure for the spam epidemic can be so broadly applied by webmasters with no clue as to how to give legitimate messages a way through.
And I hold little hope for snail mail to recover it's prominence since we have moved past the era when we expect our communications to take time into demanding near instantaneous responses.
All I know is that whoever figures out the solution (Like spammers being used to detect roadside explosives in Iraq maybe?) will be my hero for a very long time.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 04:16 PM by | | | |