The prevalence of the noreply email address is the worst thing to happen to customer service since robo-call

A while back, I signed up for redbubble.com to buy a t-shirt or something. Right away I got this really nice (automated) email that actually seemed personal because it was actually “from” someone. It felt like I was communicating with a person rather than a faceless company. Why thank-you Jason Michaels for welcoming me to this community. But then I realized the ‘from’ address is ‘noreply’ and I felt duped.

I suppose this happens because of the way companies are organized internally:

• Marketing is measured by how many people they can engage in the company. So they like to send out emails.
• Customer service is measured by how many people DON’T engage with them. Any additional customer contact is an expense.

So the compromise is to send out emails, but do everything you can to keep them one-sided. I wonder how these companies are coping with their twitter/blogs/getsatisfaction ?

On a related note, MySpace no longer has a human face.