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Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

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Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#131

Post by lotsofpulp »

ignaloidas wrote: post #128
lotsofpulp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending out a “hand” written thank you letter long after a transaction is completed and real time customer service at the time of transaction are not comparable actions of customer service.

My dad has been ordering green tea from a particular seller for maybe 10 years now, in part because they include a lovely little handwritten note for each order. It is absolutely comparable.

Customer service at the time of sale are things like promptly taking my order, being sufficiently staffed to minimize and address possible issues, and just having a quick, consistent, friendly experience.

If seller A is offering the above but no handwritten note, and seller B is not offering the above at the level of seller A, but is offering a handwritten note, I will chose seller A every time.

This thread makes me think I should possibly assign negative value for a hand written note.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#132

Post by lotsofpulp »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #101
spaghettiToy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I read more about marketing (for my business) it enrages me more. I basically don't use twitter, but I find myself on the platform in rants about how exploitive and manipulative some people are willing to be. There is one company that targets vunerable people with their relatively affordable Veblen goods to make them feel socially insecure if they buy an Android instead. It's so obvious when you read about…

TIL what a Veblen good is. "Apple products are classified as Veblen products, because most often users choose them, guided by the big name of the brand and believing that the possession of this technology will increase their status in society." https://lkrvk.com/the-veblen-effect-how-price-increases-affe...

This nonsensical trope is trotted out on HN all the time with no data to support it. Just the fact that Apple products are objectively not expensive enough to convey any information about status should be enough to prevent it from being posted.

I employ people that earn $15 to $20 per hour with no benefits that use Apple products like iPhones, MacBook airs, and air pods.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#133

Post by Silverback_VII »

boringg wrote: post #64
Silverback_VII wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interpretation would be that they are just uncovering the fact that behind many nice and kind behaviours lie some very selfish interests. In every human interaction you can perceive the battle over power, social status and personal interests. It's just the way it is. Some people can see it, others not or just don't want to.

True enough. Even though i can see it doesn't mean it isnt disappointing. Tangentially related, do you think some people can see/feel power and are drawn in while other people are relatively immune to it? There are some people in the world that i see have a very good ability to read power etc while others are hopeless (for better or worse). Seems similar to your comment thats why i ask

I think some people are way better at seeing these mechanics at play than others. it's what is called social intelligence I think. Yet it also can be midly depressing to see your friend trying to subtly decrease your social status by some harmless remarks when a woman is in the vicinity.

People who do not see it are most easily exploited by it. For example a person with low self-esteem who does (often unconsciously) signal it to others even if it worsens his situation even more.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#134

Post by aarondf »

samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

Glad you enjoyed that! I built those robots :)

That thread was previously posted to HN (linked below in some replies) and the responses were... mixed, to say the least!

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#135

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wikitopian wrote: post #52

Ultimately, culture will be defined by a strange sort of radical authenticity defined by ever more subtle and specific signals of genuine humanity. Sophisticated cants will emerge that are structurally challenging for computers to emulate. And because there's a lot of work going into preventing AI from computing anything racist, sexist, or offensive to HR, the new ways of communicating will likely gravitate towards t…

Interesting idea.

Reflecting on it, people already use what would otherwise be unacceptable slurs with their closest friends (at least IME in the UK). Using this as a human-computer differentiator is intriguing. Kinda like if non-humans were really incapable of purposeful harm to humans you could get someone to pinch you to show they're not a bot... CAPTCHA of the future!

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#136

Post by aarondf »

MrDunham wrote: post #11
samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

I really wish they had opened sourced this. Was just thinking of exactly that post, thanks for finding it. It really makes a difference to have hand written with a pen as long as you have a font with multiple letter variants/subtly differences between the same letter used repeatedly.

Open sourced the hardware or the software part? (Note: I'm the author of that twitter thread.)

The hardest part was probably the handwriting "generation." I put "generation" in quotes because it was mostly selecting one of the characters from the library of characters that we captured and putting it together with other characters.

The hardware had a lot of hard spots, but I think they were mostly hard because that was my first real foray into hardware.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#137

Post by aarondf »

reaperducer wrote: post #25
samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

Reinventing the wheel. Hand writing robots at scale was a market for decades from the 1950's. They went away when desktop publishing arrived.

Maybe, but what a fun wheel it was to reinvent! Honestly one of the more fun things I've done in my career.

I guess I could've just made another static site generator though ;)

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#138

Post by lotsofpulp »

maest wrote: post #106
PopAlongKid wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL what a Veblen good is. "Apple products are classified as Veblen products, because most often users choose them, guided by the big name of the brand and believing that the possession of this technology will increase their status in society." https://lkrvk.com/the-veblen-effect-how-price-increases-affe...

The other way I think about Veblen goods is that when you're purchasing an e.g. Balenciaga shirt, you're paying for 2 things: 1. the shirt 2. you're giving money to Balenciaga to go out there and tell people how great owners of Balenciaga shirts are. You're paying them to do some marketing on your behalf, in a way.

A logo’d shirt is a poor example of a Veblen good.

Per wiki

>A Veblen good would be something where the demand increases as the price increases.

Shirts with logos are actually priced lower than shirts with logos. They might signal that someone can ship at an outlet mall rather than Walmart, but not much more. All the high end clothing will not have conspicuous logos.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#139

Post by banannaise »

gchamonlive wrote: post #43
waselighis wrote: post #34

Fucking marketers just want to destroy all sincerity in the world.

It is a matter of semiotics. At one point you need to scale, and you realise you can just manipulate symbols easier. They might at one point have come from sincerity, but industrial scale trumples all.

And thus the simulation of sincerity leads us even deeper into the simulation. Baudrillard strikes again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#140

Post by telecuda »

We did this a lot in our early days, and while we didn't correlate it with spending, customers occasionally would acknowledge the note in future conversations.

To me, it falls in the category of "do things that don't scale" as you try to grow your business. An over-emphasis on customer service is rarely a bad idea.

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