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Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

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Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#191

Post by Bakary »

banannaise wrote: post #141
sweetheart wrote: post #10

Being kind is fine and all, but my one gripe with it is that it doesn’t make me any money. Glad to see the dark days of being nice without any ROI are ending.

One of the endlessly frustrating things about modern capitalism is knowing that if I don't monetize my kindness, there are usually two people profiting: one who monetizes my kindness instead, and one who learns to simulate it. Both of those people are almost certainly assholes. It's not psychologically healthy to change my behavior as a result, or to dwell on the above, but the fact that my psychologically healthy be…

It's not a major flaw in the system, it is a primary function and characteristic of the system and its inherent logic

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#192

Post by SnooSux »

deltarholamda wrote: post #70
waselighis wrote: post #34

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

Well, yes, but... take away from this something less grim. It's something a friend who was in marketing used to say to me all of the time: "good customer service is the best marketing, and it's often very nearly free." Chick-fil-a figured this out years ago. Their employees are required to be nice and kind, and they can get fired for having a crappy attitude. This sounds awful, Stepford-wifeish, but in reality it imp…

> good customer service is the best marketing, and it's often very nearly free

Free may apply less to CFA. One thing they don't get enough credit for is that they a decent amount more than their competitors who pay barely above minimum wage. It's clearly an investment that's payed off, but there is definitely a cost to it.

And Popeyes would be my go-to for chicken if it weren't so far away.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#193

Post by bombcar »

colechristensen wrote: post #171
bombcar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the harm - you’re taking things the body and brain are used to and simulating them to elicit the response you want. I’m sure a company could develop an AI advanced enough to imitate a cute employee who is really into you when you have an issue - and use that to encourage you to spend way more because “they love you”. Hell, I bet you could offer “CEO on HackerNews” as a marketing service - keep an eye on posts…

The thing about CEOs on HN is they have to say the right thing to be appealing. CEO on HN saying the wrong thing can really nail down the impression that a company is doing something awful and it’s not just the fault of the marketing intern or some misguided but well intentioned employee. If you hear the same crap from the top in a supposedly personal comment, there’s not much room left for assuming the best.

That's why the service would be so valuable! People perfectly trained to craft just the right amount of "mea culpa" and "we'll make this right" and "we're not actually lizardmen from mars".

Heck, if you had multiple clients you could even "reinforce" each other. It's so good ... I'm kind of scared it's already being done.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#195

Post by petra »

wallawe wrote: post #123
gregsadetsky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot for sharing, really interesting. I edited my comment so you may not have seen my additional question: why build out hardware vs. outsource the printing / mailing? i.e. with enough randomness in the font/text/letter generation, was it still obvious to tell what was “handwritten” by a plotter vs printed? And re: margins, you could have raised prices but that would have made you not competitive?

> why build out hardware vs. outsource the printing / mailing? we wanted the handwriting to feel as real as possible. to that end, my cofounder wrote an algo that varied each character slightly, the robots held real pens, etc. We couldn't find anyone to outsource the fulfillment to that matched this level of authenticity. Some competitors used lob.com and simply print an image of handwriting which actually can work p…

How can you spot the difference between a robot written letter and a printed one?

And what about volumes, is each letter has different text? Should have slightly different writing?

Or are there some volumes in the system?

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#196

Post by wallawe »

petra wrote: post #195
wallawe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why build out hardware vs. outsource the printing / mailing? we wanted the handwriting to feel as real as possible. to that end, my cofounder wrote an algo that varied each character slightly, the robots held real pens, etc. We couldn't find anyone to outsource the fulfillment to that matched this level of authenticity. Some competitors used lob.com and simply print an image of handwriting which actually can work p…

How can you spot the difference between a robot written letter and a printed one? And what about volumes, is each letter has different text? Should have slightly different writing? Or are there some volumes in the system?

There are variations in pressure that are really easy to recognize.

Not sure I understand the second question.

Edit: Do you sometimes print the same letter(or a templatized letter) 100/1000 times ?

This would have been a good optimization but we did not. Every letter generated was unique even if it was a templatized piece.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#197

Post by petra »

wallawe wrote: post #196
petra wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you spot the difference between a robot written letter and a printed one? And what about volumes, is each letter has different text? Should have slightly different writing? Or are there some volumes in the system?

There are variations in pressure that are really easy to recognize. Not sure I understand the second question. Edit: Do you sometimes print the same letter(or a templatized letter) 100/1000 times ? This would have been a good optimization but we did not. Every letter generated was unique even if it was a templatized piece.

Do you sometimes print the same letter(or a templatized letter) 100/1000 times ?

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#198

Post by iambateman »

WalterBright wrote: post #173
iambateman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about three years behind wallawe’s reply. The technical parts are fun…the core thing for us was that it was actually written by a real pen. The difference between a print and real writing is obvious to most people, so we wanted it to be believable. Our system used a set of handwritten fonts, along with a bunch of “fuzzing” of line height, line direction, and character swap outs. This created an SVG path that a…

> Our system used a set of handwritten fonts What betrays handwritten fonts is nobody writes "a" the same way every time. I get that you're addressing this with fuzzing, but that's not enough. The pressure put on a pen also varies, people make mistakes and cross them out, there are ink blotches, etc.

There were enough character alternates and special compound ligatures that it’s really hard to tell unless you know it’s machine-produced.

I think you would be surprised at how realistic it can be.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#199

Post by xeromal »

Bakary wrote: post #194

The idea of looking at a handwritten note and concluding that the company cares about me specifically or that it was an actual social interaction of any significance is just so bizarre. Maybe it's a coconut vs. peach culture thing?

It's an indicator. If someone writes me a note along with my purchase, my confidence that they care about their product is higher than receiving a mass-produced receipt. Of course, this article is specifically about people that game it, but I appreciate a personal touch.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#200

Post by lotsofpulp »

pwpw wrote: post #187
lotsofpulp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it bizarre that people talked to you about their perceived change in your status to you directly, much less simply due to a phone.

Only one person said it directly who I’m close with and is always candid. I also almost always received a short comment about having an Android when initially connecting with a woman both in real life and on dating apps. The bigger ramifications were ones I noticed myself. I wasn’t included in group texts organizing things where I usually would have before. I was still invited to things. Just no longer part of the or…

That is unfortunate. I am mid 30s, and if someone did not have iMessage, we would simply switch to WhatsApp.

Although, I can see there being an issue if someone was not using iMessage or WhatsApp.

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