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The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

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Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#11

Post by Splines »

robk wrote: post #7

Uh, the company is originally Danish and I believe most of the staff are still in fact Danes. Her grammar was poor but understandable. I'm not sure why this guy gets so rage-filled when the email is innocuous when read coming from the mouth of a non-native speaker of English. Calling a response to any sort of support mail a "ticket" is pretty common as well and certainly not worthy of offense.

Fair enough (sort of), but if I were to start a business in a language that I'm not a native in, I wouldn't try supporting those people using non-native speakers. The languages and idioms of cultures differ greatly around the globe, and sometimes you may need to tweak your site to meet the expectations of your customers.

Then again, I don't run a business, so the costs of localizing customer support and "fit and finish" for Zendesk may be justified by the benefit.

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#12

Post by nfnaaron »

Pretending to have looked at a site, especially if the pretending is automated, is disrespectful, I agree.

The Grand Finale was pretty weak though. I have no idea what ICE Webinar is, and whether it relates to the poster's business. That's a separate issue. But to choose poor (OK, really poor) grammar as the Grand Finale is ungracious. There are many non-native speakers working on the web and in cube farms; cut them the same slack you'd mostly get if you were walking around in their country.

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#14

Post by bebeastie »

petercooper wrote: post #13

Great post, bebeastie. I thought your post was really top quality and you raised some interesting points in it. I especially appreciated your insights near the end of the post.

Thanks. This is my first post so I appreciate the positive feedback. Hopefully more to come...

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#15

Post by davidu »

potatolicious wrote: post #5
nopassrecover wrote: post #2

Weak overreaction. First, is it really that big a deal you got an email that looked like it was from someone personally but may have been automated (in fact you never proved that it was automated)? Second, are you really that bothered that a company whose product is helpdesk ticketing software uses helpdesk ticketing software to manage customer correspondence? Third, are you really that bothered by the informality of…

> "First, is it really that big a deal you got an email that looked like it was from someone personally but may have been automated" That by itself is not the big deal - plenty of emails are automated yet written in a personal manner (Dear Mr. Smith, etc etc) - but this one was deliberately deceptive. It purported to have looked at the customer's website, when it all likelihood nothing of the sort happened. That's wh…

It probably works well for a majority of their signups. More smart than scummy, imho.

I don't disagree with the sincerity issue, but again, it only appears insincere to you.

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#16

Post by potatolicious »

davidu wrote: post #15
potatolicious wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "First, is it really that big a deal you got an email that looked like it was from someone personally but may have been automated" That by itself is not the big deal - plenty of emails are automated yet written in a personal manner (Dear Mr. Smith, etc etc) - but this one was deliberately deceptive. It purported to have looked at the customer's website, when it all likelihood nothing of the sort happened. That's wh…

It probably works well for a majority of their signups. More smart than scummy, imho. I don't disagree with the sincerity issue, but again, it only appears insincere to you.

Oh it's not about insincerity - I think we're all very used to "we mean it but we don't" doublespeak from companies nowadays.

It's about the fact that they practically lied in their communication about what they have done - sure, this isn't especially scandalous, but it is low.

If they had some canned stuff like "we're sure you're doing great things, and would love to work with you individually to tailor our product to your needs... yadi yada" that'd be a-ok.

But they had a bot pretend that they actually visited my site and looked at my company's offerings... that's pretty lame.

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#17

Post by hussong »

petercooper wrote: post #13

Great post, bebeastie. I thought your post was really top quality and you raised some interesting points in it. I especially appreciated your insights near the end of the post.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, I read this as a really smart prank on OP. It actually just made my day.

Re: The wrong way to "personalize" your startup's welcome e-mail

#18

Post by petercooper »

hussong wrote: post #17
petercooper wrote: post #13

Great post, bebeastie. I thought your post was really top quality and you raised some interesting points in it. I especially appreciated your insights near the end of the post.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, I read this as a really smart prank on OP. It actually just made my day.

Humor, even when apropos, has a rocky ride on HN. There are plenty of people keen to avoid the site going down a meme-heavy Reddit path and who vote down all but the geekiest humor (even though constantly voting up posts by tech community trolls is seemingly OK ).
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