[Sigia-l] Forcing use of Web pages instead of email

[John Benjamin]

Leonard,

You have some excellent points, especially with regard to making these
email forms more friendly. I have some comments, that I've added
in-line. I'll skip everything I just agree with. :)

Leonard Will wrote:
> Is anyone else irritated by the increasing trend of organisations to not
> publish any proper email addresses but instead force users to
> communicate with them by filling in boxes on a Web page?
>
> This may be convenient for the recipients, as they can connect the mail
> up to customer details (if the customer has logged in) or ensure that
> certain items of information are provided by including them as mandatory
> boxes.

What these forms really do is provide an amount of control over the
routing of customer communication.

It's a big problem in an organization with a sizable customer base
(I'm a tech writer for EarthLink). It still doesn't work as well as
we'd like, because people won't send appropriate messages via
appropriate channels. This is human nature. If you've been searching
for a solution for a half hour and see a communications mechanism, you
don't care whether it goes to Sales or Support-- you just want to send
your message.

We tried a lot of messaging tactics in an attempt to straighten out
the lanes of traffic from our customers, with very limited success.
Email filtering mechanisms don't work well enough, unfortunately. The
best (very expensive) filtering system we implemented still leaves us
with massive amounts of email that's gone to the wrong place. And with
such volume it's incredibly difficult to make sure each message gets
to the right place and that everyone is taken care of. We really don't
want to miss a single message-- it may cost us a customer. And I
believe that's why you're seeing these more restrictive contact
mechanisms.

Much of our emphasis right now is on "live chat" interfaces-- secure,
java-style pop-up chat windows that let you IM with a representative.
If you don't have a technical problem preventing you from getting
online, this is the next best thing to a phone call, maybe even better
since you can cut/paste information and don't have to phonetically
spell usernames or passwords. LiveChat (that's our official name for
it) also lets you quickly hash out communication problems in
real-time, rather than sending email, waiting for a response,
realizing they didn't understand your problem, and responding again.

> 4. Organisations do not seem to have heard of secure email with
> electronic signatures using PGP or similar systems. They think that
> "secure Web pages" are the only way to send confidential information.

See my previous comment. Also, I suspect part of the problem is that
most organizations don't have a customer base that is used to using
secure email, so using that method to communicate would require
training their users, which would just frustrate everyone.

> 5. Companies send out advertising mail and service messages by ordinary
> email, but then say "Do not reply to this message as replies cannot be
> read; please use our Web page if you want to communicate with us". This
> strikes me as particularly rude; surely they can provide a valid "Reply
> to:" address in their emails, even if they are sent out by a mailing
> list robot.

It all comes back to the kind of feedback you're going to receive from
such a reply, and whether you have the technical means to make what
you get useful to either your organization or your users.

Consider that if a company with 2 million users sends out a message to
10% of its base-- 200,000 people, and receives a 2% response rate--
2,000-- that is 2,000 messages to filter through and route. If the
message says "just hit reply" you're kind of indicating that all
replies will be read and dealt with appropriately-- even if they're
inappropriate ("why'd you send me this, stop it").

So by declaring outright that no replies will be read, companies can
relieve themselves of that burden. I don't claim that this is the
right thing to do (I honestly haven't been tasked to think about a
better way), but I believe this is the rationale.

Those comments aside, I totally empathize with your frustration.

John