I said the exact same thing yesterday but my comment never made it here (Internet connection blew up on me). This whole "stop using noreply" thing is just a bunch of silly hip dogma now. Soliciting feedback and cultivating relationships with customers is definitely important. Only a fool would argue otherwise but it simply doesn't scale. And there's much to be said about context and rules. A noreply email is usually meant as a one-way communication. There's no reason to reply to it and if by chance there is then make sure you give easy access to the proper channels.
I'm opening up my own site to the beta list in 10 days (shameless plug: https://writeapp.me) and I thought about noreply and I came up with this: Some emails are meant to or can reasonably be expected to generate feedback. Replies to those will be handled swiftly and efficiently. Others, like transactional emails the app generates warrant no reply. Changed your password? Okay, we'll click the link to reset it or ignore this email to keep it the same. Replies to such emails will be accepted but they'll be directed to a very low priority inbox.
The problem is that when you have X types of emails and X inboxes, accepting replies on all of them is an organization nightmare. There's a lot to be said for setting proper expectations. If you make sure to direct users to the appropriate channels from day 1 then you don't have to worry about support requests coming from marketing emails or transactional notification emails. Letting users reply to all emails and giving them personal attention no matter what they replied to from day 1 sets the expectation that they'll have that forever and are then entitled to it. There's a reason noreply is used. It's not because someone was an asshole and didn't want to interact with users. It was because its impractical at a certain point.
By all means make it a priority to get feedback and interact with users but just be careful and don't be short sighted about it.
The example in the post is actually a bad example. The author is saying not to use noreply and references an email that is in no way similar to any kind of noreply email youd normally get. He got an email from a founder. The context was personal. Why in the world would that ever come from a noreply address? The example would be far more compelling (yet still take a position I disagree with) if he had gotten a transactional email or a marketing email that he replied to. But he didn't. He got a personal email because of something he said online that was noticed by someone at the startup. Apples and oranges.
The post's point should have been simply to encourage startups to engage more with users and make them feel special. This post seems to have little to do with noreply email addresse at all. By taking a story about startups engaging with users and turning it into an anti-noreply article the real message is buried and becomes disagreeable.
I'm opening up my own site to the beta list in 10 days (shameless plug: https://writeapp.me) and I thought about noreply and I came up with this: Some emails are meant to or can reasonably be expected to generate feedback. Replies to those will be handled swiftly and efficiently. Others, like transactional emails the app generates warrant no reply. Changed your password? Okay, we'll click the link to reset it or ignore this email to keep it the same. Replies to such emails will be accepted but they'll be directed to a very low priority inbox.
The problem is that when you have X types of emails and X inboxes, accepting replies on all of them is an organization nightmare. There's a lot to be said for setting proper expectations. If you make sure to direct users to the appropriate channels from day 1 then you don't have to worry about support requests coming from marketing emails or transactional notification emails. Letting users reply to all emails and giving them personal attention no matter what they replied to from day 1 sets the expectation that they'll have that forever and are then entitled to it. There's a reason noreply is used. It's not because someone was an asshole and didn't want to interact with users. It was because its impractical at a certain point.
By all means make it a priority to get feedback and interact with users but just be careful and don't be short sighted about it.
The example in the post is actually a bad example. The author is saying not to use noreply and references an email that is in no way similar to any kind of noreply email youd normally get. He got an email from a founder. The context was personal. Why in the world would that ever come from a noreply address? The example would be far more compelling (yet still take a position I disagree with) if he had gotten a transactional email or a marketing email that he replied to. But he didn't. He got a personal email because of something he said online that was noticed by someone at the startup. Apples and oranges.
The post's point should have been simply to encourage startups to engage more with users and make them feel special. This post seems to have little to do with noreply email addresse at all. By taking a story about startups engaging with users and turning it into an anti-noreply article the real message is buried and becomes disagreeable.