Longer, More Formal Closings Invite Fewer Thank-you Replies
November 10th, 2011 by Rich Armstrong
Since we are entering the season of giving thanks, I thought I’d drop a little note about those useless little thank-you emails you sometimes get when you help a customer through FogBugz (or, really, any other system).
We get the occasional customer request asking us to implement some sort of auto-ignore feature that won’t re-open a case when the person just responds with “Thanks!” Now, as the person responsible for customer happiness at Fog Creek, the very idea of something that “auto-ignores” any customer communication sends up all sorts of red flags.
We’ve looked at this from all different angles and have just never come up with an automated method that doesn’t suffer from both false positives and false negatives. In the end, the false positives (closing cases that did need more work) are far more destructive than the small time savings garnered by closing these cases automatically.
The problem really is not the person responding, but your response to them. If you send a response like this, you’re basically leaving something unconfirmed and basic human decency will prompt some portion of the population to provide you with closure on your interaction.
Hi Bill,
Please reboot your computer.
Rich
Since this is basically a social issue, not a technical one, it calls for a social hack, not a technical hack. Through experimentation, we find that the longer and more formal your closing, the fewer thank-you emails you get in response.
You can use snippets to craft a closing that does not invite response. Here’s a good example that has worked very well for us:
Hi Bill,
This can easily be solved by rebooting your computer.
Let me know if I can be of further assistance, if indeed this was helpful, or if this raises any other questions.
All the best,
Rich
This closing doesn’t have any hubris in it. We don’t assume that we solved your issue. In fact, we don’t assume that we’ve helped at all, or closed the conversation at all. Paradoxically, by inviting dissent or further conversation, we invite only the constructive responses.
Thanks!
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