Email interactions have never been colder or lazier, says Brandon Robshaw
Recently, I received an email from the local council.
It was about a new system to renew my residents’ parking permit, which required me to download an app. Of course it required me to download an app! Fifteen years ago, I didn’t even know what the phrase ‘download an app’ meant. Now I’m asked to do it almost every day.
The procedure was complicated and opaque, and several questions about it immediately sprang to mind. But I couldn’t ask them. The message had been sent from a ‘no-reply’ account.
A no-reply account! How can such a thing even exist? If someone wanted to talk to you, and prefaced their remarks by saying, ‘I’ve got something to tell you, but I won’t let you say anything in reply; as soon as I’ve said it, I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears and walk away,’ you’d consider it the height of rudeness.
Yet ‘no-reply’ accounts are fast becoming the norm when companies, organisations or institutions want to send out information. Searching for ‘no-reply’ in my email account brought up half a dozen of these horrors in just the last few days, including from my internet provider, pension provider and the NHS. It’s hard to think of a colder or lazier way of communicating with a person.
Sometimes, the message will say something like ‘For further information, visit our website’ (in other words, ‘visit our labyrinth’). Yes, I know this practice saves money. But saving money by offering a crap service cannot be the way forward. I wonder whether one day, we, or our descendants, will look back on this era of insolent officialdom with a shudder, and profound relief that it’s over? Or is it here to stay?
