It’s common – and tempting – for companies to send automated email to customers from an un-monitored address, often called something like “no-reply@”.

We send from an address such as “mail@” and if our customer happens to click the ‘reply’ button and sends an email, we forward it to “support@”.

One of my projects http://www.mondoflyers.com sends email flyers from one real estate agent to all the other agents in town.

Sometimes, a recipient simply clicks “reply” – most often with the intent of sending a note to the sending agent (“hey that house looks interesting, I’ll give you a call”), but sometimes with the intent to send us a note (“unsubscribe” or “wow that’s a great flyer system, how do I send one myself?”).

We really don’t see the downside of forwarding such emails to support and letting them handle it as the situation merits. So sometimes our support folks (a) forward a note to the obviously-intended recipient (which impresses our customer to no end), and sometimes they (b) unsubscribe the recipient even though they didn’t follow the exact instructions, or (c) sell our service to the recipient who asked for info, but sent the inquiry to the wrong place.

If your customer clicks reply, do you really want to throw it away, or bounce it back and ask them re-send it? Why not forward it instead to a human who can, more often than not, discern what needs to be done?