Editing Customer Interaction (section)

= Posting Etiquette =

At JohnCompanies we follow a fairly old school, tradiitonal etiquette when responding to emails.  We use inline quoting, and we (usually) do not "top post".

So, let's consider this customer support request:


<pre>Hello John,

Please direct the following domain to my second IP 65.248.4.35
bryansgallery.com

Thanks for  your assistance.
Ty

 --
Tyler Hannigan
Founder Silverhawk.Com & Taos is.Com
(505)758-8945
http://www.silverhawk.com/welcome.html
http://www.taosis.com/index.html</pre>

When we respond, we will respond like this:
<pre>

Hi Tyler,

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Tyler Hannigan wrote:

> Please direct the following domain to my second IP 65.248.4.35
> bryansgallery.com

This is done, please test.

--john</pre>

Note how we start at the very beginning with a salutation to the individual, then we skip a line, then we have the line that the email client adds for us saying that on such and such date so and so said...

Then we skip a line and leave just enough of the message so that it is clear to anyone reading it what we are responding to.  Note that we only kept two lines of his original message, but they are the important two lines.

Then we skip a line and input our own message - in this case, a very brief one because it was a simple dns request he sent us.  Then skip a line and sign your name.

Notice that we do not "top post" - we do not start talking at the top of the post before we have some reference (quoted from his message) that makes it clear what he is talking about.

In more complex emails, we might go back and forth between quoted sections and our own typing several times throughout - especially if they ask multiple questions or bring up multiple issues.

There is one exception to this, and that is if you have done a long, multi email back and forth exchange over many email messages back and forth – if at the very end there is just a simple yes or no, or a quick response for the very last email, you can skip requoting and reorganizing the entire email all over again - you can just top post the final answer - but do include the previous message in the reply ... basically you only do this when there are so many quoted replies that it is starting to get silly AND if the final little answer you are giving is sure to be understood by all - in this case the quoted message that is now under your answer looks something like this:

<pre>> > > >>relatedly,  i'm also running a few cron jobs that are monitoring
> > > >>of our radius server.  these are running every minute,  because we
> > > >>having stability problems that i'm trying to uncover.  they're
> > > >>relatively small scripts, but please let me know if they are
> > > >>performance.  i've looked at top and can't see that it's affecting
> > > >>performance, but maybe it is in some unforeseen ways.
> > > >>
> > > >>let me know what you'd like me to change, if anything.</pre>

... because it has been quoted/replied so many times.

And finally, there is always a blank line at the beginning of all email messages ... so in pine, a response looks like this:


<pre>
To      : jerry@example.com
Cc      :
Attchmnt:
Subject : Re: Maintenance outage on your Linux server tomorrow night (fwd)
----- Message Text -----

Hi Jerry,

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Jerry wrote:

> There have been several new kernel issues/vulnerabilites
> in the Linux kernel announced in the last few weeks.  We

Yes, we are looking into that now and will have an answer to you by
tomorrow morning.

--john</pre>

Finally, and this is important - we are always polite and never terse/sarcastic/short with a customer.  No matter how annoying they are. Further, we never yell or threaten a frauder/abuser - someone that is doing things like that is likely to have the tools and motivation to DoS us or otherwise be very annoying - so when dealing with someone that has stolen service, or is attempting to do so, we are very reserved and matter of fact.

And very important:  anytime we can we thank the customer for their business and let them know how much we appreciate it - we aren't sappy and include this on every email, but anytime a customer states how happy they are, or how nice the service has been, etc., we always include a line like this:

"Also, we're glad to hear you have had such a good experience here – we are very happy to have you as a customer."