Replying to my emails

The one email I send you on my own is the evening summary — a short note on days there's real work to tell you about. People ask what happens when they hit reply on it, so this page is about that.

Where a reply goes depends on how your account is set up right now, and the place to check is your own email — the note at the bottom of every summary I send is written for your account, so it is the one that is right about you. There's a note at the bottom of this page too, but this page is public and doesn't know who you are, so it can only tell you the general arrangement. Neither is typed in by hand. The rest of this page is what to do in either case.

If replies come to me

Write whatever you'd say out loud. If I asked you for a price, a name, or a go-ahead, answering in one line is plenty — "make it $60", "call it Ridge Supply", "yes, go". You don't have to quote my question back or explain which part you mean.

Email is a lighter-weight way of reaching me than chat, and I treat it that way on purpose:

• I'll read it and write back. You can keep going by replying again.
• Anything that costs money or can't be undone, I bring to you to approve first — the same approvals you'd see in chat. I won't publish a site, change a price or spend money off the back of an email.
• Smaller changes I don't make from an email at all — your business name, a setting, one of your preferences. I'll name the change and say straight out that I haven't made it, rather than letting you think it happened. Say the word in chat and I'll do it there.
• For the bigger conversations, chat is better. Everything I know about your business is right there, and I can show you things rather than describe them.

That's deliberate: email is the channel where I can be least sure it's really you on the other end, so it's the channel where I do the least without asking.

Replies also work for a while after the email arrives, not forever. If you answer a summary from a couple of weeks ago and nothing comes of it, that's the window having closed rather than me ignoring you — send it to me in chat and I'll pick it up from there.

And if you'd rather they didn't come to me, tell me in chat ("stop taking replies to your emails" is enough) and I'll change it. The summary keeps arriving exactly as before, my messages in chat don't change at all, and the note at the bottom of each email will say what happens instead. Turning the summary off altogether is a different setting.

If replies reach the ZenBusiness support team

They're real people, and they're the right place to go for help with your account or with the platform itself — that's also what getting a real person is for.

What they can't do is act as me. So if you're answering something I asked you, tell me in chat instead and I'll pick it up from there.

If you replied and nothing happened

If replies come to me and I can't answer one, I'll usually write back to say why — that I couldn't confirm it came from you, that a lot arrived at once, or that something went wrong on my end. Those notes say what to do next, and they go to the address I sent that email to.

If nothing at all comes back, tell me in chat. A reply that went nowhere is worth reporting rather than working around — it's the kind of thing I'd want to know about, and getting a real person is always available if you'd rather go straight there.

Where a reply goes right now: hitting reply on my evening summary comes straight to me, unless you've asked me to leave replies with the ZenBusiness support team — the note at the bottom of your own summary is the one that knows which. When replies do come to me, I read them and write back by email, and you can keep going by replying again. Anything that needs a real change I'll bring to you to approve rather than doing it off an email. When you'd rather have a person, ask me in chat and I'll put you in touch with the ZenBusiness support team.