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customers first (and the attachments uproar)

  • 1.  customers first (and the attachments uproar)

    Posted 11-26-1999 10:47
    Colleagues, I am slightly amused as well as irritated by
    the late uproar over sending long attachments to the list.

    Can I suggest looking at it in terms of products and customers.

    In sending a message out you are seeking readers,
    information customers if you will.

    The advertised range of products includes receiving the
    message as part of a digest, all the messages for a day
    in one file instead of each one separately.

    If you attach something to your message that attachment
    gets put in the digest and distributed whether the
    customer wants it or not. Large attachments make the
    product unusable for such people.

    In running an e-business you re quite entitled to say that
    people who dont have a certain technical capability cannot
    access your offerings. However if you advertise one service
    and make it unusable to customers you might well receive some
    lively comments.

    Are there wider issues we can discuss arising from this
    unfortunate incident?

    Edis Bevan
    Open University Business School

    (and yes I get the mg-ed-dv as a digest. It often arrives
    at my mailer as a file attached to a mail message for reasons
    of length, which is fine no trouble. However any attached messages
    to teh oeriginal mail messges, if .pdf or other files however the reader
    and anyway get presented as ascii gibberish in the middle of
    readable text.)