Change reply-to email address on shipment & order confirmation emails

[BethanOFN]

What is the need/problem?

A lot of user support time is taken up forwarding emails to enterprises that were sent from customers replying to their order confirmation email, subscription confirmation email or shipment notification email. Customers expect that replying to these emails will directly contact the enterprise. Support staff then have to locate the contact details for the enterprise, respond to the customer explaining they'd contacted the national team rather than the enterprise, and CC'ing in the enterprise. This is time consuming and can impact customer satisfaction when, for example, an email isn't forwarded for a few days as support staff are not full time.

What type of users does this affect (and how many, if known)?

• Hub Managers (MCFEs)
• Producers
• Instance Managers

Potential solutions that could solve the problem?

Currently the reply-to email address is (in the UK at least) set to the main hello@openfoodnetwork.org.uk email address. I propose changing the reply-to address to the notifications email for the enterprise, and leave the sender as hello@openfoodnetwork.org.uk. The enterprise notifications email is where order notifications are sent, and therefore should be used in place of the owner email, which can be a different email address.

Additional context

Proposing this as a papercut/good first issue

[drummer83]

Nice one! I came across this as well when working on emails in general. I think I do have a fix ready for it already.
Let me check if I can make a pull request soon. Feel free to remind me in let's say 10 days, as I'm traveling this week and I didn't bring my OFN laptop.

[RachL]

@BethanOFN FYI in FR all these emails are send via the email noreply[at]coopcircuits.fr which indicates a bit better that it's a notification from the platform. Perhaps something to change regardless of the reply-to solution?

The sender can be changed as super admin in /admin/mail_methods/edit

[drummer83]

Hi @BethanOFN,
I've checked my notes on emails and I can confirm that the reply email for shipping notification emails is the configured email in the settings. It would be good to have the distributor's email here instead. 👍

For order confirmation emails (regular order and subscriptions) I cannot confirm this. Here, the distributor's email is already being used as reply address. Can you confirm?

However, also the order cancellation and the authorize payment emails are sent from the configured email instead of the distributor's one.
Also, the manager invitation email should be sent with the inviting enterprise's email as reply address.

So, these are all cases I've found irritating and I will try to fix it with a PR.

Let me know if you can't confirm any of my observations.
Thanks!

[drummer83]

A PR is in review here: openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork#13139

[BethanOFN]

@BethanOFN FYI in FR all these emails are send via the email noreply[at]coopcircuits.fr which indicates a bit better that it's a notification from the platform. Perhaps something to change regardless of the reply-to solution?

The sender can be changed as super admin in /admin/mail_methods/edit

Thanks @RachL that might be a good option too will consider that!

Hi @BethanOFN, I've checked my notes on emails and I can confirm that the reply email for shipping notification emails is the configured email in the settings. It would be good to have the distributor's email here instead. 👍

For order confirmation emails (regular order and subscriptions) I cannot confirm this. Here, the distributor's email is already being used as reply address. Can you confirm?

However, also the order cancellation and the authorize payment emails are sent from the configured email instead of the distributor's one. Also, the manager invitation email should be sent with the inviting enterprise's email as reply address.

So, these are all cases I've found irritating and I will try to fix it with a PR.

Let me know if you can't confirm any of my observations. Thanks!

@drummer83 I've just checked and the order confirmation does include the distributor's notification email as the reply-to address, correct. The other cases you've noted are also annoying so would be great to change, thanks!

The only other case is the order confirmation that distributors receive, e.g. whether this should default to the customer's email address (if that's possible?). We do get a lot of emails from distributors replying to an order confirmation with questions for the customer e.g. earlier this week:

[tschumilas]

I posted in the PR by mistake - I was wondering about the no-reply email address when a distributor sends an invoice? Right now it is the instance's no-reply email - could it be added to this issue - so the reply is to the distributor? (or maybe I'm confused about this)

[drummer83]

The only other case is the order confirmation that distributors receive, e.g. whether this should default to the customer's email address (if that's possible?).

Oh, interesting! I never thought about that one!
Yes, that should be doable and makes perfect sense. I will try...

I was wondering about the no-reply email address when a distributor sends an invoice? Right now it is the instance's no-reply email - could it be added to this issue - so the reply is to the distributor? (or maybe I'm confused about this)

This seems to be the case already. Could you please double check?

[drummer83]

One more thing came to my mind. What about the "authorization required email" which is sent to distributors when payments need authorization by the customer:

We could set the customer as "reply to" address as well to make it easy for the distributor to remind customers, if needed.

What do you think, @BethanOFN, @tschumilas, @RachL? Does it make sense? Any opposition?

[RachL]

Indeed, it could be useful if the distributor wants to contact the customer: they would have the email straight away. That being said, I'm wondering if some distributors are answering to this email to contact support (as the sender is clearly the system of the platform here, not a particular shop).

But maybe I'm overthinking this 🤷‍♀ Happy to follow the lead and if there is any problem we can revert. I guess people will survive if they receive an email about their own order :)

[tschumilas]

I also am not totally sure how users are using this - and it would be good to follow this path (set the customer as 'reply to' and see where it goes, and revert if its a problem. But I can't think of a problem.