#352 Email NotificaShawn

So as I mentioned the other day, I've taken on some new responsibilities at work. Specifically, Collections and Accounts Receivable.

We receive notifications from our clients that do electronic funds transfer via email.  Now, the greater number of these notifications are sent to a group email address that I was already on. But quite a few of these are sent to the person that has just retired. And in this company, the day you leave they shut down all your access and kill your email address. And to complicate things more, they do not sent bounce notifications. This is the first job I've had since 1994 that when an employee leaves that their email is not re-routed to some catchall address, or forwarded to a specific other address.

Well,  I spoke to our IT guy and asked that the email that belongs to the person that just retired would be forwarded to me, as it's very important that we are able to receive these notifications. And that I'd make it a priority to have the clients correct the address they use, with the intent that in a month or so we could then properly deactivate the old email address.

Well he said it was not going to happen. Not because he didn't agree with my request, but that the US office dept that maintains the email servers simply "don't do this".

I kinda laughed and said, "because this would require them to do about 90 seconds work?!" 

He laughed and said,  "Pretty much"

I said do you mind if I cause a stink about this, involve the CFO and the Canadian VP pointing out at just how ridiculous their policy of just killing email addresses is? Not to mention how many lost notifications there would be, I'd be unable to complete some daily reports and that electronic transfers would go un-applied to clients accounts and that I'd end up making the company look incompetent because I'd have to contact clients and ask why invoices were not paid, when they *were* but we just didn't know because our company just kills email addresses.

He gave me his blessing, and I sent the email out at 9:30 this morning.  And guess what?  By noon, the mail forward was set up and it's now policy that when an employee departs there's a process to determine if their email should be re-routed for a period of time, or if indeed there is no issue in the email being closed. AND that there is an auto-responder goes out in either case indicating the address should no longer be used and direct them to the appropriate address.

I mean this is such a basic thing. And any company in 2014 that values their clients as well as their reputation is going to take a minute to do such a basic thing. 

And as of end of day today, this simple email forward has ensured that over $15,000.00 was properly applied to clients accounts, because they were using the old email address.

So score one for me!  I'm no rocket scientist, but I'm no noob either!