Hubspot has a feature that allows automatic email replies (e.g. out of office) to be auto-spammed. The aim is to declutter inboxes, which is sensible. However, this is flawed: after a conversation is spammed, if a contact later responds (e.g. after returning from holiday), their reply is associated with the spammed conversation and remains hidden in the spam folder. This means we are unlikely to see or respond to it. A ticket is also not created, so the reply remains invisible from support agents. As a general principle, it is correct that a spammed conversation remains spammed even if further replies are received (e.g. scams, unsolicited sales). However, the flaw is that automatic responses are not spam and therefore should not be treated as such. Automatic replies are received only where we contact a customer, prospect etc. Even low-quality responses, such as automatic replies, should never be treated as spam. A simple solution: do not auto-spam automatic responses, auto-trash instead. This would resolve the issue as follows: Conversations: it is already true that conversations in trash are re-opened and moved to the inbox when a customer replies, meaning we see them. Tickets: assuming each conversation follows current logic and automatically creates a ticket, it's already true that a ticket with only one conversation is auto-deleted when that conversation is trashed. When the conversation is untrashed, the ticket is un-deleted. This would mean our support agents see tickets only when there is a legitimate reply. Hubspot has disappointly confirmed that there are no plans to change the auto-spam behaviour. They have suggested that auto-spam be disabled as a workaround, but this is not ideal because it will result in cluttered inboxes and numerous irrelevant tickets. We have decided to disable the auto-spam feature and accept the pain of cluttered inboxes. We will attempt to deal with tickets via workflows but this is inconvenient. It would be far easier to auto-trash these tickets as I have suggested.
...read more