Hi, we are new to the community forum world and I am looking ahead to when we launch next year. I currently run the Social Customer Service team and we will be training half the team to become Community moderators. However, I'm interested in how others have structured their teams, how much time did the moderators spend on the community in the early days etc.
Any learnings you can share would be gratefully received!
Thanks
Darran
How do you best integrate or structure your moderator team?
Hi Darran, welcome to the community! In my experience including all afterwork a moderator will on average be able to do about 2 to 5 cases per hour.
When the community starts ramping up and you'll be able to assign dedicated moderators to the community it's highly advised to do so. It will give them the opportunity to be fully aware of all the context in conversation and become a familiar face which helps in creating and maintaining the relation with (super)users.
When the community starts ramping up and you'll be able to assign dedicated moderators to the community it's highly advised to do so. It will give them the opportunity to be fully aware of all the context in conversation and become a familiar face which helps in creating and maintaining the relation with (super)users.
Hi Darren,
How cool that you're going to launch a community next year!
In my moderating days, i've been a dedicated moderator and an 'of and on' moderator. In the second role I had to answer Facebook and Twitter posts on one day, and be on our community the other. That was difficult. Not only because I just have more 'love' for a forum, but also because I missed a whole day (sometimes 2) of conversation, context, fun and inside jokes.
I would give the same advice as Hugo did; if you are able to assign dedicated moderators, do so!
In my current team, I don't have the option to dedicate someone to our community. Little tip: if you aren't able to dedicate a moderator, make sure they do visit the community during the day, every day. Even if it's only for 10-15 minutes. They will know what is 'hot and happening' and won't feel as if the missed anything.
Good luck with the launch next year!
- Angela
How cool that you're going to launch a community next year!
In my moderating days, i've been a dedicated moderator and an 'of and on' moderator. In the second role I had to answer Facebook and Twitter posts on one day, and be on our community the other. That was difficult. Not only because I just have more 'love' for a forum, but also because I missed a whole day (sometimes 2) of conversation, context, fun and inside jokes.
I would give the same advice as Hugo did; if you are able to assign dedicated moderators, do so!
In my current team, I don't have the option to dedicate someone to our community. Little tip: if you aren't able to dedicate a moderator, make sure they do visit the community during the day, every day. Even if it's only for 10-15 minutes. They will know what is 'hot and happening' and won't feel as if the missed anything.
Good luck with the launch next year!
- Angela
Hi Angela
Thanks so much for the feedback, really appreciate it!!
We will have dedicated moderators at launch, they are getting involved in the project now so they start to get a feel for what we are doing ahead of go live and feel part of it!!
My colleague Lucy OVO is on this forum, she will be one of my moderators, she posted a topic on that very area, so it would be great if you could stop by and give her any advice you can share!!!
Thanks
Darran 🙂
Thanks so much for the feedback, really appreciate it!!
We will have dedicated moderators at launch, they are getting involved in the project now so they start to get a feel for what we are doing ahead of go live and feel part of it!!
My colleague Lucy OVO is on this forum, she will be one of my moderators, she posted a topic on that very area, so it would be great if you could stop by and give her any advice you can share!!!
Thanks
Darran 🙂
Hi Darren,
No problem! That's why we are here right 🙂 I'm glad I could help and I will definitely check Lucy's topic.
- Angela
No problem! That's why we are here right 🙂 I'm glad I could help and I will definitely check Lucy's topic.
- Angela
Hi Angela
Yes, its great!! Thanks so much, I know Lucy will appreciate the support!!
We are all excited, lots of work to do, we love your customer support homepage by the way, we are looking at a similar integration to combine our customer support areas!!
Keep in touch!
Darran
Yes, its great!! Thanks so much, I know Lucy will appreciate the support!!
We are all excited, lots of work to do, we love your customer support homepage by the way, we are looking at a similar integration to combine our customer support areas!!
Keep in touch!
Darran
Thanks! Nice to see that you've taken the time to have a look :D
It's a lot of work, but a lot of fun work! If you're excited and enthusiastic, you're at least halfway there. That's how I see it anyway ;)
Let's keep in touch indeed.
-Angela
It's a lot of work, but a lot of fun work! If you're excited and enthusiastic, you're at least halfway there. That's how I see it anyway ;)
Let's keep in touch indeed.
-Angela
I'm a bit late to this one, but thought I'd share a few thoughts. 🙂 There are definitely different ways to set up a community team, one of which is indeed having dedicated or semi-dedicated 'moderators' who take care of all day-to-day interactions on the community.
An alternative approach that's perhaps most worth considering when your community (and community team) is becoming larger, is to look at separating out some of the roles and responsibilities. The simplest separation here is probably Community Manager, Moderator and Subject Matter Expert. The latter two (or all three) are often combined in the beginning, but as you scale I think it can be useful to start separating them out.
The skills and experience required to moderate effectively, which includes interacting with superusers, handling infractions, tagging/categorising and making escalations are not necessarily needed to the same extent by those that are responding to customer questions. And conversely, to conduct pure moderation you may not need to be a big product or subject matter expert So you can have some folks, probably part of a front-line Care team, handling questions and leave 'moderators' to be specialised in monitoring and taking care of the health of the community. This is how we're going to be approaching our communities, as the 'transactional' work moves to our front-line teams, who are becoming multi-skilled and able to handle interactions across email, phone, social and community.
Just some thoughts. 🙂
An alternative approach that's perhaps most worth considering when your community (and community team) is becoming larger, is to look at separating out some of the roles and responsibilities. The simplest separation here is probably Community Manager, Moderator and Subject Matter Expert. The latter two (or all three) are often combined in the beginning, but as you scale I think it can be useful to start separating them out.
The skills and experience required to moderate effectively, which includes interacting with superusers, handling infractions, tagging/categorising and making escalations are not necessarily needed to the same extent by those that are responding to customer questions. And conversely, to conduct pure moderation you may not need to be a big product or subject matter expert So you can have some folks, probably part of a front-line Care team, handling questions and leave 'moderators' to be specialised in monitoring and taking care of the health of the community. This is how we're going to be approaching our communities, as the 'transactional' work moves to our front-line teams, who are becoming multi-skilled and able to handle interactions across email, phone, social and community.
Just some thoughts. 🙂
Hi Kenneth
Really appreciate the input. Very helpful. We will actually have this structure from the start although appreciate when we launch they may well blur as we all get stuck in to get the engagement levels up.
Our focus is on Support and the forum being there to support Customer Service so we will have experienced customer service people moderating. We will be using my Social CS team and training them to be moderators to keep tone of voice consistent when we need to interact etc.
Again really appreciate the reply, thanks so much! I'll keep you posted on how we get on.
Thanks for the advice.
Darran
Really appreciate the input. Very helpful. We will actually have this structure from the start although appreciate when we launch they may well blur as we all get stuck in to get the engagement levels up.
Our focus is on Support and the forum being there to support Customer Service so we will have experienced customer service people moderating. We will be using my Social CS team and training them to be moderators to keep tone of voice consistent when we need to interact etc.
Again really appreciate the reply, thanks so much! I'll keep you posted on how we get on.
Thanks for the advice.
Darran
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