Allow community team to see if a member has read their direct message

I like this idea. It gives the moderators more insights about the information they share. If a moderator knows that a message was seen, a different kind of follow-up process can take place.  

Thank you for the idea Emil! We opened it for votes.

I understand why it would be useful to show if the user is online / read the message but it might be weird if it is not mutual. I understand mutual visibility is not desirable.
I wonder how would you desire to use the information that a user is online or not? Also, I’m thinking about how this feature would prevent spam and harassment?

Hi @Ati Somos 

Thanks for your response, I believe that in order to create an engaged community, the platform needs to pull from great features currently used on social media platforms. Especially for Communities like ours, where we want our community to be a place where members come to hangout, conversate and read cool articles and not just for help and support. 

1. Having the ability for the community team to see when a message has been read is vital as it can help in cases where a member claims they had not received a direct message or have not read a message we have sent them. (This will act as proof for us when dealing with difficult situations)
2. By knowing whether or not a member has read a message we can see if there is a need to follow up on something. If a member has read our message but not replied, it is likely they have resolved their issue or no longer need assistance
3. In addition, it would be great to export data on this on how many users actually use the direct message function, this will help communities to think of ways of how to make providing assistance more easier for customers or to bring awareness to the direct message feature. 
4. The reason why i suggest that there is functionality to turn off the ability to have a customer see if a moderator is online or have read their message would be to avoid harassment and spam use. In addition, it is likely that depending on the moderation team’s size, a different moderator may pick up an issue and help someone who was being helped by a different moderator due to an escalation for example. So it would stop them bei8ng able to see if the initial moderator is online and harassing them when someone else is now dealing with their case. 

Hope that helps and makes sense. 

Emil