We think that each community should have guidelines for non-community team members that are working for your company. Most companies either host their employee guidelines in a centralized page (like a Confluence page), or make it part of their internal onboarding routine to get familiar with the community and it’s rules.
In the end, it is very important that your colleagues understand what they are allowed to do on the community (and what not). For example, it should be clear to them that it is a public community for end-users, and not internal community. We’ve seen often enough that some colleagues (for whatever reason) cannot tell the difference. The last thing you want to happen is that your colleague accidentally "leaks" internal information to the public, or that promises are being made on behalf of the entire company.
Before we start: Make your colleagues visible
Now this is not exactly a best practice for your colleagues, but more for you: You have to ensure that your colleagues are easy to identify as people who work for your company. Otherwise their messages might look weird, or even worse, users will suspect that more users on the community are in fact undercover representatives of the company. This could undermine the trustworthiness of information on your community, especially while discussing sensitive subjects.
Ideally, you give them a special employee rank via a custom role, but you can also give a user a custom user title (via the profile page of a user in Control). Most communities use titles such as “company name employee”, or name specifically the department / field of expertise of a colleague. This is not as scalable however as a generic employee rank.
Some communities ask their colleagues to send a mail to the community team once they have registered, but there are also ways to automate this, e.g. by assigning custom user roles via the SSO login.
Now that we have covered that, let’s have a look at the 10 tips for guidelines for your colleagues:
1. Be aware of the potential impact
Remember that you are posting in a public community - you are not just chatting with a random customer, but dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of other visitors are reading along. Never underestimate the future audience and impact of your words. Try to be clear and unambiguously in your choice of words, so that users will not twist and turn it to read something completely different in it.
2. Never promise anything
Once you made a statement, it is nearly impossible to paddle back from that. So if you promise the update will be available tomorrow, it will damage your authenticity if it is not. I’ve even had it that some users will start asking for the promised update the first minute after midnight. So never (ever!) promise anything.
3. Don't claim that you know when you don't
If you are not sure if certain information is actually correct - don’t use it. Or at least state that you are speculating / cannot ensure your information is correct. Worst case scenario it could have bigger negative impact on your customers or on your company. Again it will hurt the trustworthiness of other official information or statements if they caught you lying - the internet never forgets.
4. Explain & educate where possible
Even if the person that asked a question seems to know everything about a subject - some people who will read a topic later might not have the same level of knowledge. So, it does not hurt to take it one step back and explain the why and the how in a little bit more detail. By doing so, people will remember that the community is a place where they can learn more and come back more often (and might not be too shy to ask those “noob questions”).
5. Don't feel forced to repeat yourself
If information is already available (in the same thread or in other areas on the community), don’t repeat yourself. Especially during outages, where customers tend to ask the same questions over and over, don’t waste too much time on repeating the same thing over and over. Rather focus on helping with new questions / adding value somewhere where it does more impact.
Tip: Users often keep asking the same question because they are not satisfied with the current level of information or it’s content. It is not wrong to moderate this, should it hinder other users from a positive experience. In essence, it is spam and conflicting with your terms and conditions.
6. Don’t share / request private information in public
Sometimes you will need to get more information from a user, e.g. to troubleshoot a problem or to better categorize product feedback. However it is very important that you don’t ask (or share) users personal information in a publicly accessible topic. Either follow up by sending a private message to that user, or ask the user to send a private message to you (via your profile page) so that the information can be exchanged.
7. Know when to say no
Often, employees on the community are afraid to say no to users, simply because they are in public and don’t want to disappoint people. But this should not be holding you back from saying no - most users rather have a clear no than no clear information at all. If users don’t know that certain changes are not planned / will not come, then they will keep coming back to you, asking for an update. So if you don’t say no and manage the expectations properly, it will continue to steal the time and nerves of you and your users.
8. You can say that you don't have an update
One of the biggest mistakes that I see is that employees are too shy to say that they don’t have an update on a subject when being asked to provide one. Just like with the previous item, it is much better to share that you have no update then not to respond at all. By saying that, you will at least show them that you are there and that you are still following the discussion. How else should they know that you actually care?
9. Be transparent when you can
Especially in outage situations, users appreciate to receive more information. It can help a lot to manage the expectations or perspective of a user if you explain a user the complexity of certain matters. Non-technical users might think you just need to flip a switch, while actually it involves an entire series of steps before you are able to resolve an issue or achieve an improvement. If you know for sure that there is no risk involved to share more background information, you should do so as users will appreciate this transparency and remember that the community is a place where they can learn more.
10. Put things in perspective
Sometimes, users have a focus on their specific problem or request and can forget that there are other things your company needs to focus on as well. So it can help tremendously to explain that e.g. there are other issues or improvements your company needs to prioritize, or that your company has a long-term vision and therefore also needs to work on the improvements it has defined for itself.
Please bear in mind that these are more generic guidelines for you and your colleagues to engage with your users. There might be other, company-specific guidelines that you want to add to this list. And if you should have guidelines that you share with your colleagues which have not been covered here yet, then please let us know in the comments. :)
