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Aug
01

Tales from my Community Manager Mailbox … a little humour now and then helps.

By | issues, members

6 Comments

Online communities are  on 24/7 and because of this many members expect us Community Managers to be on 24/7 as well. Particuulary in my case because my community has members all over world in many different time zones. I spread my moderators around the time zones so we have as much cover as possible, but there are certain things my moderators do not have moderator privileges for, and so some things just have to wait until I am firing all cylinders.

What frustrates me the most is the expectation of some community members that things should happen instantaneously. For various reasons, and depending on the issue, that just isn’t possible.  So when I get emails like this landing in my inbox I have to resist the urge to fire a blunt response back:

Hi, I have advertised 2 cars on your site today, how long does it take for ads to go live….!!!!

I generally respond with a polite email and answer their query, but when possible I’ll also try and inject a little humour into my responses to get my point across without being rude.

I’m in the US and can’t approve ads while I am sleeping, … although it would be pretty cool if I could. All this to say our site is a 24/7 site with members all over world,  we are all in different time zones and active at different times. So give us a little time to get our ducks in a row, have our breakfast and make a cup of tea and you ad will be live pretty soon. :)

Thanks
Sue
It must of done the trick because I received the following back:
Cheers sue x
Crafting my response really helped turn my morning around I can tell you, no one likes to open their email first thing in the morning and find complaints, and as community managers we can’t always please all of the people all of the time. So inject some humour when you can. It helps to get a point across in a non-confrontational way, and  lets the other person know that there is a real-life person on the other side of the email, and hopefully turns a negative experience into a positive one, not only for the recipient, but yourself.

 

Picture via CC courtesy of Matthew Grapengieser

Comments

  1. Tia Fisher says:
    August 1, 2012 at 8:57 am

    Hi Sue

    It recently worked for 02 as well! http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/o2-s-twitter-team-taming-trolls-or-provoking-customers/154478

    Tia

    Reply
    • Sue says:
      August 1, 2012 at 9:08 pm

      That’s terrific. I so agree about the personality thing too. I know when we’ve had tech issue, members don’t like the corporate standard responses to their concerns. Love those O2 tweets. Must have been tough being on the end of some of those tweets and they handled it with aplomb.

      Reply
  2. Rosemary ONeill says:
    August 1, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    That is so true. Humor disarms people because they aren’t expecting it, and it turns you from a faceless drone into a real living person. It’s shocking how easily community members can forget that there are actual humans behind the scenes.

    Reply
  3. Sherrie Rohde says:
    August 2, 2012 at 1:50 am

    Haha, well done Sue! :)

    Reply
  4. Chase Clemons says:
    August 4, 2012 at 11:08 pm

    Love that email. Finding the right balance between using humor and coming across rude is an art. Too much in either direction will leave a customer frustrated. But your email nailed it. Nice job.

    Reply

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