CUSTOMERS.COM® RESEARCH FROM THE PATRICIA SEYBOLD GROUP
They Said What?!
Dealing with Inappropriate and Difficult Discussions in Your Online Community
By Matthew D. Lees, May 22, 2008
NETTING IT OUT
Executives
at organizations taking initial steps—or thinking about taking such steps—toward
online community and social media programs are concerned about the ramifications
of opening up such conversations on the Internet. They ask “What bad things
might our customers (and former customers) say about us?” “What if
people write nasty stuff?” and “Will our brand be damaged?”
While these are indeed valid questions and concerns, they do not need to cause
paralysis. Not only are your customers probably already airing your dirty
laundry online, but most of them simply want to engage with you and each
other in a safe, comfortable, and productive way. Very few people are looking
to cause trouble.
That said, issues do arise. To help you deal with them, we have identified
nine types of inappropriate and difficult posts and discussions that appear
in online communities. These are messages or conversations that are:
1. Offensive (language)
2. Offensive/Abusive (content)
3. Off-Topic
4. Incorrect
5. Negative (about your company, brand, products/and or services)
6. Positive (about the competition)
7. Sensitive/Confidential
8. Advertising/Spam
9. Other (including the unexpected)
Through careful planning and preparation, and prompt, professional action,
you can minimize both the number and the impact of these posts/discussions
on your company and your brand, and even leverage them to your advantage.
These steps include:
- Planning
and Preparation—Creating appropriate policies and making
them visible; configuring your community platform accordingly; making allies
throughout your organization; creating an Action Plan on how you’ll
handle each type of post if/when it arises; being aware of what’s
going on in the community; and writing responses ahead of time.
- Taking
Action—Acknowledging
your customer’s perspective,
grinning and bearing uncomfortable posts; enforcing the ground rules;
acting promptly
(as warranted); being consistent and personable; reporting the reality
to internal stakeholders; and regularly evaluating and improving.
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INTRODUCTION
The bad news is that it is all but a certainty that there will be posts and
conversations within your community that you and your organization consider
to be undesirable, inappropriate, and uncomfortable. Supporting an online
community means opening yourself up to things you might prefer not to see
at all, let alone enable.
But the good news is that, through (1) careful planning and preparation, and
(2) prompt, professional action, you can greatly reduce the unwanted discussions,
learn from them, and even turn them into your advantage.
Terms of Use
© 2008 Autodesk, Inc.
Illustration 1. The Terms of Use in Autodesk’s AliasDesign community consist of eight common-sense items (see http://aliasdesign.autodesk.com/discussions/forumguidelines).
Inappropriate and Difficult, but Not Necessarily Unwanted
Note that we use the adjectives “inappropriate” and “difficult” in
the title of this report, as opposed to the words “unwanted” or “undesirable.” Some
of the posts and conversations described here you do want—or at least
don’t mind getting—as they indicate a healthy community and provide
potential learning experiences. Some difficult messages air sore points (you’d
rather have these out in the open than let them fester, right?) and let you
know what your customers really think about your company (and your competitors).
And some difficult messages give your customers the opportunity to come to
your defense.
So think of the occasional four-letter words, the bit of spam, and the argumentum-ad-hominem
rant as part of the price of being a customer-centric organization. They
are things to be controlled and contained, perhaps, but not fought with an
eye toward elimination.
Your Community Site
There are likely many places online outside of and separate from your own site
where your customers are discussing your company. You might observe these
external communities and perhaps participate occasionally, but you ostensibly
have no control over them. This report, however, focuses on how to deal with
inappropriate and difficult discussions in your community, the one you sponsor,
administer, and manage. You therefore do have a good deal of (although certainly
not absolute) control over what happens in your own community.
Text and Other Forms of Content
Although the focus here is on the written word, what’s discussed below
applies to other forms of content as well. Inappropriate is inappropriate,
whether it’s text, a video clip, photograph, picture, sound file, or
anything else. Some specifics may vary, but the approach to dealing with any
form of content or information should be the same.
It’s Not as Prevalent as You Might Think
Kellie Parker is the Online Community Manager at PC World (http://www.pcworld.com)
and Macworld (http://www.macworld.com). A long-time community moderator and
manager, she spent seven years at LiveWorld, doing live event and community
management. Her specialty is large, public-facing, brand-oriented companies.
(It’s often enlightening to discover what people studied at college,
and see if/how, years later, that background relates to their work. I’m
not sure what this means for a community manager, but, in addition to her
MBA in marketing, Kellie holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice…)
In Kellie’s experience, the tough stuff is just part of the landscape.
She says, “One of the mistakes people make initially is that they go
one of two ways. They either think nothing bad will happen, so they don’t
have any tools or procedures—and they don’t know what to do when
something happens—or they go to the other extreme, and think it will
be all porn and profanity, which cripples them from doing anything. The best
approach is the middle ground. It will probably happen, but not as much as
you think.”
Angela LoSasso, Community & Blogs Strategist for Hewlett-Packard, agrees.
She manages HP’s Home and Home Office community (http://expressioncentersmb.wetpaint.com)
and its Small & Medium Business Printing community (http://expressioncentersmb.wetpaint.com).
She says “In the ten months since we launched these communities, we’ve
had only four or five negative comments, and nearly all have been around a
customer having a usability issue and trying to fix it. I’ve been pleasantly
surprised, because, before we launched, there were concerns that complaints
could derail what we hoped would be a great customer experience. But there
hasn’t been any of that. It’s been overwhelmingly positive. When
problems have come in, we’ve been able to address them directly.”
TYPES OF INAPPROPRIATE AND DIFFICULT ONLINE DISCUSSIONS
We’ve identified the following nine types of inappropriate and difficult
discussions within online communities. In particular, these are posts and/or
discussions that are:
1. Offensive (language)
2. Offensive/Abusive (content)
3. Off-Topic
4. Incorrect
5. Negative (about your company, brand, products, and/or services)
6. Positive (about the competition)
7. Sensitive/Confidential
8. Advertising/Spam
9. Other (including the unexpected)
This report continues...
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