Confidence answering forum questions

Hi everyone

Recently I surveyed colleagues who answer questions in our public forums. Now to set the scene:

  • Colleagues are not obligated to answer forum questions as part of their roles, it is mainly done when they have time to browse and answer where they can
  • We changed the wording of Verified Answer to Accepted Answer to put the responsibility on the member who asked the question in terms of any actions they take based on answers provided

In the survey, I received a couple of comments that indicated some hesitation on participating in a public setting:

  • 'Not willing / confident / feel enabled to speak on behalf of Arm.'
  • 'Some people may be unaware of them, or think it is not their responsibility, or they are worried about answering (publicly) correctly, or they don't want their name publicly visible'

Has anyone else encountered this with colleagues supporting their forums and has anyone taken steps to mitigate this?

Thanks

Oli

Parents
  • Hi Oli

    Yes we see this all the time with colleagues. Many are really reluctant to participate in our online community for the exact same reasons you mention. They're concerned that they will say something wrong and 'get into trouble' with their manager or they don't want to put their name out there and then get bombarded by follow up questions or get into a conversational situation with someone that they then can't handle. 

    Quite often I'll prod a colleague in a particular team for a response to a question in our forum that relates to their role or business area/department but rather than respond to the question themselves, they'll give the response to the community manager i.e. me, to post it in the community under my name. Pensive There's also an underlying attitude that anything that happens in the online community is the sole responsibility of the Community Manager and the Admin team so they don't feel the need to get involved. 

    We've mitigated this slightly by providing a profile in our community that others can impersonate. So for example a profile called 'Customer Service Team' or suchlike and then enable members of the team to impersonate that account and post up responses under the 'Customer Service Team' profile. It also helps in cases where staff members leave because the content isn't 'theirs' so it remains on the site and still under the profile if the team members personal account is deleted.  Also means that I can swap out the team members if they change roles or new team members are recruited. Slight smile

    Lisa

  • That's an interesting solution, thanks for sharing in such detail! Do you find with the Customer Service profile that is hard to track who may have said what? For example, if you want to track how many answers a particular colleague may have provided? Also, how would the notifications work for something like that? Where do they go?

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