Mirroring The Words Of Your Members

Simple tip.

If you want someone to respond more positively, use their language.

It can be overwhelming to respond to 100+ questions per day. Especially when the majority of questions fall within a minority of topics. The temptation is to develop a standard response to these questions. These responses are accurate and require the least amount of time and mental energy.

The better you get at this the more you resemble a customer service rep than a professional community manager. That’s not a good experience for the member who wants a personalized response.

You can aspire to be more than this. You can aspire to make each individual feel they were listened to, that they had an impact, that they are not alone, and they are dealing with real people.

A great tip here is to mirror the exact words a member uses back to them in each response.

If a member refers to something as a software problem, a bug, problem, flaw, broken, not working, a glitch, an error, a fault etc…use that phrase back to them. Even if it’s to assure the member it’s not.

e.g. “I don’t think this is a software glitch, I think it’s more likely…”

Once you begin mirroring the words of members, they begin to feel they are getting a unique, personalized, non-robotic experience.