In a support community, the community manager shouldn’t be dealing with spam or regurgitating information from one place (published product information) to members of the community.
Cheaper moderators and machines can do that.
A community manager should participate if they can only add remarkable value. That might include:
- Taking the time to truly understand the problem. This means asking additional questions, clarifying the problem, getting to the core problem and ensuring your solution will uncover it.
- Ensuring the poster feels they are treated as an individual. This means empathizing with them, being specific to their situation, and responding personally to the information they have shared and not situations ‘like this’ in general.
- Closing the loop. Ensuring that the person with the problem had their problem resolved. That means checking in that the solution worked and there aren’t any additional problems. It means ensuring that any promises made are kept.
- Escalating the issues that matter. Knowing how to take the information being shared and identify trends or escalate problems to the right people to get a resolution.
If you’re not going to take the time or effort to do any all of the above, it’s best to let the moderators and machines do the work instead.
