How to Manage Customers Using Slack Community as a Support Forum Without Hurting Engagement | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

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How to Manage Customers Using Slack Community as a Support Forum Without Hurting Engagement | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

Sofia Rodriguez Mata
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Can you tell us more about your member's onboarding and your moderation practices on the Slack? What does your partnership with the support team look like? For example, do members fill out a form before joining? Where do they encounter the guidelines? Are the guidelines pinned in channels?
Christine Newman
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I would definitely reply directing them to open a support ticket. I’d also take a moment to understand why they are coming to your channel—is there friction with opening a support ticket the right way that they are trying to get around?
Justine Woo
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Sofia Rodriguez Mata They fill out a form and I invite them to the channel (the invite asks them to review the guidelines). Upon entering, they get an automated bot msg that welcomes them and links to the community guidelines. The guidelines are also pinned in the channel. Support/CSC generally don't reply in the community. It's supposed to be peer-to-peer learning. Christine Newman I guess they're just seeing if others are having the same issue. But it turns the community into what seems like a complaint forum
Gabrielle Herrera
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We run into this too, and have the same automations in place. But since I sit in CS, I have a little more leverage/ability to offer a support while redirecting them for future needs.
Sofia Rodriguez Mata
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Thanks for the context, Justine! +1 to the suggestion to reply directly. Get a template in place so it's an easy copy + paste for these instances. It can definitely be a more human response to set expectations and explain why they're being pointed to another channel. If you notice repeat offenders you can also consider temporary bans (if it's in your CoC). I know we're in a CMA channel so community might not be your full time role and you might not have the bandwidth for these next suggestions. I would take this as a signal and...
think through hosting community office hours where I partner with support or CSC to join 1/month and answer questions (think reddit AMA or webinars).
think through an automation to create a support ticket from Slack (the members don't care about your org structure, they just want help on their question and this is a step in that direction).
think through my current rituals on the Slack community. Do I need to lean more into content and events so there's something more appealing for members to be in the Slack for? Are they coming here for support because the other things happening in the Slack aren't as attractive.
Justine Woo
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Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions Sofia Rodriguez Mata! We do host monthly meet-ups, hands-on workshops, and product updates in the community to make it more engaging. But it's all one direction (we're mostly relaying info to the customers). When the customers post, it's usually about bugs Any way, really appreciate your thoughts!
Sofia Rodriguez Mata
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Good luck! Good tips from others here as well.
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Abbas Safdari
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A little late to the party here but in my experience, a lot of members aren't trying to misuse the community, they are often asking if anyone else is seeing this, I like Sofia Rodriguez Mata suggestion to add an integration with your ticketing platform and then push tickets into there. It could help to have a Slack bot that answers any obvious questions by referencing your knowledge-base and keeping a seperate channel in Slack for support questions (so people naturally are directed there) - that way you can at least stop them from asking questions all over the place.
Justine Woo
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Thanks for sharing, Abbas Safdari! Totally agree that people aren't trying to misuse it. Your suggestion about having a bot to answer question is very interesting!
Abbas Safdari
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Glad that was helpful 😄 Justine Woo, I have seen bots work well as a first pass, especially for repeat questions or anything that should clearly be routed to support. We are building a bot for our own community, it's not on Slack tho Are the posts you are getting mostly repetitive, or are they unique account-specific issues?
Justine Woo
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they're usually account-specific issues but there are some general questions once in a while
Abbas Safdari
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If most of them are account-specific, then I would probably optimize more for prioritization and sorting the questions. A bot can still be useful, but mostly as a traffic director - since your community is on Slack, you could create a Slackbot to do this and send queries to Intercom/Zendesk or whatever supporting tool you use
Stephanie Porter
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I'll echo what others have said. We shut it down at my last company not by asking them to open a ticket, but by explaining that if they can provide their ticket number, we will escalate on their behalf and encouraged them to also escalate. This gets things where they need to be and is a supportive way to get them into the right process.
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