“Apparently, ‘kindness’ is a requirement for using Get Satisfaction.”
So retorted someone on Get Satisfaction this week, as he accused us of censoring him. We hadn’t censored him (he’s still here!), but we did kindly encourage him to engage with a company rep who had been reaching out to him directly, instead of simply jumping into conversations to complain and then jumping out again; and again; and again.
This Get Satisfaction user is a long-time critic of the company. In fact, when you look at their Get Satisfaction dashboard (which highlights their activity), it’s pretty much a long (very long) string of criticism and complaints about the company, with no participation in any other sections of Get Satisfaction. This person holds a singular and distinguished record in our system: 0 topics started, but hundreds of replies to other people’s topics — nearly all of them angry — and all of them about that one hated company. It makes you wonder if this person is actually a customer of the company. Who would continue to pay for a service they hate that much?
There are a lot of disgruntled people like this on the Internet. Some of them obviously relish the mask of anonymity they can adopt in online places. It allows them to engage with people in an unabashedly negative way. They’re the flamers and haters and stokers of emotion. The reason they do these things isn’t really knowable (and probably isn’t all that fascinating if you were to dig down into it), but they can really kill a conversation. Just like in real life.
But where is the line they cross that makes them a troll? And, is it reasonable to expect everyone to play nice on Get Satisfaction?
This anonymously angry poster sparked a discussion this week in that vein, both on the Get Satisfaction site and in the Get Satisfaction office. We have a public set of community guidelines for dealing with spammers and trolls, but the subject always provokes discussion. It turned into a week of pondering how to keep everyone striving toward productive solutions to their problems, while avoiding the use of that tricky sword with the sharp handle: censorship.
Our conclusion (and this is no bolt of lightning from the heavens) is that it’s really all about context. You don’t sing your favorite song out loud while you’re in the library. You respect the value you get out of that place. You accept that you have to be quiet and mindful in that setting. The trade-off — knowledge, information, entertainment, in exchange for polite, quiet behavior — is worth it. If it’s not, you probably don’t go to the library.
We want to be known as a place where people work toward being productive, where everyone participates in finding innovative ways to turn negatives around. We certainly don’t mandate kindness on Get Satisfaction, but we also don’t want to be known as a place where people simply complain. (There are a lot of those kind of sites out there already.) To shape conversation toward that kind of outcome, we do sometimes have to encourage people to be less outwardly confrontational. We don’t want to overreach on this point and end up being overly touchy-feely in our language and attitude. We’re not trying to recreate Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood over here. But we are trying to get things done, for both customers and companies.
Dealing with trolls — and deciding what makes a troll — is an ongoing process at Get Satisfaction, and we’d love to hear what you think about it. If you can spot ‘em a mile away and want to share your thoughts about trolls, join us at our SXSW Meetup this Tuesday for our 1:30-2:15 p.m. session, “The Secrets of Managing Customer Communities.”
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Help us shape the discussion by bringing your troll experiences to the table. But, please: no stink bombs or bullhorns.
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I’m reminded of a section in “We-think: Mass Innovation not Mass Production” a book by Mr. Charles Leadbeater. The section heading is “The Beach Ethic” and it goes…
“On the most popular beaches people spend all day in close proximity but they are generally civil and considerate. They do not interfere with one another and disputes between neighbours are rare. Excessive noise is frowned upon. People generally avoid stepping on one another’s towels or invading impromptu football pitches. Other than the odd lifeguard to look after safety no one is in authority. Perhaps precisely because there is no one in control people take it upon themselves to self-regulate. Parents look out for one another’s children. Complexity theorist have a fancy name for this: they call it emergence,when an overall order emerges from a system with many participants; no one person is in charge; each participant is adjusting to their local conditions (the people on the towel next to them); yet a stable organisation emerges from these thousands of interconnected decisions.”
I think Getsatisfaction is one of the nicest beaches around!
This essay (”Why ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ is wrong”) is thought-provoking:
http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/
A friend of mine heads the customer service dept. for a biotech company with a consumer product. She’s had repeated interactions with one customer who has flown off the handle a few times — most recently leaving 20+ voicemail messages in a row over the weekend, dialing random extensions when that didn’t work (each time leaving vitriolic diatribes), and finally tracking down someone’s home phone! The opportunity cost alone of the two or three days my friend solely devoted to palliating that situation cost more than the whole lifetime of this customer’s contract will ever deliver.