SteemIt needs a help desk. We are a Beta Project with a solid platform, not a lot of bugs, yet users still have questions and no clear place to go for assistance. Github, #help, posts and other places end up catching simple requests and help needs that could be handled more effectively. There are many people who “help” new users. It could be more formalized and coordinated to improve continuity and effectiveness.
Level One Help Desk
Utilizing current Steemians to help augment the full-time staff to deliver timely and effective support in the current environment of limited staff resources.
The goals of adding this initiative to SteemIt are:
- Improve User Retention, User Satisfaction and thus investment
- Measure for improvement - Support Staff to provide focus on effective bug fixes, and development. By tracking each issue end-users report and distributing that information, it can be used to prioritize which if any bugs are impacting users and what features or frustrations can be solved with improved features or development issues
- Coordinate current efforts to resolve issues with less effort
Responsibilities:
- Greet all “first posts” & #Introduceyourself posts
- Requirements: Develop a way to “see” all first posts (notifications) Estimated efforts 4 hours.
- Track all interactions on a web-based CRM platform that can be viewed by TBD (I can set this up)
- Assist Users who attempt to “sign-up” and fail. (requires notifications and access to communication tools)
- Answer or escalate general user questions (escalate to whom?)
- Build a knowledgebase of FAQs (based off of real data, on the actual questions asked.)
- Focus on the user experience
- Identify ways to leverage the community to help support other marketing programs.
- Communicate with end-users regarding known bugs and their resolution. (Such as the 4-5 tag issue we recently had.)
- (possible duty) New Release Notes and Q&A on new features dropped by SteemIt, Inc.
Deliverables:
- Weekly reports regarding support activities
- Consistent tracking and reporting of user retention
Requirements
- Report, query or notifications of the “first” post from any account new or old.
- Report, query or notification of failed sign ups.
- Contact information and escalation route for issue resolution
Tasks
- Setup a support account such as @support @help
- Create a link on SteemIt for a Help Link which would take people to the #help chat room on rocket chat.
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This post is meant to be a conversation starter... What are your thoughts? I think the community is already doing a lot of work to help new users as they come on board. Can we take the same efforts and gain more from coordinating them?
I really need help I am getting an error that says I don't have posting authority what does that mean please help...How come I can comment but I can't post
Hi Tiffany, that is weird. Can you tell me exactly what it says?
First, log in and out of SteemIt... second... What frontend are you using? I see you have plenty of bandwidth. I feel like this is some sort of issue with a specific post... Give me more information and or a screen shot and I will see who we can find to help you.
You know what its working now...I think it was my friend's email address steemit might not like it...I had to reset the entire post and something said to remove her info and now it works...I mean I have been trying for hours smh and I finally got it...thank you so much for responding so quickly your awesome sending you love and light at God Speed
I do agree it is a great idea. Resteemed.
Two questions:
My thought was to start with volunteers. People are helping out anyway, we would just give them a process and tools.
I don't know. ;)
Excellent thoughts on the legality issues.
Thank you for the support.
We don't want to do this yet. Soon, but not yet. Interviewing, screening, and training volunteers and defining processes and support flows for them is not something we have the bandwidth for—yet.
Steemit is in beta. When we come out of beta, this is something we'll address properly.
Good to know. Thank you for answering, as I wasn't sure where to head with it.
Without getting any feedback from SteemIt, Inc.
We are in the process of scaling up the team and once it's done we'll have some resources to devote to building a knowledge base that people can use for self-help, or that a support desk team can use to assist users.
We're also presently redesigning the signup process, which should smooth things out too once we ship that bit, making it require less support (and making it easier for users to complete/boosting conversions, too!).
I agree entirely. This is a great idea but who will pay for it. I am a massive fan of spending/investing as long as there is a return/benefit. The only way I would suggest a help desk is done is pure voluntary. If the help someone gives is of value they are rewarded the same way as any other post in Steem. There could easily be an area to go to where people could post a "help request" and anyone in the community could answer for free. If the answer is useful people simply upvote like any other post. It is a great idea that you have suggested and keep plugging away at it. Stephen
Well Stephenkendal, I am glad you asked. I think it would be staffed with volunteers. Real volunteers, not people who are paid in votes. It is in all of our best interest to support steemit with our time.
Some of us curate for free, help new users, and post content that doesn't receive automatic voting. We do it just because we are interested in the future of steem.
I think this is a great idea @whatsup. Are you aware that there are some fairly extensive FAQs? I believe @shenanigator is the writer. He's currently revising and updating them.
The updates should be done within a couple days. Check out my blog to see what I've done so far.
Yes, there are lot's of current people doing great work. @shenanigator, @shawdowspub @sykochica @steeemitiq and others are doing lot's of great work. I just think we could get together and coordinate things better. Take the same efforts and maximize the number of users helped.
I hope to see this realized! good luck!
I've seen one or two people attempt this ,but it is def. a much needed idea.
It would be hard to be successful without community buy-in and a bit of support from Devs. Otherwise, there is nowhere to escalate the issues to. 1800NotHelp. ;)
I think it's a great idea!
Excellent
Really great idea. You got my support. Let me know what I can do to help :)
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