Giving a face to your feedback

There's a story (probably apocryphal) of a woman who was driving to a job interview and running late. To make an already stressful situation worse,  another driver cut her up. Incensed, she swore at him and made a typical road-rage gesture then sped off. She made it to the appointment with just a few minutes to spare and took a second to compose herself outside the door. When she walked into the meeting room she recognised her interviewer immediately... it was the driver of the other car.

I was reminded of this when speaking to a communications manager about why she didn't like discussion boards on their intranet. "People are much harsher online than they are face to face, the whole tone is just more negative somehow", she said.

I think she had a good point - its the anonymity of road rage and discussion boards that make people more blunt. Possibly they're also more inclined to exaggerate a point to make sure they've been 'heard' because theres often no response either.

The same thing happens when an intranet has a link to "feedback@thisorg.com". As a portal manager I had to remind myself that when users didn't hold back on expressing their frustration, it wasn't personal. But then I was keeping it impersonal by just giving them a box to fill in.

We therefore always recommend that feedback mechanisms should make it clear who the real person is behind it. Give the real email address of a site owner, or call the discussion board "ask Jack..." rather than "Your feedback" and make it clear how quickly you will respond.

Comments

[Nic Price]

I hope the interviewer apologised for cutting her up ;-)

Perhaps harshness online can just be a matter of people not being used to the medium.

Perhaps you could exchange harshness for honesty.

Surely it's the communication manager's role to help people learn how to communicate well online. Maybe they could lead by example.

Then again we could prohibit driving because of road rage.