Online listeners not actually online (problem and solution)
So I was approached by an awesome listener and asked to share their idea and keep their anonymity. Their idea is as follows --
It can be really hard for listeners to find their own listeners. I think, as listeners, we can be pretty picky when it comes to finding a listener for ourselves. The other day a friend and fellow listener really needed someone to speak to because they were feeling low. This listener logged into their member account, and headed over to browse listeners. It took themabout half an hour to find a listener. Theymessaged about 5 listeners who were listed as online, and got no response from any of them. To be fair, this person may not have waited the entire two minutes, but we are looking for someone who is both online and likely to help support themthrough theirissue. It is very frustrating when someone is listed as online, but they don?t respond to your request or respond but they are busy (which didn?t happen as often). The same person even asked in the Community Room, but due to wanting to protect their anonymity, didn?t request anyone who offered to listen to them.
I know it is possible that they might be taking a few requests, or got busy and stepped away. Life happens. They may not notice that they have private requests, because both bars are now yellow. But there should be more awareness of the ability to change your status and it should be used as effectively as possible.
The suggestion given to solve this problem is as follows: If a listener receives a Personal Request and misses it, it is counted as a missed request in our personal response rate (as indicated on the third pie chart on the dashboard). When that miss is marked, a friendly, unintrusive pop up should come up to let the listener know the Private Request was missed.
?Listenername, you missed a Personal Request. Remember, it?s really important to accept these. If you can no longer take any more personal requests, please change your status to busy or offline. Thanks! :)? At this point the listener can then press okay to close out the pop up.
If the listener misses 3 Personal Requests in a row, their status should be automated to switch to offline without the listener manually doing so. When this happens, another message will pop up to let them know, perhaps saying :?Listenername, you have now missed 3 Personal Requests in a row. Your status has been changed to offline. When you are available again, please feel free to change it back to online. Thank you!?
If anyone has any feedback, questions, or concerns, please let us know by responding here. Thanks! :)
I love this idea! It's frustrating when you go through listener after listener and no one responds.
I agree with this @Jaelin.
One of the things that we often recommend is to browse for a listener however if they're online but don't reply, then it's difficult. I think a lot of it is a lack of understanding of the three statuses (Online, Busy, Offline), most especially among newer listeners but you're right in that there could be other reasons also such as just forgetting to change the status.
Assuming that such a fix was put into the pipeline, in the interim, what I think we can do to help is the following:
1. I'll make a general post in the Listener Category about the use of statuses
2. As members of the welcome committee, we can push forward when to use each of the three listener statuses
3. As mentors, we can advise our mentees about the three statuses and when to use them
4. We can let other listeners know through the listener chatrooms
Thanks! :)
@Jaelin I absolutely love the idea, if a member/guest is feeling low and they don't get responses from listener then it can be frustrating and upsetting. It should be an welcome additional for all listeners I think!
@Roadie Of coruse, we should propagate the meaning and use of this listener's status, I'll denfintly add to my welcoming message and let other know in listener chatrooms (:
@Jaelinlovethis idea! Not much to say other than I completely support this. Not getting a response can be really frustrating and if that experience is happening over and over it doesn't make for a very good view of the site.
Thank you all for your support on this. I forgot to tag @laura ! :D
@Jaelin,
Overall, I believe this is a great idea. I'm all for it ^ - ^
I do have one suggestion though, which I mentioned earlier in the community discussion chat with @Laura today. Not sure if this is the place to post this or not, but here it goes:
While I agree that it is a listener's job to accept these personal requests (especially if their status says online), it becomes a bit hectic when a large volume of guests/members begin messaging you at once -- and this happensdespite setting the status barto"busy."
One suggestion that is often given at this point is, of course, that the listenershould notify thisguest/member that they are currently busy [i.e. taking on too many chats] at the moment. Having to do so repeatedly does, by no means, decrease the hecticness; while that same listener is accepting all new personal requests so as not to let their "Personal Request Response Rate" lower and inform them of their inavailability, they may also be speaking with another member who requires their full and immediate attention -- they shouldn't have to wait! D:
So my suggestion is that perhaps by setting one's status as "busy," a listener's 'message' button on their profile will become gray and unclickable as a result so as not to be disturbed when focusing on other guests/members or other various responsibilities on 7 Cups (i.e. mentoring, group/forum moderating, verifying, etc.).
Yep, love the idea.
Personally i find it hard to deal with a high volume of traffic.
I come online to talk to an individualbut then i alwaysend up talking to 5 people and around 3 private message requests, plus you have those cases when you need to focus directly to one individuals as (not to be rude) their require quick and serious responses.
Having 3 private message requests while talking to other people gives me a sense of stress as you cant help everyone at the same time but at the same time you don't want to say your busy as your just neglecting them in a way.