Anyone else seeing a drastic drop in community activity for Support forums?

[HAWK]

@Helga_Razinkova

Sure! Here are some numbers on users’ topics and comments.

Engagement metrics themselves don’t have much primary value, so I wouldn’t worry about those yet. If the goal of your community is to support your SaaS product, what stats do you track to ensure you are meeting the business goal? And are those stats declining as well as general engagement?

@Helga_Razinkova

• This is what does look concerning though:

I’m curious as to what concerns you about it, specifically. Perhaps people don’t need to post now because your search is super-powered so they are finding what they need. Or some other reason.

@Helga_Razinkova

The confusing part is that some metrcis look ok, but the involvement is clearly decreasing. I’m trying to figure out the root of the problem and my next steps.

I think you need to go back to first principles. What goal is your community serving for the business? How do you measure success? Are those specific metrics dropping?

@awesomerobot

There’s a potential information degredation cycle here to look out for too: if communities go away because people are going to AI first, AI also loses community as a source of information.

At that point AI will become worse at answering new questions about your subject matter, and people won’t have another place to go to ask either.

Yup, so much this. Rather than panicking about dropping engagement, I’d focus on optimising the data output that people are getting from AI. And that means finding ways to keep generating updated content that you are sharing with LLMs.

@Helga_Razinkova

ChatGPT advises testing out a light shift from a support forum to a place where users could find practical solutions from real people.

Any idea what this means in reality?

@Tris20

Taking Meta as an example, I love that Hawk and Sam still take part here

Thanks. We do because we believe in community. No one is ever too busy to participate, they are choosing not to prioritise it. And that’s cool, but it’s not the path I’m choosing when people-first is more important now than ever.

If people aren’t visiting your community as much, I would ask them why. I would dig into how good the info they are getting from other sources is and how I could help make it better.