We currently have a response rate of ~60%, and want to increase it.
We currently average ~500 topics a month, meaning ~200 topics don’t get a response. The forum is focused on community support, so we encourage most interactions to be the community-supporting the community.
We run a Community Leaders program with ~4 members from the forum as part of it.
What methods are you using to increase response rate, without it becoming the Admins “filling the gaps” and distracting from the main intent of the forum?
How well do you know the expertise of your members? Are you able to identify or seek out people who are likely to be able to help?
As an example, our Discourse is for internal support at a large company. I bookmark every new topic I see and leave a reminder for 24 hours. If it hasn’t had a response in 24 hours, then I look at the details and start using my internal contacts/network to see who I can bring into the the discussion.
I find it doesn’t even have to be someone who knows the answer. Even someone who knows people in that domain, or is good as asking questions can kick off a productive discussion: Rubber Duck Debugging
You need to assess whether the people in your community:
Are capable of responding to all 500 topics in terms of knowledge and time.
If it’s a time issue, you need to engage more people by rewarding them in some way.
If it’s a knowledge issue, consider creating documentation or webinars to broaden knowledge and enable your moderators to respond to all requests.
If the moderators are unable to respond, they should be able to draw on the knowledge of other community members. Do you have a table listing everyone’s skills/knowledge so you can tag them?
You might also consider paying people to respond and cover all the topics, even if only part-time or occasionally. It’s not guaranteed that you can do everything with volunteers. My sense is that your community has grown a bit too quickly, and there’s an imbalance between those who are asking for help and those who can provide it. Why do you have so many requests but so few responses? Is your product/service in high demand? Are the same 4-5 people always responding, or do you have a larger group that posts occasionally? I hope this is helpful.
