Summary :with a profile that’s still hard to define, community managers look like rare birds. The only certainty is that they should be true professionals. But in which field ? Knowing social environments, the way they work and their rules seem to be a prerequisite. But, having a closer took to what people really expect online, a good knowledge of the industry and real front-end experience may look at least as essential for a good community manager. Is it sensible for any organization willing to go beyond insubstantial chatter and have a real logic of service toward their customers to rely on people who never met a customer and are unable to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and understand what they feel ? Obviously not.

A couples of week ago a job offer for a community manager position showed up in my twitter timeline. It grabbed my attention and raised a questioning on what skills should a community manager have.

The offer details the skills the community manager should have and, among them, “Knowledge of the travel industry (a trump)”. I stopped on this item. If one think that the role of a community manager is to push messages that have been written by others, say “hello, we’re there” in twitter and facebook, chat with the audience as long as the topic is not too sensitive, it’s true that mastering social tools is enough. But if community management is supposed to be a part of a service driven approach, I’m doubtful.

We know, since the issuing of an IBM report earlier this year that enterprises are wrong about what they think their online audience expects. While they think customers (in fact nothing proves they are only customers…) need more closeness, to be a part of a community, the audience only wants information, discounts and services when they have an issue with what they bought. The social channel is a shared one and customer service is not its least use. In short, instead of communities, love stories and idle chatter, community managers should expect to be sent to the coal mine. It’s even more obvious in the travel industry as this survey shows.

“Airline companies are sending a lot of tweets. They sent over 25,000 in July alone, but users only tweet at these companies for a few reasons. Largely, users want customer service — 86.2 percent of users follow airlines for that reason. Only .02 percent want a social conversation and only 1.6 percent tweet about airline food and entertainment.”

Any customer who once ended up in troubles because of an airline or hotel issue is in fact in a crisis situation. People often mention Zappos as a successful example of a company able to do anything to solve customer problems and sell happiness. That’s true they’re awesome at that. But as I often say, not everybody as the luck of selling shoes. There’s few things in common between a late shipping or the wrong size being delivered and a cancelled/delayed flight, ruined vacations. The customer is not in the same situation, the problem is more difficult to fix, helping costs much more etc… This reasoning applies to many industries that are much more critical than books or clothing selling…

So, let’s come back to the “knowledge of the industry would a trump” point. [Read more...]