In this spirit "If you’re a customer, we ask that you hold us to a high bar. We’re ready for it."
---
Perception is pretty much all you have right now and if there is one thing that community professionals know (and live every day) - any void will be filled.
No recording? People will talk to those that did...their opinion will tell your story.
No Q&A replies? People will speculate, make jokes, and get suspicious.
No specifics? People will infer and read between the lines.
No earned trust? People will cast doubt and throw shade until you prove it.
So far, 4 weeks in, it's "all been rebuilt", it's all "underway", we have great new devs, and yer gonna love it - you can trust us. That language may work with VC's and all but falls flat in this space - we are on the ground wondering when we'll be able to push our custom page to production and when that bug in the database on LastModifiedDate will be fixed.
If you don't know...say you don't know and you'll keep on working until you do know.
If you do know...say what you know in real terms.
If you don't have specifics...resist the desire to offer platitudes ('deep updates', 'stabilizing', 'rebuilding', or "leadership edited" stories.) We spend our lives avoiding that language in most communities that choose a robust enterprise platform like Khoros. Online communities, ANY community, respects effort and OFTEN just as much as results.
Put out the actual plan, publicly (or semi publicly) for comment. Provide specifics on your AI tech and tell us how that helps community health and trust. Don't tell us how it fixes support, or sales, or product, or investors, it doesn't seem appear that you know enough about community yet to make those calls. WE serve our community and those communities serve our 'missions' (corp or otherwise).
So...your offer..."Come along for the ride, influence our direction, and hold us accountable."
Where? How? When?
We have customer accounts - we know privacy and PII and how to hold things under NDA. If you don't trust us then...
