The lessons for community moderators from how Optus’ Dan responded to racist comments
Optus’ Facebook community manager ‘Dan’ has garnered national headlines for politely schooling racists angry about the telco’s multilingual signage with the incident proving the importance for brands to respond to negative comments on social media.
Optus was inundated with a barrage of complaints on its Facebook page in response the telco’s Arabic signage in Casula Mall – which were pulled by Optus after threats were made to staff – to which its social media team member ‘Dan’ responded to with class, respect and, most importantly by not giving an inch to the angry commenters.
Julie Delaforce, general manager of Quiip, a company that offers 24/7 community manager and moderation, told Mumbrella the Optus case proves the importance for big brands to reply to interactions from customers on social media.
Delaforce
“For some comments a simple Like does the job; it says ‘thanks for engaging with us’. In a situation where there are customer complaints, it needs to be addressed,” she said.
Great work Dan. This has really made me smile.
“Dan” needs to learn how to use the apostrophe correctly.
Wow, you must be fun at parties, Spinner. If this is your only takeaway from this story then I hope you do not and will never work in any form of communication.
And Spinner, you should learn to use quotation marks for their correct purpose.
well done
Ooh, a punctuation smackdown! Nice one Steve.
Well, yeah. Considering “Dan” is actually ‘Dan’, those quotation marks are incorrectly placed.
If I had a dollar for every post I wanted to correct, I’d be doing pretty well, by now.
But what REALLY gets my goat is when people fuck up in pointing out other people’s supposed fuck-ups >=/
Wow, this makes me want to join Optus, even if they were a bit pricier than my current contract, morals and values have allot more than a dollar sign attached. Well done Dan.
Spinner, I am not so sure that Dan did misuse the apostrophe.
The possessive may apply .
The subject is the showing of their own personalities, those of their front-line social media team, and, if the Brand can be said to have a personality, also the Brand’s.
where was Dan when I wasted a day trying to get someone at Optus to hear my plea?
It may have won plaudits from some with its essay length rebuttal but I think Dan’s response would probably be ignored by those who were the intended recipients.