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Hi everyone,
As you'll have seen from @Martin-O2's post earlier this month, he and @Breanna will sadly be leaving us towards the end of next week. Under their guidance and expertise, as well as that from all of our previous Community Admin's from Standing on Giants (SoG), they've helped us get to where we are now, and I cannot thank them all enough for their hard work, amazing attitudes and incredible professionalism.
This thread is meant more for our regular members, to keep them updated on Community staff changes. If you're a new or casual Community member, these changes won't mean anything to you and you won't notice or experience any changes with this news.
Why are SoG leaving?
There are several reasons for us making this change, some of which are strategy based and we're unable to share too much there, but I have to say we are not doing this because of SoG - it's just that with the plans and vision we have, we see it happening in-house rather than with a partner - which truly pains me to say, as we have built an incredibly strong relationship with SoG and the amazing people that have worked on the O2 Community.
Who's 'replacing' them?
As mentioned above, we're bringing the O2 Community back in-house for the first time in a long time. If you've been on the O2 Community for a while, you'll know who me and @ColinO2 are... We're not going anywhere, and our involvement will remain the same.
New to the O2 Community is @Dave-O2. Dave is a member of my Social Media team and has been with us for many years. He's even lurked in the background here, and was the one who created our Volt Megaguide - so he has some prior experience. He's also been working alongside Martin and Breanna for the past week or so, and will continue to do so while they're both around, so he can do his best to pick things up from 1st September.
Just 1 new person? This is new for us, and how we work and do things may change on a daily basis until we find our feet - but a lot of behind-the-scenes tasks Martin and Breanna were responsible for, that didn't impact the day-to-day running, health or management of the community, will be stopped (or at least paused) when they leave which in theory means Dave can focus solely on the core community duties.
What about the future of the O2 Community?
Short term, our priority is to ensure Martin and Breanna's hard work doesn't disappear. They've helped us build a solid foundation that we hope to work from - so Dave will be picking up moderation duties from 1st September to ensure there's as little disruption as possible, and once we're settled in, we can then look towards content, engagement and other things.
Longer term, that's not something we've settled on. You may remember Colin posted this thread back in May talking about the potential merging of the O2 and VM Communities - but if or when that will happen, we're unsure. If it does, it'll take a long time to plan and it won't be a quick decision, so I'd say don't expect any major shake-ups anytime soon!
Once SoG have left us, if you have any feedback, concerns or anything you'd like to share, please DM me. I promise we're listening, and if we make mistakes, we'll learn from them.
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Having been here for over 10 years I have a reasonable idea of how things work. I have some questions and I'll ask them here as they affect all of the members (particularly the regulars)
1) Will we be losing the moderators? A lot of things are posted at night which need immediate removal
(I mean pornographic photographs) These along with private account information, which is a route for spammers. I can't see this working well if we only have one person doing a moderation job.
2) When @Marjo and @EmilieT were here, they were of the opinion that Off Topic was as important as any other topic posted. I hope you and your team accept this as well. Otherwise the community will just become solution driven. Many members don't have the expertise to answer queries which result in a solution.
3) Will the community still be working with the monthly Reward system? A few of us have concerns about this as they have up to 3 months rewards outstanding. I'm not inferring that we answer queries just to be rewarded, however the reward system was started by the community and if it's being stopped then we should be informed.
4) Currently you have control of the social media team. Will that continue, as I don't see how you can be responsible for both?
5) The biggest complaint we have on here is the frustration from new members who fail to get a response from customer services, be it by phone or the social media outlets. How can this be improved?
That's it for now, hope you don't mind me posting on here. 😉
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@Enlli wrote:@Cleoriff With regards to Community Awards you may have missed this
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Welcome-News/Changes-to-Community-Rewards/m-p/1642056#M40270
No I didn't miss it @Enlli but I wanted to ask the question openly 😉
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@madasaf1sh wrote:I [am] owed 3 or 4 months in community rewards I am tempted to claim interest 😂🤣
With the removal of the lowest band of reward, there should be less transactions per month to process, I would guess. I think most of these rewarded have a backlog of rewards - but in my dealings with the Social Media team where a refund has been offered, the credit on the bill has been almost instantaneous. Perhaps the rewards, once the backlog is cleared, will be equally timely (or timeous?) 🤞
Following-on from @Cleoriff's final point: Will the Forum now count as one of the avenues of support, similarly to the current Instagram, FB and Twitter offerings?
Note that an on-line review in Which! made a thing of going into the O2 store and getting help from a Guru - a service expunged from the Forum and from O2's YouTube channel almost 2 years past, I believe: I queried the statement with Which! and they said the comment had been passed on to the author of the item. O2 has eyes everywhere 👀
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@Cleoriff wrote:1) Will we be losing the moderators? A lot of things are posted at night which need immediate removal
(I mean pornographic photographs) These along with private account information, which is a route for spammers. I can't see this working well if we only have one person doing a moderation job.
No - the moderators are part of a separate contract and not part of SoG, so the jobs and duties they've been doing at night while Martin and Breanna are enjoying their downtime, will continue.
2) When @Marjo and @EmilieT were here, they were of the opinion that Off Topic was as important as any other topic posted. I hope you and your team accept this as well. Otherwise the community will just become solution driven. Many members don't have the expertise to answer queries which result in a solution.
I'm of the same opinion. I know how popular off-topic is and also understand some members are here more for that than for offering solutions to other customer issues. What I will say however is that, at least to begin with, our focus is on ensuring we nail the basic day-to-day moderation duties as we absolutely don't want to see the Community become rampant with spammers or inappropriate content. Once we're happy we've got moderation duties on point, we can look towards the content and engagement side of things and that'll include off-topic.
3) Will the community still be working with the monthly Reward system? A few of us have concerns about this as they have up to 3 months rewards outstanding. I'm not inferring that we answer queries just to be rewarded, however the reward system was started by the community and if it's being stopped then we should be informed.
Yes - we are looking at the Rewards system in more detail but with regards to the backlog, I do apologise for this. On Social Media we've seen more volumes than expected or forecast for a number of months now and as it's the same agents on our Social Media team that apply the Community Rewards, we've had to ensure their focus is on answering customer queries.
We know the rewards are important to everyone and we will get these up-to-date soon, but the removal of the lowest tier going forwards will remove a lot of future work in that area and make getting them applied faster and easier for our team.
4) Currently you have control of the social media team. Will that continue, as I don't see how you can be responsible for both?
For my part, for as long as I've been part of the Social Media team - before I even managed anybody - I've been part of the community. Though my involvement here won't change, and you might even see me a bit more, @Dave-O2 will be doing the heavy lifting. He'll be our eyes and ears on the community, and your main person for any issues, concerns or escalations. He's been part of my team for years now and honestly, you're in good hands. You'll get to know him more in the coming days and weeks I'm sure 
We also have additional support for Dave lined up for in case we need it. Again this is new to us - Martin, Breanna and others from SoG have done amazing jobs keeping the community running smoothly and we want to continue that, so we'll be taking each day and week as it comes and we'll adjust and adapt to that.
5) The biggest complaint we have on here is the frustration from new members who fail to get a response from customer services, be it by phone or the social media outlets. How can this be improved?
On the community, I'm not sure there is a route of improvement - at least not currently, but we are aware of the frustration particularly on the social media side and we have plans well underway to address that, so in the coming weeks you should see less and less frustrations aimed towards the social media side of things.
There are similar plans on the voice/call side of things, though I'm not as close to those plans to know the specifics... But yes, you should see a reduction in those frustrations.
Following-on from @Cleoriff's final point: Will the Forum now count as one of the avenues of support, similarly to the current Instagram, FB and Twitter offerings?
I don't see any major changes there - if the O2 Community operated more like the Virgin Media Community, where any queries there are replied to from their Social Media team, then potentially - but that's not how the O2 Community model works so treating it as a support resource and expecting you - our regulars - to pick up that burden isn't right or fair.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will remain the main ones that we'll drive customers to for support - since that's where our Social Media agents are, and where they can provide that support, with the Community playing an important supporting role as always. Certain things work far better here than they ever would on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram - such as our guides for example. The scam megaguide for example is a hugely important resource for us and something we direct customers to often from our main channels, where this sort of content just wouldn't work.
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Thanks for your answers above @Chris_K. It's just a little unsettling for us to realise all the changes which will be taking place
I personally think @Dave-O2 WILL need help on here, as previous managers had the marking of solutions down to a fine art. Usually the day after a question is posted and answered.
I am aware of the workload of your team, particularly with the transfer of VM clients over to O2.
We really miss the help we had on here from the O2 account advisors. I wish they were still here as they resolved many issues, as they had access to clients accounts.
Best of luck to you and your team. I really hope all we have discussed goes well for all of us. x
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Sorry, just as I maybe wasn't clear earlier - after SoG have left us and @Dave-O2 takes over, he's full-time here on the Community. He won't be doing any of his current duties or tasks alongside or in addition to... His focus is 100% on the Community.
And as mentioned before, our primary and immediate goal is to get the basic daily tasks nailed down and that includes solutions. Dave's been spending time with Martin and Breanna to understand more about their process for this and it's something we hope to see continue.
And RE: account advisors, we know how useful this was and though I can't discuss the in's and out's, I know losing them was a blow and it's something I'd like to see return. If/how/when - that's for another day, but it's something I'd like to see return.
