Ep 36: How to Handle Conflict Escalation In Your Community

Oct 25

How to Handle Conflict Escalation In Your Community

If you're a business owner and you feel like your team is always pulling you into the weeds whenever there's a little complaint inside of the community. Or if you're a community manager and you're never quite sure when you should be handling conflict yourself or when you should be escalating it up to your business owner, this is for you.

Effective community management involves several key elements, including setting clear expectations, preparing for potential conflicts, and having a well-defined escalation process. Delegation and involving the right team members at the right time are also critical to success.

Setting Expectations

Setting clear expectations is the first step towards effective community management. This involves defining what is acceptable behavior and what is not. It also means communicating the rules and guidelines to all team members involved, so they know what is expected of them and the community members. The team needs to know who is doing the mass monitoring of the community, and know what is expected of them on the operational side as well. This is all about culture, which we dive deep into in Cultivate, community training program.

Preparation

Effective community management also requires preparation for potential conflicts. This includes identifying potential conflict instances and flagging them for further monitoring. It also means having a plan in place for how to address conflicts when they arise.

Delegation

Delegation is crucial to effective community management. You want to identify who is responsible for monitoring the community and who is best equipped to handle difficult conversations. As a business owner, I recommend you stay out of these conversations when possible, delegating them to support staff or other team members.

Escalation Process

An effective escalation process is essential for community management. This involves identifying who will be responsible for escalating issues and who will be involved at each step. For example, I go to the community director or my boss and I say, “I feel like we need to address this”. The community director may be able to support and step in, or they may say, “we've really never dealt with this before. I think we need to get the business owner involved.” Sometimes you can go directly to the business owner and then sometimes there is an integrator between you and the business owner. Either way, the escalation process doesn’t take all of the problems to the business owner.

Involving the Business Owner

Involving the business owner in community management issues should be done sparingly. This may be necessary in situations where the issue has never been tackled before, or there is a personal relationship between the business owner and the member involved. However, it is important to protect the business owner's energy and only involve them when necessary.

Rushing Escalation During Launches

During a launch, it may be necessary to rush escalation of certain issues. This is because energy is typically high during a launch, and issues can quickly spread and become more significant. So address objections quickly during a launch to ensure they are addressed in a timely manner.

For example, if someone is posting objections inside of the community about the program being too expensive, or really anything that feels like an attack on the program, you want to escalate that fast. The reason being is that when you confront those objections quicker in a launch, you can make sure that it's addressed in a timely manner.

Things can catch fire really quick and spread really fast. When you see hot button topics like price, offer or whatever they're teaching, then that's typically something you want to escalate faster. You can use that as a quick realignment moment. You could say, “we're getting a lot of objections about pricing. Can you address that in a live or in the next Q&A?”

Supporting Your Team

As a business owner, it is crucial to support your team in community management issues. This may mean finding a way to show up for your team, even if it means working late or on weekends. It is important to prioritize these issues and show your team that you are committed to supporting them.

It's a Process

My hope is that over time you build a really great cohesive relationship where you have good plans in place for conflicts. You have boundaries, so that expectations are really clear. You show up for each other in the best way possible, so that you can succeed at your key role inside of the organization.