Community managers and marketers know that Discord is a powerful communications platform. An engaged Discord community creates awareness, generates feedback, and builds a loyal base.
Customer support is a key component. With efficient customer support, a brand can boost sales and gain a competitive edge.
Here are the three best approaches, having the pros and cons of each.
1. Deploy Dedicated Public Support Channel
Discord servers can be divided into separate channels. One of them can be a public help and support channel. This can be accessed by any member of the Discord community.
Pros:
- The channel serves as a FAQ section where members can search for responses to questions.
- Active members of the Discord community can help others to resolve issues.
- Conversations can be grouped into threads for detailed solutions to inquiries.
Cons:
- There could be a high volume of questions. Some may go unanswered if no separate threads are created.
- Answering every question can be time-consuming.
- Difficult to derive actionable insights or existing gaps in current support solutions as all requests are disorganized and uncollected on these support channels.
Also read, How to use bots to manage and automate your discord community
2. Use A Ticket Bot
A ticket bot is an automated tool that creates support tickets for Discord community members. Moderators can systematically deal with those who need support. One example is the "Tickets" bot. It allows users to submit a ticket for each separate support inquiry.
Pros:
- It auto-creates a private ticket channel with the person who needs support and one of the moderators/admins.
- It allows structuring each customer support request to ensure that all questions are attended to.
- It can be programmed to provide automated introductions and recommendations.
Cons:
- A large number of questions leads to a cluttered list of channels. Most bots will not be able to auto-delete them.
- Moderators will not be able to analyze questions to find out if there are information gaps.
- Moderators still have to manually deal with every ticket and have to delete each such private channel which can be time-consuming.
3. A Combination of Automation and Analytics Bots (Best Approach)
An automation bot, as well as an analytics bot, could be used in a public customer support channel for the Discord community.
The automation bot will automatically respond to FAQs and links to relevant documentation. If the documentation doesn't exist, the analytics bot will ensure that it creates a new topic to cover the given request. Thus eliminating support gaps in the future.
Thus moderators/admins only have to intervene if the documentation for the support request is missing.
With a public threading response, members can also benefit by seeing answers to earlier inquiries.
Pros:
- It drastically reduces the load on server admins as most of the support requests are similar to previous ones.
- A public thread response ensures that questions are not ignored and are answered in depth.
- Analytics help to reduce the volume of support requests. It documents the requests that are new and creates a new topic for those using AI. Thus improving support documentation in real time.
Cons:
- Moderators have to set up two bots and program them for efficient performance.
Examples of Tools for the Third Approach
Among the tools that moderators can use for effective customer support are:
- BotDisco, which auto-responds to messages that contain FAQ keywords.
- BlazeBot, which categorizes messages with support topics to understand problem areas.
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