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Official Rep vs Employee
What is the difference between an official rep and employee?
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Inappropriate?I think that, by virtue of you asking this question, this is not clear enough. It's been a detail of Get Satisfaction that we talk about a lot in the office, and we have a lot of different ideas about how to best structure employee roles.
As it is now, there are three roles: admin, official rep, and employee. Admins have all the power to promote the other two (as well as some additional duties). Official reps are something like customer service reps. They have an official voice -- they can mark responses as "official" company responses. Employees participate in conversations, but they don't have any extra abilities when it comes to participating in conversations.
What we're trying to accomplish is to take into account the many ways that employees want to be seen in relation to the companies that they represent. That's kind of tough to do because there are a myriad of ways people think of themselves when they represent their company.
One change we've considered is calling official reps "customer service reps" or something similar to take into account the way most customer service-focused organizations work. If the framing of our site is about customer service, perhaps that would be a better way to represent employees who are specifically focused (or responsible for) customer service.
If you have any preference or thoughts about it, we would love to hear it. It's a detail we think needs to be clarified a bit more.
I’m glad you asked
2 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Besides having the ability to mark responses as "official" company responses, what more can Official reps do that employees cannot? -
Inappropriate?They can also set the status on topics. See this topic for more info.
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Inappropriate?As a person with a GSFN account, I have three "hats" I wear, and the roles you're discussing vary in relevance dramatically based on the hat, as follows...
As an employee, the way I want to be seen is by the title that's on my business card. And I've never had a card that says "employee" or "official rep". i.e. Give me a "title" field on my profile page. (BTW, I'll be needing one for each company I happen to represent, of which there may be more than one).
As a GSFN administrator, I want to know what exactly are the permissions I'm granting when I assign someone to a role. Having a table that shows which roles can do what on the admin page would be really useful for that.
As a user making suggestions and reporting bugs to some other company, here's how my interest in the roles of other people breaks down:
50% - "Can you fix my problem/contribute to my topic?"
40% - "Do you work for the company?"
9% - "How much influence do you have? (a.k.a. 'what's your title?')"
< 1% - "What is your role in the GSFN permissions system?"
In other words, don't bother showing me the employee-official rep distinction anywhere except on the "Accounts & Roles" UI for managing the employees of our company.
Just my $.02 -
Inappropriate?Hi Robert,
For your first issue -- adjusting your title... There is a title field. You can give yourself a title in addition to the "Employee" badge. You see in the upper left or this page where it lists the Company Participation and next to my avatar it says "Cruise Director"? You can add/edit that on this page in your profile section:
Would that suffice for you or were you hoping for more flexibility?
Love your idea of providing descriptions of role permissions on the admin page. We of course have a topic about that but I'm always looking for ways to better surface and contextualize that kind of help content.
As to your last point. Our original thinking in terms of the distinction between "Employee" and "Official Rep" was to distinguish for customers that there is an "inside perspective" (former) and an "official voice" (latter). Now, again, we haven't found an effective way of communicating that other than through the afore mentioned help topic so I'm sure it's a concept that most users don't grok. However, I believe we have some pretty significant changes coming to roles when we release our new suite of pay-for tools. So this may become a moot point.
Thanks for your $.02. We always appreciate it. -
Inappropriate?Hi Amy, I didn't see the profile option for setting my title. That's exactly what I had in mind.
... but is that title shown to users anywhere? If I click on somebody else's avatar or name I see a profile page for them, but I don't see any title information there. i.e. As a user, how would I know what role/title a person has within their company?
I’m just the slightest bit chagrined
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Inappropriate?Hi Robert,
Glad that solved it for you.
Good question. Right now, any company related meta-data is only shown in the company area(s) that the user is associated with. We have debated this off & on since the beginning -- whether to display it across the site or not -- and I do believe some changes are coming in that direction.
I’m pretty sure you're going to be happy with our upcoming releases.
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
