The image used in this post is a cartoonised image of mine of two athletes helping each other in an tough obstacle race. Watching two people help each other is always a wonderful experience for the person outside the conversation, it is even more rewarding both for the person needing help and the person who is giving. Local Guides is all about giving and supporting each other.
Do you like helping people? Do you often reply to posts here on Connect? It is awesome to try and help people and I absolutely encourage every single Local Guide to do so, do it every day.
Here are a few guidelines that you might find helpful.
Live the Five Core Values of Connect in every response every time
It isn’t a race - nothing is gained by being the first person to respond to someone’s post - it’s better to be a bit slower with a considered and valuable response - the original poster will thank you and is more likely to give you kudos and perhaps mark your answer as a solution
If the post has content you don’t like or you feel is wrong or inappropriate then a gentle word is much more likely to get a positive outcome than an argumentative one - if its really bad then hit the three dots and Report Inappropriate Content so a moderator can take care of it
Include the persons name in an @Mention and restate their issue to show that you do understand it before you try and answer
Rather than include steps to do something - talk in general terms of what should be done and always include a link to a relevant article. Both Google Support and Connect Helpdesk articles are good sources. This is because the various Maps applications change often, the help articles will always be brought up to date but steps and screenshots can become out of date quickly - look how many people read old articles and get angry because they can’t get free storage because the response they read is out of date
Try not to fall into the one size fits all macro based answer trap - I (and the other Moderators) use reply Macros a lot, but after popping the Macro we customise the text to ensure that the answer addresses the person, restates their issue, then answers their issue. There is little point in giving 80% of an answer in an unfriendly way.
I hope people find this helpful. If you find someone who is not living the core values in their replies, feel free to give them a friendly nudge to read this post.
My personal tip is to re-read the original post and if there are existing responses read those too. If a fellow Local Guide has already responded with your answer there is no point to repeat the same answer.
This shows the poster (and the person who took the time to resply) that you have read thoroughly.
It is very important to restate the question from the Original Poster (OP). As the conversation is here open to everyone to see, and might be helping people with similar issue for a long time to come, to make sure the question is clear and understandable to everyone is very important.
When LGs dedicated to answering question for enough time, it can be very easy to see the actual message the OP wanted to say and ask. And it will be quick to just provide a answer. However, and answer in this way will not help others.
Our aim should be: to help people solve their issues on hand. At the same time, make people visit Connect more, not only when having issues on hand to be resolved.
@PaulPavlinovich Thanks for sharing this and all local guides should go through this. This will help me to provide required answer in correct and friendly manner.
The definition of “friendly” in replies is very tricky in a global forum. All people are not fluent in all languages and they may not no the proper way to reply in languages other than their mother tongue. For example when I am writing in English(not my mother tongue) I do not know how to express myself in English, so I will write something in a way I thought right and it may look unfriendly for others.
If I reply in my mother tongue, the translation would look funny or it may give a completely different meaning.
@PaulPavlinovich Warmly thanking you for the post. This is how a featured post should be.
I read all the words of the post and my understanding is clear. We must not go for race rather than solving in proper and exact way. If we answer to one person it doesn’t mean that we are not replying to only one. Sometimes there are several people who may have same questions.
