In the mid-to-late 2000s, newspapers and blogs realized that comment sections were a great way to drive engagement and get people to stay on their sites longer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before comment sections started to become dominated by trolls whose goal seemed to be dragging conversations down and offending as many people as possible.
As websites began to shut down their comments sections, OpenWeb saw an opportunity and launched a platform for moderating conversations around content in 2015.
OpenWeb’s content moderation platform filters toxic comments, rewards good behavior and gives preferential treatment to high-quality contributions. When everything is going according to plan, the comments section is a pleasant and engaging place to be. If there’s a technical issue or user error, though, then a site’s comments section could go offline or, worse, be sent back to the internet Dark Ages when toxicity was rampant and trolls roamed free.
OpenWeb’s technology plays a highly important and visible role in its customers’ businesses, and if there’s an issue of any sort then its customer success team will hear about it. For this reason, Daniella Kohlhagen, VP of partner success, makes it a point of emphasis for her team to embrace critical feedback and grow from it.
Here’s how she cultivates that mindset among her team, along with her strategy for preserving client relationships that come under strain.
OpenWeb’s content moderation platform enables The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, IGN and other news outlets and websites to have comment sections without the toxicity.
If a customer shares critical feedback, what are the strategic steps you take to preserve the long-term health of the relationship?
At OpenWeb, everyone we work with is considered a partner. We position ourselves to be an extension of our partner’s teams and strive to have authentic and transparent relationships with our points of contact. We want everyone to feel comfortable being candid and open about issues and concerns because every relationship, from personal to professional, is predicated on trust. With that in mind, we approach every issue as a personal matter that is impacting OpenWeb.
When a partner raises concerns or frustrations about our products, we are quick to jump into action and immediately get in front of them and listen to their issue. We want the partner to feel heard and that we are taking all their problems seriously. This approach solidifies our position of being partner first. Having this quick reaction and face-to-face time shows that we are serious about their concerns and ready to take action.
Critical feedback can be difficult to hear. How does your team bounce back after receiving it?
It is important for partners to share their frustrations and concerns. If we never received critical feedback, I wouldn’t view our relationship as healthy. Further, if a partner didn’t share their feedback, I would see it as if they didn’t value OpenWeb.
It is important for partners to share their frustrations and concerns. If we never received critical feedback, I wouldn’t view our relationship as healthy.”
I genuinely feel that you give feedback when you want to see improvement, and if you are ambivalent about improving you don’t take the time. Critical feedback is what helps my team and I become better partners ourselves.
How does critical feedback allow your team to learn and develop?
People fear failure, but I believe it is important to fail in order to grow. Critical feedback, both internal and external, is essential. No one is perfect, and feedback allows us to be better assets to our partners.
To help myself and my team grow, I take critical feedback from partners and turn it into an active learning session. We meet as a team and I present the problem and ask for feedback. This helps my team brainstorm different objection-handling scenarios and answer questions like, “Could we have been more timely or responded more thoughtfully?” It also helps us do some objection handling.
