Friday Protip: Identify Employees

Every Friday, barring flood, fire, and federal holiday, we’re going to post some helpful tidbit. It’s one thing to design big sweeping systems and dream in broad brushstrokes, but here in the trenches it’s the little things that matter. Every one of these tips should, in hindsight, be so obvious that you think you’ve always known it.

Today’s tip: Identify employees – everywhere.

An employee should always be identified by name and function in a visual way. On a forum, that means a differently colored name and a clear, complete signature file. This extends to the product as well, if the employees are online in a professional capacity – a different color name, a larger size, whatever it takes. There needs to be a clear differentiation between customer service and developers as well.

No exceptions.

Major MMOs already do this, but smaller games (and non-“game” communities) sometimes don’t bother. Reasons vary from “Oh, we’re so small that everyone knows who the devs are” to “we want our employees to be exactly equal to our customers – one big happy family” to “employees are people too, we should be able to just hang out with our users without always being on duty.”

All of those reasons are pure wishful thinking. There’s always someone who doesn’t know who is who until they’ve inadvertently stepped on some toes. Obscuring affiliations does not substitute for a warm style of communication that builds relationships. And online, there’s no such thing as off duty – unless you’re anonymous. Even then, you need to behave as though you were on duty, because eventually, everyone discovers your secret identity.

Be clear, and be accountable.

– Sanya Weathers