Mid- July! Campfire Onboarding for new members/Guests & Noni Update

HI Everyone!

I am writing to share an exciting update we have been working on! The goal of this update is to ensure that every new member or guest who visits our site feels connected to our community, understands what we are about, feels like they belong and gets connected to a caring, supportive chat. There are three changes we are going to implement in our hopes of reaching this goal! To explain these changes, I am going to walk you through the new user experience since this is primarily where these updates will be experienced.

When a new guest visits 7 Cups, they will see the main get started page (like usual)! When they click get started, they will be brought to a second welcome page. This is the first change! This second welcome page will further explain who we are:

-----> 7 Cups is a place full of people who care for you and who also struggle

-----> When you are lonely or need someone to talk to there are always people here

-----> We also have therapists and self-care steps you can take once a day or any time

The last part of this page will invite the member/guest to Come sit around the campfire and get a sense of what its like to chat with caring folks on here. A campfire is a place for people to gather in community building, sharing and support.

If they agree to move forward, they will brought to a campfire page. This page will show a rolling mock group support discussion. The member can watch as the chat scrolls through.

Heres quick mock-up Krink made to explore the idea:

...and here is a more developed mockup our visual designer Ryan made (we are still discussing making it lighter in color and other adjustments to the final design):

Whenever they are ready, they can move on to the next stage. This is where we have our second change!

Noni is about to get an upgraded role in our community! Many of us know Noni from chatting with her while we wait to get connect to our listeners. Noni is a friendly bot, whose goal is to provide additional information and support to you as you wait for a listener. Up till this point, Noni has not had a super active or present role beyond what I have just outlined. But today, this is going to change. Noni will become a more thoughtful and caring bot to us all. After the campfire, the individual will be brought into a chat with Noni. Today, you only talk to Noni when you are requesting a listener (or her sister Sophia when you are seeking a therapist). In this chat, Noni will ask the new user if theyd like to talk to a listener, and she will also be able to offer the option of talking to a therapist, or a third option to choose from: continuing to just talk with Noni, A friendly bot.

If the member/ guests selects to chat with Noni, they will be able to engage in a friendly and supportive chat with Noni. We have written a script for Noni to encourage this supportive conversation. Our goal in adding this is to provide additional options to guests/members who are struggling. Did you know that around 40% of guests/members who make a general chat request never exchange 1 message with their listener? There are many reasons for this, but one is fear. We want to give those folks who are not ready to chat with a real person the opportunity to still get help and feel like they belong. This is why we are introducing the option to chat with Noni only.

Noni will continue to suggest talking to other people, visiting the community, group chat, self-help, etc., and will be able to respond (at first in a limited way) to questions.

In additional to the third chat option, the third change is that Noni will become a persistent presence in your conversation list. To start, this will just be for members/guests. However, down the road, this may expand for listeners too. As a persistent presence, Noni will be present if the members would like to talk to her. Noni will offer kind and supportive messages to members and some suggestions on activities to try around the site. Members can talk to her as often as they would like.

We are very excited to share these three updates with you! We think they have a lot of potential to increase support giving and making more people feel like they belong at 7 Cups. We are still ironing out some of the specific details with these updates, so stay tuned for more information to come in the next few days/ weeks, as we have it.