When User Has Had Bad Experiences On 7 Cups Chats

Sometimes we hear stories from fellow listeners and members that they have had less than stellar experiences on 7 Cups. As a Listener, or as a Peer Support, it can be an awkward situation to listen to someone complain about the site you're working on if you don't know how to best handle this kind of discussion.

Example initial responses:

"I'm sorry another listener hurt you/was not helpful/did X, I will try my best to offer you the best experience possible, is there anything that can best help me, help you tonight?"

"I'm sorry Listener did X, I will not do X, is there anything else I can do to help ensure you feel safe here?"

Some do's:

✅ Be empathetic.

✅ Ask them if they would like to talk about the negative experience.

✅ Validate what the user is feeling.

✅ Remember why the user wanted to chat with you in the first place if it is not about their negative experiences on the site.

Some don'ts:

❎ Insinuate in any way that the user's experience was their own fault.

❎ Interrogate them if they do not wish to talk about it.

❎ Ask them to name names.

❎ Derail from what the user wanted to discuss for that chat.

Tips and comments from Fellow Listeners:

You can also remind them that sometimes listeners and members just don't click with each other and it is totally fine to keep searching for the right one! -@Pali 

Invalidating [their feelings, experiences] would probably be a bad idea, and it probably won't be productive because it might reinforce their already negative experience and cause them to shut down. This would stop the process of figuring out if there really was a problem on our end. -@Chester 

If they are not abusing me, then I allow them to discuss what they came to me to discuss. We are not here for witch hunts/ to see who was wrong, we are here to help the user by listening. Really, we're not even here to "solve" what went wrong in previous chats, we are only here to listen to them, and if they want, give them options to report if they desire them. Then it's up to higher-ups who was wrong. -@SamanthaH 

Ask if they would like to be presented with options to report their experience before offering the following:

- Report a behavior via Behavioral Report Forms found in this post 

- Submit a report ticket via https://help.7cups.com/hc/en-us/requests/new 

Original post here by @SamanthaH, send them a thanks!