Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website
Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website · Kapwing Blog
We changed the photo and name of our customer support agent four times to see how it changed users' responses. This is the story of how gender matters when chatting with users on the internet.
Sorry ladies that you have to go through this.
These are lonely and sad people with porn probably being their highlight of the day. I've met guys like that in person, they are not happy.
So just don't mind it, close the window, ban the IP, don't think about it. Your time is too precious to give it away like that.
Or, even better, just change your avatar so you don’t have to deal with this stuff at all
Boy have things hardly changed in human nature over the last 20 years. Your tests with your chat agent pseudonym are strikingly similar to my tests with making a honeypot test bot on IRC well over 15 years ago.
I created a bot that would simply execute routines from familiar Eliza style "AI" interactions. I fed it a dictionary, and gave it a "young female" name, something similar to the days of AOL where you put your age in the name.
So names like "Jenny17", "hottie party girl" and "Lisa1980".
And sure enough, so many random people would message it.
I logged the interactions for years. After reading the logs randomly, I realized that this had such an impact on human psychology.
People simply treat these "desirables" differently.
Sadly, the differently is worse. It made me appreciate that women have a very difficult time in society, because they are constantly targets in just about any format.
Hey Kevin, Thanks for the comment. The results from your experiment and ours surprised me - before this, I thought that female customer support agents might get more patience and kindness than males. But yes, as you say, this doesn’t seem to be the case... In this context, thankfully, people can control how their gender is perceived by changing their avatar or screen name.
Julia, First, I’m sorry people suck. That’s just awful behavior to see.
I wanted to comment not on the content of the article but the intention as I think that is what the community around here is best at. I read the whole thing and then left and came back to IH and I found myself thinking ‘hmm, I read that whole thing and I don’t even know what Kapwing’ does / is trying to sell.
it might be worth including a few sentences about Kapwing and some sort of CTA in a few place (middle and end of article).
Good luck with the biz.
Hey Evan, I appreciate the feedback! Yeah, I do want every post to communicate what Kapwing is/does, and I agree this one was light on that. Of course, our primary goal with these articles is to share authentic advice for other entrepreneurs and write content that is “link-worthy”, but I should take advantage of the opportunity to promote the product also.
Julia, thank you for posting this. It's good to hear these experiences and to get actionable advice from it as well.
I just don't get why someone would talk that way to a woman. I was raised with 3 younger sisters and I would NEVER say things like this. I just don't get it.
The only thing I can think of is men who are resentful. There is no physical consequence for things you say online. So they feel like they can lash out without consequence.
Sorry to hear you have to experience that :/
Hi Julia,
An other great article! (Even if that one is really really sad...)
I am curious about Kapwing's blog. Is it driving sales to your product? Or is it simply for Brand awareness?
I need to start blogging for my own idea but I am lost on what I should focus on:
• The product and subjects that will matter to my customers
• The broader experience of building a product
• Both
Interested in your thoughts.
Thanks 👍🏻
Hi Waleeg - Thanks for reading this one! Kapwing depends on SEO for getting people to the website, and in my opinion the most important part of SEO is getting people to link to your site. We write the blog with hopes that our content is compelling enough that people will share it and link to it online. For example, our first blog article went semi-viral on Hacker News and we got nearly 4000 links as a result. Huge Google juice haha!
Your blog ideas sound great! My advice about content blogging:
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
This comment was deleted 7 years ago