Author Details:
- Name: Zineb EZ-ZERROUQI
- Title: Global Customer Engagement Leader, Online Communities
- Company: Schneider Electric
Tell us about you, your company, and your team?
Schneider’s purpose is to create Impact by empowering all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability. At Schneider, we call this Life Is On. Our mission is to be the trusted partner in Sustainability and Efficiency. We are a global industrial technology leader bringing world-leading expertise in electrification, automation and digitization to smart industries, resilient infrastructure, future-proof data centers, intelligent buildings, and intuitive homes.
Anchored by our deep domain expertise, we provide integrated end-to-end lifecycle AI enabled Industrial IoT solutions with connected products, automation, software, and services, delivering digital twins to enable profitable growth for our customers. We are a people company with an ecosystem of 168,000 colleagues and more than a million partners operating in over 100 countries to ensure proximity to our customers and stakeholders. We embrace diversity and inclusion in everything we do, guided by our meaningful purpose of a sustainable future for all.
Our community team is dedicated to enhancing and maintaining our community platform, ensuring it remains a vibrant and engaging space for all users. Comprising eight talented individuals, we focus on technical development, customer engagement, and performance monitoring. Our mission is to create a seamless and enriching experience for our community members. We strive to continuously improve the platform’s features, foster meaningful interactions, and ensure optimal performance.
Our team consists of the following roles, with each leader supported by additional team members:
- Community Platform Owner is a key role responsible for the overall success and strategic direction of the community platform. This individual ensures that the platform meets the needs of its users and aligns with the organization’s goals.
- Technical/Product Leader who oversees the development and implementation of new features.
- Customer Engagement Leader who manages and organizes content for the platform and drives user engagement and community activities.
- Adoption Leader who ensures that new technologies and processes are effectively integrated and utilized within the community platform and is responsible for improving the visibility and ranking of the community platform in search engine results.
- Performance Analyst who monitors and analyzes platform performance to ensure a smooth user experience.
How does your role and your team support your company and its goals?
Our Community team consists of 8 individuals with complementary skills and expertise, working collaboratively towards a common goal or objective. The team members have defined roles and responsibilities, meet regularly to discuss progress and challenges, and leverage each other's strengths to deliver high-quality work. The team environment fosters open communication, mutual support, and a shared sense of accountability for the team's outcomes to drive the success of our community.
Great people make Schneider Electric a great company. Our ultimate ambition is to deliver higher performance and greater employee engagement, through world-class people practices that are supported by a multi-hub model. Schneider Electric is a people-centric company where employees come to work for a meaningful purpose and are empowered to deliver impact in an inclusive environment. The Schneider Electric Community offers several benefits that can significantly help our company Schneider Electric in various ways:
- Knowledge Sharing and Problem Solving: The community provides a platform for users to discuss and solve problems related to energy management and automation. This collaborative environment helps in quickly addressing technical issues and sharing best practices.
- User Engagement and Feedback: By engaging with users directly, Schneider Electric can gather valuable feedback on their products and services. This feedback can be used to improve existing offerings and develop new solutions that better meet customer needs.
- Training and Development: The community offers access to customized training. This helps users upgrade their skills and knowledge, ensuring they can effectively use Schneider Electric’s products and solutions.
- Innovation and Co-Creation: The community fosters innovation by allowing users to co-innovate and collaborate with a global network of peers. This can lead to the development of new ideas and solutions that benefit both Schneider Electric and its customers.
- Increased Visibility and Brand Loyalty: Active participation in the community can increase Schneider Electric’s visibility and strengthen brand loyalty. Engaging with users and providing valuable resources can build a strong, loyal customer base.
By leveraging the Schneider Electric Community, our company can enhance customer satisfaction, drive innovation, and maintain a competitive edge in the market.
Who were the teams and use cases you put this solution in place for? What challenges was this solution intended to solve?
Customers who have EcoStruxure IT data center software:
- Schneider Electric internal users
- Users who need help installing, setting up, and configuring their software go to the EcoStruxure IT Help Center to search the documentation for guidance.
- Users who encounter issues that are not addressed in the documentation go to the community to search for posts about their situation or create a new post to ask the other users for assistance.
- EcoStruxure IT technical communicators
- Technical writers create online help articles for end users and gain insights on effectiveness from platform analytics to share with product owners.
- The help center gathers documentation for the entire data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software suite. Paired with the community forum, everything the customer or end user needs is in one place.
The challenge: Software documentation is scattered across product pages and is created in different formats: online articles, PDF format, and in some cases is embedded in the product. The help center presents all the products in the DCIM offer in one place where users can search for content or links to resources.
What is a recent win, major innovation, or challenge your team has tackled in the past year that this solution helped you address? Describe the challenge, opportunity, and teams involved.
Three new teams have asked to join and host their content on the help center. These teams use older and more traditional methods of creating content, creating books or manuals, and having technical support create FAQs published on a different site. They’ve seen the flexibility and the benefits of managing their documentation directly in the help center and reaching customers where they are – in the community. The platform integrates with mySchneider.
Within our team, this has saved us 20 hours per week, which gives us additional time to author new content. We have one person dedicated to the Help Center, one writer focused on a specific product, and another team adopting it. The time savings are immediate in authoring, editing, and publishing, allowing us to provide new information to customers in real time. Increased usage has led to the need for more staff, which is a positive development! While it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the staff has quadrupled, we have certainly grown.
Additionally, there are significant time savings in the documentation delivery process. The authoring interface is user-friendly, with draft management capabilities well-integrated across the platform. Challenging the status quo, “the way we’ve always done it” and encouraging colleagues who have never explored a new way of working in documentation was difficult. It took the better part of a year to convince one team to try a proof of concept. SmartConnect content has moved from hosting CHM-like help pages on their product portal to the help center. The install base is large, and user engagement in that category immediately increased significantly. The PCNS team is in the process of migrating the FAQs created by support to the help center instead of using their CRM tool. They will now create and maintain content in the help center Software services team has asked to create and maintain user-facing content on the help center instead of local PDFs. A technical expert was assigned to regularly monitor the posts in the community.
What were the business outcomes and value driven by addressing these challenges? Please share specific results, metrics, and/or KPIs that quantify the change.
Excellent customer engagements stats from the analytics:
EcoStruxure IT Help Center home page
- Visits: 64,317 (2024) vs 15,722 (2023): +309% YoY
- Unique Visitors: 37,371(2024) vs 10,572 (2023): +253% YoY
- Page Views: 80,079 (2024) vs 20,920 (2023): +283% YoY
EcoStruxure IT Help Center Categories
- Visits: 380 117 (2024) vs 1283 (2023): +29,527% YoY
- Unique Visitors: 295 006 (2024) vs 840 (2023): +35,000% YoY
- Page Views: 604 977 (2024) vs 2318 (2023): +26,000% YoY
What were the progress outcomes driven by addressing these challenges? Please share specific results, metrics, and/or KPIs that quantify the change.
As highlighted in the analytics shared earlier, we’ve seen a significant increase in several key metrics:
- Page Views: There has been a substantial rise in the number of page views, indicating that more users are engaging with our content.
- Visitors and Unique Visitors: The number of visitors and unique visitors has also grown considerably, reflecting a broader reach and increased interest in our Help Center.
- Community Engagement: Achieving 0 unanswered questions is a fantastic milestone for our community. This accomplishment demonstrates our commitment to providing timely and effective support.
- Solution Views and Accepted Solutions: There has been a notable increase in both solution views and accepted solutions. This indicates that users are not only finding the answers they need but are also validating the quality and usefulness of the solutions provided.
These metrics underscore the positive impact of our efforts to enhance the Help Center and foster a supportive community environment.
Community Analytics: EcoStruxure IT Help Center
What differentiated the Khoros Communities solution in your ability to achieve/deliver on your goals for the year? What in the solution helped enable it? Were other factors involved?
The Khoros AI solution distinguished itself in several keyways that significantly contributed to our ability to achieve our goals for the year:
- Automated Moderation: Khoros AI’s automated moderation tools helped maintain a positive community environment by efficiently filtering out inappropriate content and flagging potential issues, saving valuable time and resources.
- Personalized User Experience: By analyzing user behavior and preferences, Khoros AI enabled us to deliver personalized content and recommendations, which enhanced user satisfaction and engagement.
- Scalability: The solution’s scalability ensured that we could maintain high levels of service and engagement as our community grew, without compromising on quality.
- Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with our existing tools and platforms allowed for a unified approach to community management and data analysis.
- Support and Training: Access to comprehensive support and training resources ensured that our team could fully leverage the AI capabilities, maximizing the solution’s impact. Other factors that contributed to our success included strong internal collaboration, clear goal-setting, and continuous feedback loops to refine our strategies based on real-time data and insights.
What parts of your experience working with Khoros enabled you to address the need or challenge?
Working with Khoros provided several key advantages that enabled us to address the need/challenge effectively:
- Comprehensive Analytics: Khoros’ great analytics tools allowed us to gain deep insights into community engagement and user behavior, helping to identify areas needing improvement.
- Efficient Moderation: The platform’s advanced moderation features streamlined the process of managing community interactions, ensuring a positive and safe environment for all users.
- Customizable Solutions: Khoros offered some flexible and customizable solutions that could be tailored to meet specific community needs, making it easier to implement targeted strategies.
- Support and Training: Access to Khoros’ support and training resources ensured that our team was well-equipped to utilize the platform’s features to their fullest potential.