Zoom

Author Details:

• Name: Briuana Green
  • Title: Senior Community Manager
• Name: Alexis Brown
  • Title: Senior Manager, Global Community and Social Media
• Company: Zoom

 

Tell us about you, your company, and your team? 

Zoom is an all-in-one intelligent collaboration platform, to make connecting easier, more immersive, and dynamic for both businesses and individuals. Zoom operates by putting customers first and enabling meaningful connections and facilitating modern collaboration. With solutions like Zoom AI Companion, Zoom Meetings, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Phone, Zoom Clips, Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Docs, and more all in one offering, we help drive human innovation and deliver exceptional results for our users.

The Zoom Community team is part of the Digital Customer Support organization, dedicated to delivering customer satisfaction and resolution through various digital platforms, those including the Zoom community, knowledge base, chatbot, and support web experience. By offering 24/7 online support, we enable accessible resolutions for our customers. Since joining Zoom in 2021, the Community team is proud to continuously make a positive impact on both our customers and our internal teams.

The Zoom Community and Social Media Team

 

How does your role and your team support your company and its goals?

The Zoom Community team fosters a healthy, welcoming environment where users are encouraged to seek digital support first. It offers a space for end users to collaborate and find solutions alongside fellow Zoom users. As a company, we are committed to delivering innovative technology and exceptional user experiences. Providing the support customers need to succeed with our products is a top priority, and the Zoom Community is one of many avenues for users to seek help, share knowledge, and collaborate. This positive and supportive online community compliments Zoom's overarching mission of one platform delivering limitless human connection.

 

Who were the teams and use cases you put this solution in place for? What challenges was this solution intended to solve?

The Zoom Community was created to meet the needs of Zoom users worldwide, offering a dynamic online forum where individuals can ask questions, find solutions, and collaborate with peers. In response to growing demand for 24/7 online support, the Zoom Community team was established in March 2021. By August of the same year, the community officially launched, and has since expanded to over 371,000 members, 173,000 posts, 39 million page views, and 24 million visits. As a key resource for Zoom users, the community works in tandem with Zoom's digital support tools, including the knowledge base and chatbot. This forum empowers users to self-serve by either searching for answers or asking new questions, receiving guidance from experts. It fosters connections among users, helping them expand their knowledge, exchange ideas, and discover innovative solutions.

 

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. 

Over the past year, the Zoom Community has evolved into a key destination for Zoom users, offering valuable updates on product launches, feature solutions, upcoming webinars, and service statuses. With a wide array of content shared within the community, we've seen significant improvements, innovations, and strengthened partnerships. Here are some of the key initiatives driving this growth.

SEO Optimization: A major success for our community has been the effectiveness of our SEO optimization efforts, significantly boosting our visibility. Our threads now consistently rank higher in Google search results, making it easier for users to find Zoom-related solutions. This enhanced visibility allows for faster issue resolution, improving the overall user experience and attracting a broader audience, further establishing our community as a crucial support resource.

Voice of the Customer (VoC): The community plays a vital role in collecting and conveying customer feedback to internal teams. By prioritizing the voice of the customer, we can address trending topics, resolve identified bugs, and fill content gaps, helping us maintain exceptional customer satisfaction.

Knowledge Base (KB): The community helps us uncover knowledge gaps in our self-service resources. By monitoring frequently asked questions, we can identify areas for improvement in our knowledge base, ensuring users find the information they need more easily and escalating issues when necessary.

Customer Success Forum and On-Demand Learning: This year, we expanded the community to include more collaborative spaces like the Customer Success Forum, Customer Success Events, and On-Demand Learning areas. These spaces provide opportunities for users to share success stories, unique use cases, customer spotlights, and access live and recorded webinars.

Escalations and Service Impacting Events: We use the community to communicate updates on service-impacting events and system status. There have been multiple instances where issues or bugs were first identified through reports from community members.

New Product Announcements: With the introduction of new products such as Zoom AI Companion, Zoom Docs, and Zoom Clips, we've added dedicated forums for each innovation. These spaces allow customers to ask questions, share use cases, and learn from previous discussions, fostering a deeper understanding of these products.

Community Champion Spotlight Series: To celebrate the contributions of our experts, we launched a monthly Community Champion Spotlight Series, highlighting the outstanding work and expertise of our top champions.

This year, we enhanced the Happy Rewards program to better recognize and reward community members. Leveraging Khoros' gamification features, we introduced:

• Leaderboards: New weekly leaderboards highlight top contributors based on accepted solutions.
• Reputation Levels and Rank Icons: Updated rank titles and icons showcase member expertise.
• Badges: Increased thresholds for badges awarded for accepted solutions, likes, and replies.

Collectively, these driving projects that were prioritized over this past year helped us to truly strengthen the customer experience on the community, which in turn, enabled us to better support and connect with our users.

 

What were the business outcomes and value driven by addressing these challenges? Please share specific results, metrics, and/or KPIs that quantify the change. 

By focusing on providing solutions for our customers and overall customer satisfaction, we achieved significant business outcomes that reflect our commitment to delivering helpful support and valuable information to our users.

SEO Impact and Business Outcomes: Our SEO optimization has markedly increased our visibility in search engine results, which directly impacts user engagement. Over the past year, our key metrics demonstrate the following results:

• Increased Organic Traffic: Our threads now rank higher on Google, leading to a noticeable increase in organic traffic to our community. In August, we saw a 54% year-over-year increase in total clicks from Google Search. This growth in traffic indicates that more users are finding and accessing our solutions through search engines.
• Enhanced User Engagement: The higher visibility has resulted in increased interaction with our content. During our third year, the community saw a 22.36% increase in page views, a 33.71% rise in visits, a 29.94% boost in unique visitors, and a 17.65% growth in total user time, reflecting improved engagement.
• Improved Problem Resolution: In August 2024, we achieved a remarkable 48.6% reduction in the average time to first reply, bringing it down to just 18.7 hours compared to 36 hours in August of the previous year. This improvement in problem resolution contributes to greater customer satisfaction and reduces the need for additional support.

Customer Satisfaction and Business Value: Our focus on customer satisfaction is evident in the positive feedback and increased participation within our community. Specific results include:

• Higher Satisfaction Scores: Customer satisfaction for our community forum jumped significantly from 84.5% in August 2023 to an outstanding 93.6% in August 2024, indicating higher satisfaction with the support and resources available, as users can more easily find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
• Increased Community Growth: Year-over-year growth in community membership and activity levels shows that users find our community valuable for expanding their knowledge and resolving issues. Total registered members increased by 28.6% year-over-year, rising from 283,851 at the end of August 2023 to 365,057 at the end of August 2024.
• Cost Efficiency: By empowering users to resolve issues independently through improved SEO and accessible information, we’ve reduced the reliance on direct support channels, leading to cost savings in support operations.

In summary, our efforts to optimize SEO, expand programs, and consistently provide users with timely solutions have led to significant growth in both user engagement and community traffic. These enhancements have not only improved the efficiency of our support but also generated measurable business value through cost savings and an enhanced user experience. Our goal is to empower users to resolve issues and broaden their knowledge of Zoom’s capabilities. The Zoom Community’s wealth of shared knowledge and information helps us achieve this mission. By analyzing year-over-year key metrics, we can clearly see how our continued growth reflects the community’s success in delivering solutions that meet user needs. 

2023 Zoom Community by the Numbers – YoY growth (August 2023) compared to (August 2024):

• Solution views increased by 50%
• Community visits increased by 22%
• Unique visitors increased by 25%
• Page views increased by 11%
• Number of clicks from the Zoom support site to the community; from Google to the community (August 2023 Google clicks: 320K, August 2024: 494K)
• Membership growth increased by 29%

 

What were the progress outcomes driven by addressing these challenges? Please share specific results, metrics, and/or KPIs that quantify the change. 

Addressing the increased need for self-service within our community has yielded several key progress outcomes, enhancing both customer satisfaction and support efficiency. Here are the specific results and metrics that quantify these improvements:

Increased Traffic to the Community:

• Traffic Growth: Our SEO enhancements have led to a 53.6% increase in organic traffic to the community. This surge in visits indicates that more users are discovering and accessing our community through search engine results. 

Increased Resolution Rate:

• Solution Visibility: The rise in community traffic has corresponded with a 50% increase in solution views. This boost in visibility has directly improved our resolution rate for user issues.

Increased Self-help Success Rate:

• Effective Self-service: The improved SEO has facilitated greater access to self-help resources. This reflects the community’s enhanced role in enabling users to resolve their issues independently as opposed to creating support tickets and calls. 

Increased CSAT Scores:

• Customer Satisfaction: As users increasingly find solutions through the community, our customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) have risen by nearly 10%, increasing from 84.5% in August 2023 to 93.6% in August 2024. This improvement is a direct result of users’ ability to quickly and efficiently address their problems.

 

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?

Khoros Communities has been pivotal in the successful launch and development of the Zoom Community, offering extensive features, customization options, and integrated tools that supported our goals. Here’s how Khoros has distinguished itself and contributed to our success:

Customization

• Design Flexibility: Khoros provided robust customization options that allowed us to align the community platform with our brand identity. We implemented custom top navigation and dropdown menus to seamlessly integrate Zoom resources, creating a cohesive look and feel across our marketing and support sites. 
• Recent Activity Feed: A standout feature is the custom recent activity feed, which organizes posts into categories like "Latest Posts," "Trending Posts," "Solved," and "Unanswered." This structure helps users easily find relevant content, enhancing their overall experience. 

Gamification

• Rewards and Recognition: Khoros’s gamification features have been key in driving user engagement. By implementing leaderboards and custom badges, we effectively recognize and motivate community members for their contributions and solutions. 

Analytics

• In-Depth Insights: Khoros’s analytics tools provide valuable metrics on traffic, content, and user activity. These insights enable us to track trends, gather feedback, and make informed, data-driven decisions. Our monthly Listening Reports, generated from this data, offer a comprehensive overview of community growth, top discussions, and member contributions. These reports have directly influenced new knowledge base articles, product features, and content updates.

Custom Components

• Cost-Effective Advertising: Khoros’s custom components allow us to promote events, product launches, and important announcements through ads and banners. This feature has been especially useful for communicating updates during service-impacting events in a cost-efficient manner.

Integrations

• Khoros Care: A major benefit of Khoros is its Khoros Care feature, which helps us manage and prioritize the high volume of community posts, ensuring that critical issues are addressed promptly to boost user satisfaction.
• Qualtrics: By integrating Qualtrics for customer surveys directly within our community, we’ve streamlined the process of gathering valuable user feedback.
• Tableau: The availability of the Tableau API has been essential in analyzing user behavior and engagement, providing deeper insights into community interaction.

Khoros Communities has given us the tools and flexibility to build a dynamic, engaging platform. From customization and gamification to powerful analytics and seamless integrations, these features have been instrumental in helping us meet our goals and deliver ongoing value to our users.

 

What parts of your experience working with Khoros enabled you to address the need or challenge?

Working with Khoros has been instrumental in addressing our needs and challenges, thanks to several key aspects of our experience:

Relationship with the Professional Services Team:

• JWT Login Flow: By working with Khoros’s professional services team, we successfully implemented a JWT login flow, enabling better customer identification and more personalized services. This enhancement also supports the setup of special-access forums, providing a tailored experience based on account types.

Ease of Integrations:

• Seamless Platform Integration: One of Khoros’s key strengths is its ability to integrate seamlessly with other platforms. This has allowed us to connect the community with various tools, improving how we manage user interactions and support. Integrations with platforms like Qualtrics for surveys and Tableau for data analysis have been especially valuable in optimizing operations and gathering actionable insights.

These elements of our experience with Khoros have been instrumental in providing targeted support, enhancing user engagement, and streamlining our community management processes.