Company: JMP
Company background: JMP is a business unit of SAS that produces interactive software for desktop statistical discovery. Pronounced “jump,” its name suggests a leap in interactivity, a move in a new direction. John Sall, SAS co-founder and Executive Vice President, created this dynamic software and remains its chief architect and leader of the JMP division. Introduced in 1989 with scientists and engineers in mind, JMP has grown into a family of statistical discovery products used worldwide in almost every industry. From its beginnings, JMP software has empowered its users by enabling interactive analytics on the desktop.
Contact: Ryan Gilmore
Title: Community Manager
Related URLs: community.jmp.com
Kudos Category: All-Ways Connected
1. Tell us about your digital customer experience: When and why did digital customer experience become a focus and priority for your organization and what technology(ies) did you decide to implement to help you, and what problem(s) does it help solve?
It’s no coincidence that the JMP User Community tag line is “Share. Ask. Learn. Connect.” One of the overarching goals of nearly every area of the JMP User Community and the programs it supports is helping users stay connected. JMP Customer Care focuses on making sure users get the most out of JMP—and one way we do that is by keeping everyone connected.
For the past seven years, the community has supported a vibrant and growing Discussions space where JMP users stay connected, ask and answer questions, and learn from JMP experts. To expand the number of JMP employees in this kind of knowledge sharing, we wanted to draw more of them into the community. We also wanted to give Discovery Summit attendees a space to continue conference conversations. And, the JMP Wish List gave us another layer of engagement to connect with JMP users about their software needs.
In addition, JMP continues to use the community platform to support users through a full set of programs. Below are three of our favorite ways to stay connected, including a list of other programs and spaces that are just as essential to keeping community members connected and our customers cared for.
- InsideJMP: An internal space dedicated to disseminating JMP information to all employees. This intranet houses content for JMP employees to use for sales and marketing, for getting to know teammates, and for sharing division updates. InsideJMP consists of important internal boards coupled with a home page that presents curated news from those boards most relevant to employees. The space is a way to encourage employees to be active in the community on a regular basis ̶ interacting with each other in ways similar to how they engage with customers and how customers use the community.
Employees are encouraged to take advantage of the subscription feature to receive email notifications when new content is available. By providing a space for JMP employees to share previously inaccessible content, InsideJMP makes it even easier for us to present JMP users with consistent sales information and support.
Figure 1: InsideJMP home page - Discovery Summit Series: A collection of knowledge bases paired with Discovery Summits, our large customer conference events. Whether these live events are held virtually or in person, the community boards compile presentation materials that conference attendees can view before, during and after an event to participate fully in the conference experience. Particularly over the past year, the community has been essential to maintaining access to content that normally would be lost after a live event ̶ conversations and presentation materials that disappear with the end of an event held in a virtual conference platform.
Additionally, purposefully and consistently labeled content in these boards allow community visitors to filter content by topic area, presentation type and more. The available materials give attendees flexibility to attend presentations and view other presentations they may have missed while attending the live sessions. By offering a space for conference attendees to gather throughout a conference event and for months after, JMP gives users more opportunities to learn from each other to enhance their use of JMP.
Figure 2: Discovery Summit Americas 2020 home page for navigating conference presentation materials - JMP Wish List: An ideas exchange where JMP users can connect directly with JMP product management by submitting their suggestions for software enhancements and new features. This feedback helps determine the priorities of software feature development. Most importantly, the space allows JMP to mark wishes complete when they have been delivered, facilitating further engagement by communicating to customers that their input is important and valuable to us. Wish lists have been set up across the community for the larger community, for employees in the InsideJMP space, and for each private collaboration space designated for specific organizations that use JMP.
Figure 3: JMP Wish List page
OTHER PROGRAMS:
- Community Newsletter: Monthly e-newsletter distributed to JMP User Community subscribers highlighting popular, new community content.
- Data for Green: Group Hub space where JMP users showcase how they use JMP for environmental conservation efforts.
- Blogs: Blog articles that provide content on statistics, analytics, how to use JMP and more. Blogs utilize the commenting feature to support connections between readers.
2. What are the benefits of having an integrated community and social media management platform for your organization? How does it improve your strategy for digital customer engagement?
Staying connected is made easier through a variety of Khoros-supported technologies. The community platform has enabled centralized knowledge sharing in myriad ways. Here’s how the three programs we featured above use these technologies to keep community members connected in common, convenient spaces.
- InsideJMP: Uses community boards that are restricted to JMP employees and includes a unique home page that serves as an initial navigation point and place to feature content. Most importantly, InsideJMP has used boards as a central source for news and important information for the division. JMP uses the announcements feature to keep key division goals consistently visible. Content can be found months after it is released to the division. A record of reported division news and any supporting resources is available long after being announced. JMP went from email silos and often inaccessible content to a main location for division information.
- Discovery Summit Series: Uses knowledge base functionality to offer a central location for JMP Discovery Summit conference attendees, or any community visitor, to access conference presentation materials (videos, slides and sample data). With the implementation of the Discovery Summit space, conference attendees can now take advantage of a richer experience with the option to watch and rewatch presentations, view presentations they may have missed, and connect with presenters in the comments section after the event. Additionally, the space allows JMP to show community visitors who have not attended a conference the value and benefits of the event.
- JMP Wish List: A space where JMP users submit ideas for software enhancements and new features. Prior to the JMP Wish List, a formalized mechanism to submit suggestions for enhancements or new JMP features didn’t exist. Customer Care might hear feedback during events, Sales could gather requests while training customers or Tech Support would document ideas from users. This idea exchange now allows JMP users to submit suggestions themselves and upvote existing submissions they like, giving Product Management a space to capture these ideas and prioritize them for future releases.
OTHER PROGRAMS:
- Community Newsletter: The community e-newsletter has enhanced outreach to community members, providing a monthly, curated list of some of the latest and most popular content in the community. The newsletter is designed to cultivate interest that draws readers back to the community to see what they may have missed.
- Data for Green: JMP as an organization has begun actively supporting environmental conservation work in this brand new initiative. The community Group Hub space allows JMP to nurture conversations and encourage discussions among customers who are involved in the same effort.
- Blogs: The JMP Blogs use the Khoros blog feature to create one central place, along with other community content, for JMP users to get all of the information they need for the best statistical discovery.
3. What are your digital results? Please provide your business outcomes and results because of your digital customer experience approach in quantifiable metrics (e.g. revenue, Net Promoter Score, cost savings, brand reputation).
For insight into how the community is helping JMP in reaching customer care and business goals, we pull from a variety of data sources, including Salesforce data, Tech Support tracking entries, and Community REST API and the Bulk Data API. Here are some high-level findings from this analysis:
- If we define engagement as posting articles, visiting the community, and giving kudos, we have experienced year-over-year growth in engagement since 2019 (for both the internal InsideJMP spaces and the larger community).
Figure 4: InsideJMP engagement 2019-2021 - Since JMP began providing Discovery Summit conference presentation materials in the community, engagement (as defined by the number of kudos) has trended up.
Figure 5: Engagement in the Discovery Summit spaces has increased over time - Our customers have connected with us to submit more than 1,000 software feature wishes. And JMP doesn’t ignore wishes. We have either delivered, already offered or are currently developing more than 15% of wishes requested and continue to evaluate existing ones.
Figure 6: JMP Wish List ideas - Since 2019, JMP has seen a downward trend in Tech Support tracks for topics that customers are asking about and getting answers for in the community. Tech Support tracks and community content are both labeled, allowing us to see topics for which the Tech Support tracks have trended down.
Figure 7: "Scripting" is an example topic for which the number of Technical Support tracks is trending down - A JMP software sale tends to be higher for an organization that is connected (which is defined as having more community members).
Figure 8: Sale amount versus community membership - JMP is more likely to complete a sale with an organization that is connected (which is defined as having community members).
Figure 9: Sales won versus community membership
A final important note about community content and staying connected: All content in the JMP User Community is translated into multiple languages using the solution from iTalent/Lingotek, allowing customers and employees to collaborate and stay connected regardless of their language choice.