Company: Swisscom
Company background: Swisscom is the leading provider of communication, IT and entertainment in Switzerland. As number 1, we are shaping the future. Together we inspire people in the networked world.
Contact: Thomas Schönholzer
Title: Experience Designer
Related URLs: https://community.swisscom.ch/
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Community
1. Describe your community(s) and how you decided to start a community or grow/change it in the last year? (user request, Khoros suggestion, internal idea, etc.) What is the purpose of your community?
Answering customers' questions via phone is often not the most efficient way. To collect their questions and make the answers accessible to everyone online, the Swisscom Community was launched in 2010. In this way, many customers that would have otherwise called the support hotline can solve their problem online instead. In addition, the Swisscom Community reflects the premium character of the Swisscom brand.
2. Tell us about how you made it happen? Did you stage it first? Who got an early look? How did you drive adoption? Did you get executive buy-in? Did you have any key iterations?
Until 2019, there was a simple reward system with two badges that users received based on a certain amount of time spent in the Community and their activity level. It was unclear to users how these were assigned, and the ranking was meaningless. This is why asked ourselves: "How can we manage and motivate the Swisscom Community members better?" The solution was a more professional gamification system: There are several levels that users can reach when they have collected certain badges, which are awarded to them when they have carried out certain activities. Dr. Loveable, Scribbler, Nosy Parker, Expert or others – today there's a huge variety of different badges Community members can collect for different activities or special achievements which can be collected more quickly than before. This motivates users to like, comment or write posts.
In addition, the badges and levels show transparently how experienced and active a user is in the Swisscom Community. Users can see their own badges as well as those of others.
For us, on the other hand, the system is an indicator of whether someone might be a suitable super user. This role we assign manually based on various soft facts (behaviour, tone, etc.) and hard facts (posts, solutions, likes, etc.).
3. What were the results? Tell us how it impacted your customer experience or the outcomes you seek as a business. Please include metrics if possible.
Today the Swisscom Community has almost 200,000 users – an increase of 100% since the time of the introduction of the new reward system. Many customer questions can be solved online, which helps us handle customer requests more efficiently. The new gamification system also shows users our appreciation for their activity and makes them – perhaps subconsciously – engage more with the Community. This is reflected in the rising number of likes and in the increased time users spend online: Compared to October 2019, users spend on average almost 23% more time on the platform.
Example of a users profile page