Spotify
Company: Spotify
Company background: Spotify transformed music listening forever when it launched in 2008. Discover, manage and share over 82 million tracks, including more than 3.6 million podcast titles, for free, or upgrade to Spotify Premium to access exclusive features for music including improved sound quality and an on-demand, offline, and ad-free music listening experience. Today, Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with 406M users, including 180M subscribers, across 184 markets.
Contact: Leslie Fountain
Title: Community Project Manager - Content
Related URLs: https://community.spotify.com
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Community
1. Describe the organization's objectives in launching a community. What is the use-case and purpose of your community? Do you use your community for support, enablement and learning, marketing awareness, customer success, driving sales, product innovation, etc.? Has the community charter evolved in any way since launch?
Spotify’s Customer Service Operations (CS Ops) wanted to provide a world-class online Community where users help users to resolve their queries and create Ideas for the product roadmap.
Over the past ten years, Spotify Community has evolved strategically as a user-generated knowledge hub that supports call deflection and customer experience communications.
For users, Spotify Community provides support, marketing awareness for new features, and product innovation through user-submitted Ideas. When our community launched in 2012, our community manager saw a single superuser’s impact on the community, which inspired the creation of the Spotify Stars Program (formerly the Rock Stars Program). Our operations have since evolved to recognize and develop superusers’ value by investing in the program and tools to empower their ability to help other users.
2. Tell us about how you are using your community and how you made it happen. Did you get executive/business/stakeholder buy-in? What was your process to gain this buy-in? How have you achieved cross functional support, added stake-holders and increased organizational adoption?
The community is an integrated customer service channel and user forum within Spotify’s Customer Service Operations. Customer Service leadership, including the Vice President of Customer Service, Senior Directors, and Operations Directors, were keen on the potential of what Spotify Community could deliver and invested in more resources for a better user experience in the platform while aligning the cross-channel customer experience for our users.
Due to the increasingly high volume of activity as a result of Spotify’s growth and Customer Service’s strategic objective to provide a consistent customer experience, CS Ops sought additional resources to support key community needs and developed formulas to determine the value and cost savings of support activities in the community.
Our first key need for the community was to increase moderation staff to address unanswered questions and the ongoing high volume of activity. Our second need was to improve the user journey and experience in the community by establishing a relationship with an external partner to enhance the discoverability and usability of Help, Chat, and Ideas.
With resources in place to support users and customize the platform, cross-functional relationships with Press and Product Teams were shaped to form communications and feedback loops with users through Ideas. Ongoing alignment is developing with the Support Team to improve the content experience in Help.
Additional investment in Khoros CX expanded cross-functionality with Spotify Stars (superusers) to collaborate with staff and our moderation team. Using a combination of Khoros Community’s Group Hub and Event content types and Khoros CX, Stars have a space to connect, learn about the program, and manage their Twitter account to respond to other users.
Soon after bringing on a moderation team, we adopted Khoros Care to manage and monitor Spotify Community’s incoming activity.
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.
1. Our investment in Design grows membership and engagement with Help, Chat, and Ideas:
Working with our external partner on design and user experience, we evolved our community from its original design on Lithium to the current design on Khoros Community platforms.
Spotify Community UI
- In 2022, our membership reached 5M registered members.
- For a connected experience, Single sign-on (SSO) was added to the community for Spotify accounts.
- The community averages 4.9 million visitors a month, 20,000 posts per month, and 260,000 views per month on Community Blogs.
- Approximately 71,000 Ideas have been submitted since its launch.
2. Superuser program grows in participation and impact:
Superuser Program Logos
- We launched the Spotify Stars (formerly Rock Stars) superuser program in 2013 on the Lithium platform.
- Five years after launch, Stars created 158K posts and 12,600 answered questions.
- Annual in-person events that launched in 2014 facilitated direct superuser feedback opportunities with Spotify executives, product leadership, and engineering teams.
- The highest number of Stars reached 174 at one point, and in 2021 one Star achieved the 10-year mark as a member of the program.
- Feedback on historical program performance and low retention led to significant program changes with a 40% increase in applications and a 60% improvement in retention in 2022.
- NPS Score in the program improved from 11 to 45 with the additions of Chat and Ideas to the community in 2016.
- After launching a Twitter profile, Stars were brought into Khoros CX to collaborate with CS Ops teams to help users on Twitter and promote community activities.
- The @AskSpotifyStars Twitter account to date has 10K followers and saw a volume of 23K incoming conversations in 2021. One Spotify Star has provided more than 6K responses in 2021 through Khoros CX.
- The first marketing campaign for the program was launched in 2022.
- Stars have gone as far as joining the Spotify moderation team as staff and have been featured in press interviews on Spotify products.
3. Khoros Community provided additional solutions for developers, internal collaboration, and user feedback on products:
- Khoros Community’s extensive platform provided solutions for hosting three sub-communities, including Spotify for Developers, Open Mic (an Internal Community), and Beta Band (user beta feedback forum for products including CarThing).
4. Ideation influences major product releases and product communication:
Through our Ideas Board, Spotify users, Product teams, and Research & Development have collaborated on product releases to enhance the Spotify experience. Product updates in Ideas have become a source for media stories and enriched Spotify Community’s relationship with our Press Team.
- Chromecast support is launched as a direct result of Ideas engagement reaching more than 9,000 votes.
- Spotify’s Xbox One app was launched as a direct result after Idea reached more than 7,600 votes.
- Spotify Android Widget is reinstated due to feedback through Ideas. The idea reached almost 17,000 votes and more than 2,000 comments.
- A Repeat One [Track] idea championed by a Spotify Star was adopted as a product feature.
- The number of Songs in Your Library was changed to unlimited after receiving almost 13,000 votes. The announcement post from a Spotify Star was widely promoted by the media, including CNET, TechCrunch, USA Today, and The Verge.
- Upon the new release of our Desktop and Web application in 2021, we worked with Press and Product Teams on the user feedback loop process. One thread on the topic generated more than 2,200 replies.
5. We had the capability to build solutions to help visitors find answers and create posts through a guided user experience tool:
In April 2022, we launched a Help Wizard solution with our external partner to assist visitors and registered members in finding answers or posting their questions. Community posts increased by approximately 50%.
Help Wizard in Spotify Community
6. Growing our moderation staff and adopting Khoros Care as a moderation and monitoring solution helps achieve high response rates in the community:
Since growing our moderation staff, we’ve reported an average success rate of approximately 90% in providing a response within 24-48 hrs to new posts, compared to an estimated 30% in 2020-2021. Using Khoros Care allowed us to see our performance levels and recognize that thousands of posts were being flushed when unanswered. The insights from our dashboard helped build a case for increasing the staff to achieve a higher success rate.
7. The Ongoing Issues board in Spotify Community serves as a communications hub for Customer Service (CS) Advisors and users:
Using the Ideas content type, we created an Ongoing Issues board for a communications hub where moderation staff can raise issues coming into the community and communicate their status and findings. This communication provides CS Advisors, developers, and users an efficient resource that reduces support demand on other channels and saves time on support contacts.
Ongoing Issues in Spotify Community
Communication example
CX Communications
8. Spotify Community is recognized as a reliable knowledge hub for CS Advisors and Developers:
57% of surveyed CS Advisors visit the community once a week or more for content on Troubleshooting and updates on the Idea Exchange and Ongoing Issues boards. Developers work closely with moderators in Spotify Community to investigate live issues, collect user stories, and troubleshoot service disruptions.
9. Spotify Community generates conversions:
By adding strategic placement of a promotional banner in Spotify Community, we generate a consistent nominal amount of conversions every day. For a time period in 2019, the community generated $80K in potential revenue.
Spotify Community Banner
These results capture more than ten years worth of achievements and progress we’ve made towards realizing the potential and mission for Spotify Community since adopting Khoros Community, Khoros Care, and Khoros CX. As a result of adopting these tools, the community truly runs on balanced collaboration with partners, staff, and users to become a strategic asset in customer service delivery.