Lithys 2013: Mozy - Best Community Technical Implementation

Company: Mozy by EMC

Entry submitted by: Zach Moffett (zachm) Community Manager

Community: Mozy Support Community (community.mozy.com)

Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation

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Three years ago we created the Mozy community to add a level of support for our customers.  The community has helped decrease the number of support cases that have been created by customers while keeping a high level of customer satisfaction.  We rely on our super users to help answer questions for their peers but we find ourselves asking support agents to answer questions in the community.  We know there will always be a need for Mozy support agents to work with customers but would like the community involvement to answer a majority of the questions.

 

Since we launched our community we have been cultivating users to participate more frequently and with a higher level of knowledge.  We provide knowledgebase articles, tutorials, and technical blogs for them to pull their information from.  This process has helped us further reduce support costs while keeping customer satisfaction over what we agreed to be an acceptable level.  Gamification has been a huge influence on the processes we have implemented to drive this participation.

 

As processes of gamification grow, so does the need to have a leveling system in place. To complement the Lithium rank structure we have implemented a leveling scale that shows the progress to the next rank.  As community members participate and work towards the next level in the community, they can see their progress and have an idea of what it will take to get to the next level. We built a custom slider bar that shows how close the customer is to the next rank.  Once the customer ranks up the slider bar refreshes to show what it takes to get to the next rank.

 

We have also implemented a rank system so community members can start off as a villager and work their way up to cook, ninjas, and eventually the overlord through participation.  We used the default Lithium measurements for the rank system but changed the names and provided corresponding avatars.  For example, when the user reaches the rank of Sensei the new avatar becomes available.  We modified our notifications to not only alert customers that their rank has increased but that they can change their avatar as well.

 

To augment the new features we wanted to provide our community members with more context for the gamification concept. We wrote a story that goes through our protagonist’s life story and how he started off as a lowly villager and through much learning, dedication and will, worked his way up to be the Overlord and eventually the Emperor.  The story can be found at http://community.mozy.com/t5/community-story/ct-p/communitystory . The story changes dynamically as the community member’s rank increases.  If you were to visit this page while not logged in you would not see any information.  If you create an account then you will see the first part of the story.  Once you level up then more of the story will become available. 

 

A member of our staff created all of the avatars along with full size images.  We went through multiple versions of the story but eventually agreed on the story that is now available.  We have had great feedback from our customers and staff members on this process.