Company: EE
Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social
Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)
Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader
As part of a company-wide program to become #1 for Service within our sector, we have taken the opportunity to focus the EE Community and deliver clear (and ambitious) benefits to the organization. While our community is 18 months old, it is only within the last 6 months that we have made some real, demonstrable progress and are delivering operational savings back to EE.
Our strategy for developing the community is based on the Lithium benefits methodology of call deflection. At the start of 2014, we set out a clear ambition (dubbed our 2-3-4 strategy):
- 2 x Volume of topics created
- 3 x The volume of traffic Y-o-Y
- 1 in 4 topics resulting in an approved solution
Through this clear articulation of the targets, we have built a robust business case that has been shared throughout the organization and is tracked week on week. We are completely transparent with our performance and the benefits we are delivering. This simplicity and transparency has engaged parts of the business previously unaware (and skeptical) of the community and has garnered a large amount of support for our cause.
This support has opened doors to a new level of transparency between our brand and our customers. This transparency is demonstrated by our being open and honest with our community members when there are system/network issues, or when we recently changed terms and conditions and also when we announced a price rise. The benefits have been both intangible and tangible.
- Intangible:
- Real-time feedback from community on hot topics
- Platform for transparency when we are experiencing system issues
- Tangible
- Traffic is up 50% in 4months - Peaking at 300% uplift in traffic at certain points
- Best ever performing thread - 100k views in 24hour period
- Continuing on this trajectory we will see exceed traffic target by 30% in 2014
- Topics started exceeding target by approx 30%
- Approved Solution Rate exceeding target week on week by up to 40%
- Number of customers no longer needing to call us - Currently at 130% of YTD Target
Without Lithium we would not have been able to act (and react) in real-time. The flexibility of the platforms allows us to publish content, manage interactions and provide real-time insight back to the business in order to inform better business decision making.
Our 2-3-4 strategy has provided a clear platform both internally and when working with Lithium. In our recent QBR, it allowed me to work with our Exec Sponsor to ensure that all parties are 100% on the priorities, opportunities and plans. This alignment aids collaboration and ultimately project delivery and business realization.
Through a simple, clear and consistent strategy we have seen:
- Dramatic reduction in the time to respond to customer interactions – Time to respond has dropped by 95%
- Average Agent Handle Time for Social Interaction down by 8%
- Reduction in inbound customer service support calls
