Company: StarHub
Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM
Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/)
Lithy category: Social ROI Titan
StarHub is Singapore's fully-integrated info-communications company, offering a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services. It also manages an islandwide HFC network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services (including HDTV, Internet TV and on-demand services) as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services. StarHub operates an extensive fixed business network that provides a wide range of data, voice and wholesale services. Over Singapore’s fibre-based Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, StarHub offers a broad range of home and business broadband plans along with a host of advanced media-rich value-added services, such as IPTV for commercial entities.
Best in Social, a Social Business
The objective of StarHub Community is to transform StarHub into an engaging social business by letting different departments execute their social media initiatives on the platform, interacting more intimately with their targeted audiences and thereby positioning StarHub as a leader in Social Media.
A company-wide balance score card was created based on the number of projects the company activated on the platform. It was based on the Threshold, Target and Stretch targets of seven, eight or nine projects.
We achieved the Stretch benchmark of nine projects at the end of 2014 and bagged a regional award for Best Use of Social (http://www.marketing-interactive.com/le-awards-sg/winnersasiaall/). StarHub Community also won the Lithium APAC Star Award (http://www.lithium.com/company/news-room/press-releases/2014/lithium-announces-lithy-award-and-hackathon-winners-at-linc-2014).
The success also enabled StarHub to be a thought leader in several industry seminars, including a Social CRM seminar and a Social Media Branding Conference in Singapore and Hong Kong, a testament to the success of StarHub Community and the credibility of StarHub’s social media presence. https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/pacific-conferences-presents-first-social-074500138.html, https://www.apconnections.com/industry-events/all/icalrepeat.detail/2014/08/11/131/-/-
StarHub Community has certainly helped StarHub to achieve leadership in the Social Media landscape, transforming the company to become a more social business and eventually facilitating the efforts of advocates to promote the brand.
In addition to the above strategic objectives, several tactical objectives were also listed:
- Drive Peer to peer support
- Generate sales leads
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Attain most socially devoted brand status in Singapore
The nine projects which spanned across different departments of the organisation were:
- Content contest on MTV http://community.starhub.com/t5/Latest-Contests-and-What-s-New/Contest-Closed-Win-a-Trip-To-Glasgow-to-watch-the-MTV-EMAs-2014/m-p/99559#M516,
- Sponsorship contest on a famous Korean pop star http://community.starhub.com/t5/Past-Hackathons/CONTEST-CLOSED-Win-passes-to-meet-Kim-Soo-Hyun-in-person/m-p/73605#M16,
- StarHub e-books product contest partnering a company to form a Writing Interest group http://community.starhub.com/t5/Young-Author-Club/Welcome-to-the-Young-Author-Club/gpm-p/81977
- New Channel “Hits” launch contest activation http://community.starhub.com/t5/HITS-TV-Shows/Welcome-to-the-HITS-TV-Shows-group/m-p/81919#U81919
- Social TV Blog content for a popular women programme http://community.starhub.com/t5/Lady-First-Episodes/Welcome-to-the-Lady-First-Community/m-p/81285#U81285
- Travel group as content strategy for our roaming product http://community.starhub.com/t5/General-Travel-Discussion/Welcome-to-the-Travel-Group/td-p/80637
- Local music scene sponsorship contest http://community.starhub.com/t5/Latest-Contests-and-What-s-New/CLOSED-Win-a-pair-of-tickets-to-Xinyao-Reunion-Concert-%E6%98%8E%E5%A4%A932%E6%96%B0%E8%B0%A3%E6%BC%94%E5%94%B1%E4%BC%9A/m-p/94569#M284
- Cross Bundle Product market research user reviews and inforgraphic http://community.starhub.com/t5/Hubbing/HomeHub-Review-See-what-our-customers-saying-about-HomeHub/m-p/86839#M324
- Revamp of the super user programme http://community.starhub.com/t5/Latest-Contests-and-What-s-New/Meet-StarHub-Community-s-top-contributors-and-advocates/m-p/108091#U108091
Sales Leads Revenue
Although the main return on investment (ROI) for StarHub Community was a reduction in customer support costs, a surprising result was that when we channeled below-the-line recontract EDMs to StarHub Community for a few months, we actually saw huge ROI. A post dedicated to broadband renewal promotions was created and when we directed EDMs to that post, we found that the conversation rate increased from 17% to 26%. We surmised that StarHub Community had become a place where customers can look at the most common questions and they can get their queries answered there quickly. This has become one of the most popular threads with 143,000 views. Considering StarHub has only about over 400,000 broadband households, the reach of the post is quite significant. From the leads generated from the web-based form, we are able to account for S$2.8 million in sales revenue. http://community.starhub.com/t5/Broadband-Recontract-Offers/StarHub-Broadband-Recontract-offer-HomeHub-and-more/m-p/24794#U24794
Customer Support Savings
Within six months of implementation, the traffic to StarHub Community superseded the traffic to starhub.com/support page. It quickly managed to realise significant cost savings of S$300,000 in Customer Support in 2013 through peer-to-peer (crowdsourcing) support.
For 2014, we saw traffic increase by 84% and the resultant cost savings ballooned to over S$500,000. Our top three super users alone spent 3,800 hours on the community helping others!
Based on a poll we did, we found that 43% of visitors to community were here for support reasons and 82% eventually got an answer resulting in 34% of them no longer needing to call the contact centre.
Customer Satisfaction and Brand Equity
Based on internal brand equity study results, StarHub scored significantly higher ratings on “online brand support forums” as compared to its competitors which have contributed to StarHub improving in the national published study on customer satisfaction according to The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG).
Socially Devoted
Because of the TKBs and accepted solutions on StarHub Community, we were able to provide better responses on Facebook, which remained the primary source of customer support queries on social. The improved efficiency helped us earn the coveted most “Socially Devoted” brand in Singapore according to Social Bakers for all 4 quarters of 2014.
