Lithys 2018: Tableau Software - Surprise and Delight

Lithys 2018: Tableau Software - Surprise and Delight

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Company: Tableau Software

Company background: We help people see and understand data. From connection through collaboration, Tableau is the most powerful, secure, and flexible end-to-end analytics platform for your data. Elevate people with the power of data. Designed for the individual, but scaled for the enterprise, Tableau is the only business intelligence platform that turns your data into insights that drive action. Founded in 2003, Tableau Products now include Tableau Prep, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Online and Tableau Server.

Contact: Amanda Boyle

Title: Community Manager

Related URLs:

Lithy category: Surprise and Delight

1. Tell us about a social promotion or digital/brand campaign that ‘surprised & delighted’ your customers.

The Tableau Community is unique in the industry and acknowledged as such: “Tableau Software is the Apple of the analytics market, with a huge fan base and enthusiastic customers,” - Doug Henschen, Constellation Analyst on ZDNET.

By supporting the fundamental human desire to connect with others, and carefully curating a diverse community of passionate individuals with a variety of different ways to participate and contribute, Tableau has built a community from our very early days that differentiates us from other non-consumer tech companies. The Tableau Community is a core manifestation and enabler of our mission to Help People See and Understand Data, and it appears prominently in Tableau’s website and annual report.

The Tableau Community is a fundamental ingredient to how we define our brand – and maintain our brand's authenticity.

The tagline featured on the Tableau Community page (“Together, we are extraordinary”) highlights the two primary benefits community brings to its members. The first is together, which is all about connecting. The second is about being extraordinary, which takes learning and practicing.

Community members make connections in the forums, Twitter, a Customer Conference or at a Tableau User Group (TUG); get answers in person or online; shape the future of Tableau products through ideation forums and beta testing focus groups; and find inspiration and unleash creativity on Tableau Public and at Tableau events.


Tableau’s community team has a number of ongoing efforts to support our own and community led initiatives. For the purpose of this submission I would like to highlight the  Tableau Follow Friday campaign on Twitter that was started by Tableau employees Jewel Loree and Jade Le Van. The due started the #TableauFF hashtag to help highlight undiscovered Tableau Public authors in 2016.

This viz on Tableau Public for Zen Master Mike Cisneros  shows “who we’ve been missing”: https://public.tableau.com/profile/mikevizneros#!/vizhome/ff_6/TableauFollowFriday

This initiative may have been started by Tableau employees - but has really only taken off with ongoing community support.

2. Share the goal, strategy and tactics. What makes your approach to customer satisfaction a gold standard in the industry?

The goal of #TableauFF is to highlight new voices and encourage community members to be inclusive and elevate new and unique perspectives, specifically on Tableau Public. Tableau has a global footprint and massive reach - but often as is seen with robust community - those who have been placed in the spotlight shine bright and others may be missed. The community has dedicated time and energy to surprise and delight their peers by including them in this weekly social campaign - and the results have been incredible. Here is a link to the campaign hashtag on Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tableauff&src=typd

Strategies for inclusion have evolved from a campaign started by members of our Tableau Public team to highlight great work they were seeing - to members of the community themselves highlighting work of their peers that they found impressive.

Every week (on Friday) random members of the community share a tweet with a link to someone new - or new to them - that they have “discovered” amongst the thousands of authors on Public to showcase and then link to their Tableau Public profile. Mike’s viz is automatically updated with the data from Twitter to serve as a living repository and well of amazing voices to witness and garner inspiration from.

Ongoing tactics include sharing this campaign across our teams in marketing, support, sales and development as it is a fantastic resource into how our customers are innovating and using our products - as well as highlighting the campaign across Tableau’s social channels to give a boost in reach to new audiences.

3. What were the results? (e.g. customer response, brand impact, sentiment change)

Again, this viz on Tableau Public for Zen Master Mike Cisneros includes the results and has had over 12k views alone:  https://public.tableau.com/profile/mikevizneros#!/vizhome/ff_6/TableauFollowFriday

-- I thought it best to link to it as a screen shot or an image takes away all the interactive functionality --

There is something incredibly kind, supportive and generous about the Tableau Community as a whole that our team has never been able to fully articulate. They give generously and support each other beyond measure. That is pretty remarkable for a company that specializes in data to state 🙂

Tableau Community members simply care about each other. It’s something we all know we are lucky to be a part of. But don’t just take our word for it: check out the hashtag - scan through conversations on Twitter - read through a thread or two in the Community Forums - or we hope that someday you can attend a Tableau User Group meeting and see for yourself. 

With many projects that we support here, we may start them, but our community quickly makes them their own.

Tableau Community members engage across multiple properties: the Community Forums, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tableau Public, through webinars and interactive chats and finally in person at our annual conference, TUG meetings, regional events, and then larger tier marketing and product launch events. They are diverse, they are passionate, they are brilliant - and as we see with campaigns like #TableauFF - they are kind.

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Thanks so much for your consideration!