Company: Vipnet

Entry submitted by: Hrvoje Puljko (puljac) Community (Forum) expert

Community: VIP forum (http://forum.vip.hr)

Lithy category: Best Community Design

Vipnet is the first private mobile network operator in Croatia, a part of the Telekom Austria Group. By entering the Croatian telecommunications market in 1998, Vipnet introduced competition into mobile telephony. Over the last 15 years Vipnet acquired the status of the most renowned innovation leader on the telecommunications market in Croatia.

Vipnet was the first in Europe to demonstrate the HSPA network, thus offering mobile Internet access that is faster than ADSL. Furthermore, Vipnet was among the first in the world to successfully test HSPA+ technology for mobile broadband.

In June 2013 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb Vipnet set a new world record for the fixed segment with speeds of 5 Gbit/s using the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network, and in the mobile segment presented speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s based on 4.5G – LTE Advanced technology. In September 2012 and again this year Vipnet was proclaimed winner in the Best value for money for business in the Business Best Buy Award. Vipnet currently has more than 2 million customers.

Vip forum as a goal has multiscreen customer experience, to increase street credibility, and to be customers' first choice when searching for support information’s.

Vip forum also has a purpose to increase brand awareness and to be the place for engaging existing and future Vip customers.

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THE STRUCTURE

In August 2013 we launched the first telco brand community in Croatia.

It is a small step in the world but big in Croatia where customers don’t forgive unfriendly functionalities & illogical designs, because community is here for the users, not for designers or employees!

Well established names from online community and IT/telco journalists were involved in Vip forum trial and helped to design final version of community platform.

During the 2 week trial, beta testers spent more than 200 hours online and generated more than 50 different ideas and improvements which were implemented in final Vip forum version.

We made it clear in structure, transparent at the glance, light to use and spend time, easy to find answers & support.

We are the first telco community which is open to non-Vip & Vip customers with the intention to get customers help themselves.

COVER PAGE CALL FOR ACTION

FRONT PAGE BIG VISUAL BUTTONS – we are offering a way for a customer to Registrate / Login in to our community with these BIG buttons, familiar colors and sentences that are describing the action.

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After customer login, he can now use his visual designed User Panel:

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On the right side MENU of the cover we have visual help icons (links) to support customer if this is his first time on Forum:

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After customer login, he can now use his personalized custom component which depends on his rank and role:

Personalized links
Greeting and user avatar
Last user posts

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MENU CUSTOM COMPONENT TAB beneath main category icons allows customers to have an overview of what's new in a few seconds!

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And depending on if user is logged in or not, he can see the personalized posts he didn’t read from the last visit to the community:

CSS CUSTOMIZATION

We made lot of CSS customization in our community but the latest demands from our community members were this three for better functionality and visualization:

Provided better “SOLUTION PROVIDED” visualization:

Provided better “QUOTE” custom visibility and automatically @mention the user we quote:

MOBILE VERSION

Cover page easy to use!

Very similar to desktop version which is also available for mobiles.

Same icons, structure & features are now available to customers!

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Lithys 2014: Vipnet - Best Community Design