Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, our #1 goal as an organization is customer satisfaction.  Prior to deploying Lithium, we did not offer any support to our free users.  With Lithium, we now have various ways to provide support to free users.  This results in customer retention and increased brand equity because their positive experience propels them to recommend us to other users or pitch us in enterprise conversations.                                         The rate of support calls that come to our team should be lower than the rate of our company’s growth - basically call deflection is very important.  In 2011, case volume growth was 4% per month.  Lithium was implemented by Lithium partner, Cloudsquads, in December 2011, and in 2012, the case growth rate was decreased to 2.5% a month.  Customers want to get their answer quickly and efficiently.  Call deflection is good for the customer too as it gets them the answer they want quickly and the way they want it. When we rolled out, we saw a immediate 20% drop in call volume simply due to the much improved self-help options.  Phone calls are the most expensive support ticket to take, and we were able to take what could have been a 20% cost savings and reinvest into delivering an even better support experience, which translates to more product virality and higher lifetime value of our customers.   Since our deployment of Lithium and some of the customizations that CloudSquads has made, we’ve been able to significantly slow the incoming rate of new cases, and in turn manage the many costs associated with scaling our call center, while at the same time meeting our #1 objective of delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, we’re very focused on finding the best and most cost effective way to manage all of our customers through social.  We have over 40 million customers, many of whom are free users, so we’re unable to provide the same services for them as we do our paid customers. Our support program uses social media to stay connected, but not incur high support costs.  We worked with Lithium partner, Cloudsquads to have a more integrated unified approach to engaging with customers.  Below are two examples of that integrated approach.    With our Lithium community we were able to put our blog and forum in one place.  Because of this, we get more visitors/readers to the blog. We leverage our knowledge base more and directly link the support questions coming through our community to the right answers and information.                                               Also, we offer multiple ways in which our customers can contact us (email, live chat, call, search knowledge base, open discussion thread).  This is all based on permissions (free, paid, enterprise).  It was important to serve up the right options based on the type of customer asking for support, so we needed to make the form smart - which required customization.  We now take the subject line as the user types up their support request and instantly serve up the right answers based on articles in our knowledgebase.                                     Customized contact us forms based on customer type                                             Dynamic search

Company: Elisa Entry submitted by: Noora Halme (Noora) Community Manager Community: Elisa Palsta (palsta.elisa.fi) Community: Saunalahti Palsta (palsta.saunalahti.fi) Lithy category: Best Community Design ___________________________________________________________________   Saunalahti and Elisa had separate discussion/help forums for several years, original launches dating back to 2005 and 2009. That makes a total of ten years of conversations and community bonding! When we decided to bring our community to the next level and moved the old forums over to the Lithium platform, we had few things to consider design-wise:   We wanted to keep our community clear and simple, easy to navigate, visually new but similar to what our users were used to. With a decade of history with little or none design changes, we couldn’t risk losing our members due to a radical change from classic and simple design to something very cutting edge. Our current Scandinavian design reflects the minimal taste of our Finnish users. The whole web presence of Elisa and Saunalahti is being renewed during 2013, and we wanted to be the first ones to take the changes into account. Elisa is a pioneer of support communities among Finnish telecom companies, and as a community, we wanted to be pioneers also internally. We were excited about the great new features that could guide our users to the most relevant and helpful content. We wanted to present kudos, solutions, subscriptions and bookmarks on our forum pages in a way that would make it possible for all of our users to find relevant content easily. Our goal is to be easy to approach and intuitive. Two brands, one community. We have one community, but two separate brands. Elisa provides IPTV-services, e-books and home security systems and Saunalahti focuses on mobile and broadband services and our customers are interested in different things depending on their products and services. We want to be there to help and to listen on both brands, forum pages have to be similar, but still provide relevant content for all types of customers. This was no easy task, but we managed to do it!   Our main focus is to provide a safe and friendly environment to our customers to ask questions about our products and services - we're essentially a support forum, a challenger to traditional customer support via telephone and e-mail. The community is a natural part of our customer care for us and - more importantly - to our customers.   We have had loads of good feedback from our clear colors, simple navigation, simplicity and the visual similarity of our two forums that form one community. The usability of our forums has been much praised: even though the radical decrease of different boards, from 30 to 11 on Saunalahti and 23 to nine on Elisa, was frowned upon at first, our members soon begun to appreciate the simplicity. Bringing the kudoed posts and solutions to the forum pages has also been a much-appreciated feature. We have had an amazing growth on our community members, and what is most important, the amount of visits and the average time spent online!   Our much praised avatar collection is one of my favorite parts as well. We use clear coloring to separate our staff and even super users from other community members, we see this as an important factor that helps our new users to find the most trustworthy content. After all we have a whopping community of 50 000 members! Our basic set of avatars consists of 20 characters including these ladies and gentlemen:                           We added a bunch of new at the end of 2012, including few moustached-up versions for movember (they were a hit!):                           And don't tell anyone, but we still have few more in store:   Maybe we'll add few special ones for nose day and pink ribbon?   We have a long lasting tradition of choosing a member of the year, they are rewarded with a crowned version of the avatars and our superusers have their own avatar collection with a small starred banner:                           Finally, here are our staff members. Orange is for admin (that would be me), green for moderators and blue for other staff. Our moderators also requested a special avatar for movember and we have a grey one for the moderators, who have already moved on:               Now that the first year of the new community has passed, we want to keep on rolling! Some of our users are very active on other communities around the web and they're constantly driving us towards better usability. Our plans for 2013 include, but are surely not limited to: Ideas exchange! We’re implementing Ideas in few weeks. Our users have been wishing for “Ideas-smithy” (that would be Ideapaja in Finnish) for a long time and now we’re ready for it! The design will be even more simple than the one on our forum pages’ and we’re ready to listen the voice of our users on what they want to see and how they want to use the “smithy”.                                                 Banner rotation! New banner pictures for spring, 1st of may, autumn and perhaps also gay pride? User designed banners? Sky's the limit! Speech bubble -logo and branding aren't going anywhere, but now that we have a good grounding, we can let loose a bit. Product-specific designs, new backgrounds for new product launches. Even better visual integration to product pages of Elisa and Saunalahti. We'll be incorporating a new navigation bar (currently marked with a grey bar on top of the community pages) that will allow our customers to easily navigate between our product pages, help pages, forums and self services.

Company: Skype Entry submitted by: Claudius Henrichs (Claudius) Community Manager Community: Skype Community (community.skype.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ___________________________________________________________________   Skype’s peer-to-peer community improves 1st contact resolution to 70% and reduces support cost by 10%   What happens if you flip on all switches for “Community” and put the spotlight on a previously hidden tech support forum? Skype did just that and turned it into a vibrant location for exchange around everything Skype, resulting in 1 st contact resolution at 70% and reduction of company-wide support costs by 10%. On top of that we discovered that community members are 30% more likely to use long-term subscriptions, connect on more platforms and show double usage of paid minutes.     With more than 200 million connected customers every month, Skype cannot rely on traditional, resource-intensive methods of customer support alone. Reflecting their truly global product Skype launched the community in ten languages to offer answers on new and trending support questions faster and deliver them on a more direct channel. The landing page was designed to showcase the various language communities and the current activities and hot topics. Members appreciated the fact that they could exchange in their language and had experts covering all time zones around the world. To drive direct exchange with their customers on product improvements, Skype launched #SkypeTalks live events where questions were streamed into a dedicated community board and Twitter and were replied by product managers inside Skype. This helped prioritize the developments sprints through the insight gained and gave users a very rewarding feedback experience.   Additionally Skype aimed at improving the capabilities of listening to its users through open discussions. Turning the previously used tech discussion forum to a real user community proved the answer to both demands. The community is looked after by a team of 30 moderators, both volunteer and Skype staff, and a team of 16 dedicated Super Users, expert users that like to share their knowledge and help other Skype users. The Skype Support Network community is offering support and discussions for the whole range of Skype products, from desktop via mobile to the living room. Within our first year already more than 400,000 individual topics have been replied on.   Solution Making the community a place you wanted to stay and return to was Skype’s primary goal.  To that end, Skype came up with several programs to reward their most engaged visitors.  The Community News highlights weekly activity, discussions and user participation.  Eventually the community helped Skype identify and resolve new product issues within 24 hours of a product launch that would normally have taken days to identify. Upon launch of a new product for the Android platform, the community compiled a list of problematic devices that prohibited them from using video calling. Armed with this critical feedback, Skype was able to issue a hotfix within days after the initial launch.   Another goal was to offer answers on new and trending support questions faster and deliver them on a more direct channel. Skype accomplished this by integrating the most helpful peer-submitted content called “Accepted Solutions” with related topics from their knowledge base to be prominently displayed on the Skype Support page. A category-based selection logic ensures that related topics are pulled from the correct community boards.                                                 Business Impact The Lithium-powered community is thriving with passionate users who share their expert knowledge and creative solutions on using Skype products.  Community helped Skype identify and resolve new product issues within 24 hours of launch that normally would have taken days. First contact resolution at 70% for 5 millions users/month 10% reduction in traditional support costs Community members are 30% more likely to use long-term subscriptions, connect on more platforms and show double usage of paid minutes  Visit: community.skype.com  

Company: Future Shop Entry submitted by: Laura Buchanan (LauraB) Social Community Manager Community: Future Shop Tech Yeah Steelbook Community (community.futureshop.ca/) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ___________________________________________________________________   This is the story of a group of superusers who came sort of out of nowhere to become influential in not only the community, but in the Future Shop movie business.     When we launched the Future Shop Community almost 6 years ago, it was always with the vision that it would be a place where our customers, employees and vendor partners would connect and engage directly. What’s happened in our Movies & TV Show forum over the past year has been a beautiful example of a niche group of passionate customers, an engaged merchant team & vendor partners who recognized the opportunity that this group of people represented.   Steelbooks are a special release of movies (new and old) that come in a metal packaging with different artwork than the regular DVD or Blu-ray releases. They are highly coveted among the collector community and Future Shop is in the unique position of being the sole distributor in Canada. Steelbooks are so sought after and produced in such limited quantities that you can find them re-selling for over $100!   The buyer team here at head office decided to start “leaking” Steelbook artwork and release information in the forum because it was easy to access and they could turn the “leaks” around quickly. When TheJord asked “What 2012 releases you would like to see in a steelbook?”, he got 24 replies and over 50,000 views on that single thread. Because of the engagement of all of the buyers & superfans, the Movies & TV Show board saw a 56% growth in board posts, a 59% growth in board views & a 75% growth in post views (YoY).                                               As the group of superusers continued to grow, so did their roles in the community – several rose quickly in the ranks and joined larger superuser programs in place for the entire community, our invite-only Community Ambassador program. They started posting Steelbook links for everyone to go place their pre-orders as soon as they were online.   Our vendor partners saw the passion that this group had for steelbooks and decided to tap into this by conducting polls in the forum to help them decide on what titles they would produce steelbooks for next. Future Shop produced approximately 80,000 steelbook last year and saw 60% comp growth online for last year – large in part due to the popularity of our Steelbook program.                                             The Steelbook superfans have also helped Future Shop to perfect the art of shipping Steelbooks without overpackaging them. Future Shop received lots of feedback on how to better package and ship Steelbooks so that they didn’t get dented or scratched, which was surfaced up to the teams who could directly impact this.   Shout-out to all of our Steelbook superfans! Atomic, kaw, Drum18, jceperley, debaser17, TheJord, ZeroX39, pioupiou, saybinator & many more.      

Company: Joe Mobile Entry submitted by: Laurent Partouche (lpartouche) Community Manager Community: Joe Community (communaute.joemobile.fr) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Joe is a new kind of Mobile operator. Real-time, full control over your budget, Joe allows you to finally take control of your phone plan.   Joe is also community-based. It means that the community is at the heart of its business model and allows for very lean operation when it comes to customer support.   Obviously it is easier to achieve this result when it's in your DNA right from the start rather than switching from a regular business model to a cooperative one.   That being said, it might have failed and we could have been flooded with support requests from angry users dying to find an answer to their legitimate questions. Fortunately this has not happened, in fact it's quite the opposite since with a satisfaction rate of 92% and an NPS score of 44 just two months after the start of our operations, our customers seems to be quite happy with their customer experience.   Let's dive into some numbers. There are 3 ways to find an answer with Joe :   1) Search the community. Chances are your question has already been asked, but also already answered. With 80K searches since the community started, this seems to be the preferred and most effective way to find your answer.   2) Open a topic : 3K new topics have been opened in the Help sections of the community (I voluntarily left out the "Café" section dedicated to off- topic discussions).   3) Fill out a support form : 2.5K have been opened so far. These are treated by our support agents via a dedicated channel and depending on the difficulty, are escalated to Level 3 support.                                           So how much have we saved ?   Again this is hard to tell since we have no prior comparison point. What we can say however is this :   We have to first make an assumption on the efficiency of the search tool. Let's say, that only 10% of searches guides the customer to the answer he is looking for (we think it is a conservative number when we look at the search terms that are most used). If we assume this hypothesis to be true, that's 8K support "cases" (10% of 80,000 searches) that would get solved without any further interaction with either the community or our support staff.                                                     All in all, this would mean that, out of the 13.5K support cases that you get if you add up 10% of the search to new topics and support forms, only 18.5% of those cases incur a direct cost for Joe (the support staff). That would be quite a compelling result in our opinion and truth is that we have not been forced to hire more support agents so those figure seems to be spot on.      Of course you should take into considerations all the efforts and staff needed to make sure that the community is indeed active and effective but in the long run, it will be more effective to have a few community managers rather than line up support agents that solve cases one by one.   One last takeaway. The community can handle the first level of support effectively because our system is simple and transparent. We don't have the burden of legacy IT or aging tariff plans. That allows the community, in most cases, to know the answers. We have worked a lot to have a simple process and make most information available directly to the customer via self-service. The best way to cut costs on support costs is to take away the root cause of calls.  

Company: Joe Mobile Entry submitted by: Laurent Partouche (lpartouche) Community Manager Community: Joe Community (communaute.joemobile.fr) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   How long does it take to build a new community?   Some weeks at least, a few months probably. Joe's community was born in a day. We remember it very clearly - it was last Oct 23 at 1PM.   Joe is a new kind of Mobile operator. Real-time, full control over your budget, Joe allows you to finally take control of your phone plan.   We launched that day of October after a month-long teaser period consisting of a single video on our website with very few information inside. At 10pm, we broadcasted a live Google Hangout from our offices that was watched live by 12,000 people and opened the service early in the afternoon.     It took only minutes for the first curious person to register for an account and order a SIM. The first questions started to pour into the forum and while the team took on the role to try and answer them we soon found this effort was futile. Indeed, in less than one hour, a few good men had already visited every corner of our website, read every information that they could land their hands on and started posting and answering questions way faster than we were able to.   By 4 PM we just sat there and read, amazed by what was happening.   Three months later the community is going strong. With 50,000 posts over 3,900 topics it is very active. Each new subject gets 14 answers on average but what we pride ourselves with is that 49% of questions are tagged as Solved. This helps a lot the new users to quickly find the answer to their questions.   There is still a lot of work to do for the community to keep growing. We need to build engagement and give everyone a good reason to come back every day.    Joe is a pure community-based model. Each and every Joe customer is a community member thanks to a one-step subscription process that allows us to have a single ID for both the community and our self-care.   We also provide an invitation system inspired by Dropbox where a member can invite his friends and relatives to join the community and earn a few euros for each new member that actually activate a SIM.   This allows for funny initiatives such as the member map : a google mashup where members can pin their location on the map and insert their invitation link.                                              

Company: Joe Mobile Entry submitted by: Laurent Partouche (lpartouche) Community Manager Community: Joe Community (communaute.joemobile.fr) Lithy category: Best Community Design ___________________________________________________________________   Joe is a new kind of Mobile operator. Real-time, full control over your budget, Joe allows you to finally take control of your phone plan thanks to a web app called the cockpit that is accessible on any smartphone.   The community is at the heart of Joe Mobile's website because it is very much the key to its success and its low-cost business model.   It was clear from the beginning that Joe's community should take center stage in our otherwise very lean website. Hence on Joe's homepage the community link sits in the header's navigation bar, a search field module appears in the middle just above the latest conversations module, and the blog finally rests on the lower right side, just above the fold.   The customer is welcomed via its pseudo and a ticker that notifies him of any unread messages.   You just can't miss that Joe is serious about being a community-based service. But that's not enough. Joe's business model lies on the fact that the community should be in charge of the first-level consumer support. We don't have any call centers, just a limited number of agents that use a form-based tool to deal with the most complicated requests.   For this to work, you need to organize the community space so that the customer, who often comes here for the first time, knows instantly what he is supposed to do to find the answer he is looking for. We have worked hard on the design to ensure that a newbie would find his way. This is how it's done :   First, a mega huge search bar People are very used to searching the google way, it's just the same with Joe. Chances are your question has already been asked…and answered already so Search should be your first stop.   A  horizontal community nav bar This design moves away from the commonly accepted best practices for new communities. However, knowing that it could be risky, we decided to go along with this horizontal design that clearly separate the section for prospective customers, who mostly have questions about our services and how to join, from the section for current customers who need help when activating their number or a more technical issue related to phone or the network.   A cozy place to chat Joe's community is about support, about people helping each other out. But rather than using the Q&A style module that could have been well suited for this purpose, we went along with a regular board design. This choice allows for longer discussions between members sometimes long after the correct answer has been given and validated since we never close subjects. We also dedicated a space, the Café Joe, for pure off-topic discussions and where new users can introduce themselves to the community.   This design is a success! With 30,000 searches per month and 17,000 posts for 1400 new topics, the community is thriving.   All section are very well balanced and we mad sure that "approved solutions" would be very visible both in the live search bar and the posts to be as precise as possible for anyone having a question about Joe.                           We just added The Facebook integration for the community again using the Facebook studio tools provided by lithium. This allows to open the community to a broader audience whilst retaining the same design principles that have worked for us so far.   Good design is key to a successful website. It is even more important when you service depends on the efficiency of the community. Forums can be messy and overloaded, a well-thought design is critical to give customers both a feeling of liveliness that brings a more emotional touch to your operation but also a efficient tool to very rapidly answer any question.                                                            

Company: Telefónica Digital Entry submitted by: Aurelien Poma (Elixor) Head of Community Community: TU Me Community (support.tumeap.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Hello everyone, I would like to nominate the TU Me community for the Best New Community Lithys. TU Me is a free app, all-in-one global communicator for iOS and Android.   I’ll try to keep this short.   The aim of our newly opened community is customer support using the model giffgaff has brilliantly put in place: we empower community members and reward them for their help and contributions.   On top of providing amazing customer support the TU Me community has become a massive group of friends from all over the world.     To give you an idea, the map below is a snapshot of where users are registering from on the TU Me community.     In addition to the friendly, multicultural and multilingual atmosphere of the community, our members have suggested amazing features and improvements for the app.   Seven of their ideas have been developed and implemented in the app.   And another seven ideas have been accepted and will make it into the app. Having community members directly impact the development roadmap and influence the priorities for improvements made our work challenging and even more exciting.   We also received impressive new design suggestions for the app, new avatars for the Lithium forum and banners for our Facebook fan page.   Finally I thought I would share a nice story that happened a few weeks ago. To thank one of our community members from Bolivia for his positive contributions we decided to send him a goody bag as a present. This is what we got as a reply when we asked for his postal address:   I've just seen your message about the present, like I said I live in Bolivia, and over here we don't have a mailbox, the apartment where I live in doesn't have a mailbox, I think that the only place that has one is Cochabamba. To be honest, just being part of this community is super cool, and a very good present is to have had the pleasure of meeting you all.   Thank you for reading this nomination, I’ll just finish with one image which is our TU Me user of the week wall, so everyone in the office knows how great our community members are. (I wish we had a bigger wall though :D)    

Company: Time Warner Cable Entry submitted by: Phil Blum (TWC-PhilB) Social Media Customer Care Manager https://twitter.com/TWCableHelp Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   Time Warner Cable is one of the largest providers of video, high-speed data and phone, supporting over 15 million customers in the United States.  In 2010, I was selected to lead the social media arm of TWC’s customer care operations.  Our mission was to provide high-quality service experience to customers on any channel for which they prefer to interact and we needed a solid social engagement and response platform that can help us manage the flow of service-related conversations and ensure that my team of social agents are able to address each and every customer need.   We launched Lithium Social Web in April 2012 to my team of 10 social customer care agents and we now have a streamlined platform to identify messages from Twitter and Facebook that need a response and provide timely resolutions.  Within 6 months, we have improved our social response rate by 30% and increased agent productivity by 57%.  This is driven by the integrated nature of the platform that allows my team to tackle cases more quickly and ability to respond without switching back and forth between different social tools. We were also very honored to be placed on the "Top 10 Socially Devoted Brand" list by AdWeek.   Our social support program proved critical in sustaining customer relationships during one of the worst storms in recent history.  As Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the East Coast in the fall of 2012, our customers were anxious to learn when their services would return.  Many of them turned to their only remaining avenue of contact: accessing Facebook and Twitter via their smartphones.  With the overwhelming increase in volume, my team was able to step up to the plate and even received kudos from grateful customers for their timely response.     Our social support strategy extends beyond this customer care team.  We will be launching a community soon because this is a critical way for us to provide support in a scalable way.  We also want to bring the conversations that are happening about us onto our own domain so we can engender goodwill, provide more transparency to our customers, and weigh in on those conversations where appropriate.  We’re excited to embark onto the next phase of our social support strategy!

Company: Autodesk, Inc. Entry submitted by: Katinka Sante, Strategic Social Programs Manager Community: Autodesk Expert Elite Lithy category: Best Social Support Program, Best Superfan Story or Insight, Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   On November 28, 2012 at Autodesk University, Autodesk’s annual user conference, we announced our formal customer advocacy program: Autodesk Expert Elite. This program is designed to recognize community members who make extraordinary contributions to the company's online community. The program builds on, and is an evolution of the Autodesk Community rank and reputation model.   Members of the Expert Elite group are characterized by their regular and responsive participation in Autodesk's discussion forums, advanced knowledge of the company and its products, and leadership in the user community.   Individuals are selected after a detailed review of their Autodesk Community contributions, which include assisting other customers by sharing product knowledge and displaying engaging and positive styles of communication and collaboration. The goal of the Autodesk Expert Elite program is to deeply engage this important group of individuals and empower them to better assist their peers and support the Autodesk community. The program has a one year term and members are reviewed bi-annually.    As part of the Autodesk Expert Elite program, members receive a number of benefits including access Autodesk’s portfolio of design products, access to a private forum known as the Expert Elite Lounge. This Lounge is only available to our Autodesk Expert Elite members and is geared toward opening the lines of communication between Autodesk and its most valuable customers.   Expert Elites are also given additional administrative permissions within Lithium to help curate and highlight valuable forum content. For example, our Expert Elite members can accept solutions for their posts as well as posts authored by other customers. Additionally, Expert Elites have the ability to escalate their own posts into our CRM system for support assistance. We’ve also created an Expert Elite community badge for members to include in their forum profiles, which they are very proud of.   Today, Autodesk has 64 Expert Elite members from 11 different countries.  These 64 members represent 28% of all posts, 30% of all accepted solutions and 27% of our community kudos. Here are just a few of our Expert Elite members: - Adrianna Schneider - R.K. McSwain   Our Expert Elite members are a key group of stakeholders helping us shape our community programs, strategy and policy.   Watch this video to hear from some of our Expert Elite members as they talk about the importance of supporting our community http://youtu.be/xNsDzbZc58I  

Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring MasterCard © is a very simple credit card product with a low interest rate, simple terms and no annual or balance transfer fees. But what sets Barclaycard Ring apart is its use of online communities in an innovative way to talk with card members about the product and how it should evolve. The Barclaycard Ring team also developed the industry’s first profit sharing program with card members, called Giveback™. This aligns the interests of both bank and card member like never before and opens the door for both to advance the cause of charities. And to help crystalize the trust, the team posts the financial statistics for the program on the website and discuss the results each month.                                                           While less than 10 months old, Barclaycard Ring’s innovative credit card community is already showing signs of revolutionary success:   Gross Income has increased for Barclaycard by > $500K since the launch of the program.   The business ROI of Barclaycard Ring has benefited others as well. The Ronald McDonald House received $10,000 donated by the community through our Giveback program.                                     The future for profitability looks even brighter as community engagement level is driving significantly different card behaviors.  Superusers and engaged community members give Barclaycard more of their business, are less likely to close their account and are significantly more likely to pay their bill on time.  The results are staggering:                                                                                                               There is no better evidence perhaps than continued investment in branded community – based on the success of Barclaycard Ring, Barclaycard is launching a new travel community focused on servicing the specific needs of its traveling customer base.  

Company: Navis Entry submitted by: Jennifer Grinold (jgrinold) Marketing & Communications Manager Community: Navis Online Community (community.navis.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Navis, the global technology software standard for managing the movement of cargo through terminals, has been on the forefront of tech innovation in the marine shipping industry. Their use of the Lithium platform has helped to bring social media to an industry that otherwise would have not adopted it. The Navis Online Community, better known by its users as “The NOC,” is leading the way by providing a platform for information sharing and collaboration, uncovering key knowledge from container terminal operations experts and driving innovation in the industry overall.   For Navis, a significant amount of knowledge-share takes place at Navis World, Navis’ bi-annual user conference. Navis felt that it was time to move industry networking opportunities online, truly making Navis World a 24/7/365 experience. In short, Navis wanted to effectively reach employees, customers, and major shipping community members in one place, which is how the NOC came to be. Navis knew that the NOC needed to be more than just a marketing channel in order to be successful. Instead of using the Lithium community as a platform to publish Navis products and company news, the NOC passes the microphone to professionals in the marine shipping industry – opportunities to share perspectives, start discussions, ask questions, get product information, get advice from Navis and broader industry experts and shape future product roadmaps. The NOC also features the Salesforce connector for full social support integration. Cases can be submitted from the NOC, and there is a single search for Salesforce and community content. The NOC has also become an invaluable medium to highlight Navis’ loyal customers and promote personal successes for the very people that use its technology on a daily basis. Every month, Navis highlights a customer site and the people running it as part of its ongoing Terminal Spotlight Series. While early Terminals Spotlight Series posts honor customers who have faced, and thrived, during industry challenges (such as Port Newark Container Terminal and the impact of Hurricane Sandy), future posts will cover all notable stories impacting Navis customers.   The biggest and most successful promotion for the NOC took place at Navis World in October of 2012. During the conference, Navis selected and appointed special NOC ambassadors to educate and excite attendees about joining the community. NOC ambassadors, as well as Navis’ PR agency, Affect, also posted a steady stream of Navis World content to the NOC—session recaps, best practices, interviews with attendees, videos, presentations and more—enabling those who couldn’t attend to follow along from afar and for those that did, to keep industry discussions going long after the conference was over.     “One of the advantages of buying from Navis is that you join the largest community of TOS users on the planet,” says Brian Hibbert, General Manager of APM Terminals. “It is this collective brain trust that makes Navis and its customers stronger together.”     “We have come a long way in getting Navis to host an online community that includes all levels of their employees as well as the customers,” says James Burgess, Technical Project Engineer at APM Terminals. “I have used the NOC as a resource to solve issues and answer questions before opening a Salesforce case. By going to the NOC first, I have received answers within minutes and hours instead of days.” As a result of promotional efforts to date, 60% of Navis’ customer base today is registered on the NOC, and that number continues to grow each week. Additionally, over 75% of Navis employees are signed up for the site, making the NOC truly one of the only places where industry professionals can share what they know, get the feedback they need and gather information do the best job possible for their terminals located all over the world. In the future, Navis intends that the online community will be the medium that will help the industry innovate, share best practices and collaborate on a global level, making it the go-to resource for the marine shipping industry.

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 _________________________________________________   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.  

Company: Spotify Entry submitted by: Rocio Guerrero (rociogc86) Community Manager Community: Spotify (community.spotify.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ___________________________________________________________________   In just one year the Spotify Community has accumulated 15-20 super users, and all of them super cool and amazing folks. However just 6 months ago..a 20 year old boy from England started shining like a star in our Spotify Community! We are all amazed by his work, passion, enthusiasm, talent, kindness...he just has it all! We are very happy to introduce you to "Hammeh"....if you want to know more about this little fella and his more than 6,000 posts in 6 months!!! We've dedicated this song to Hammeh. Take a listen!   View the infographic here: Best Fan Story Ever!    

Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Marina Lin, Project Manager Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design ___________________________________________________________________   In February 2012, we launched Cvous.com, the first community in France where customers can interact to create products and services for stores. C’Vous is the oral abbreviation for “C’est vous” meaning “It’s you”. Designed to be a community space and not a commercial website, we deliberately chose to develop a new graphic identity, different from our stores' branding.   We wanted a simple and colorful website that would convey a sense of proximity, a key value to the Group. The website tone also had to be positive so the members give useful ideas, comments and don’t use the community to complain about their individual problems. Our agency developed characters to embody the community: funny and happy, they have become a key element of the C’Vous identity. Their language is fresh and catchy and draws users’ attention.               Our avatar library:                           With its bright colors, banners and icons, the website is welcoming and easy to navigate. The community interface is simple and playful with an incentive to participate: we revamped the kudo and branded it “C’Top” (meaning “it’s great”). The green button turns grey when you have voted. The colors are especially vibrant when visiting the community on an iPad.                                         We have also adapted the content to allow 2 levels of user experience: For new users who are not yet logged in, the homepage displays a large carousel explaining the 3 main sections of the website. It is much more pedagogical while the logged in user's experience is more personalized with our notification system that allows returning members to see immediately what's new.                                         Finally, the community identity has been extended offline in store promotions, catalogs and product packaging and they are all by-products of C’Vous! The characters can be found in our stores as they help to highlight the community’s favorite products.      

Company: Ooyala Entry submitted by: Thomas Kearsley (tkearsley) Community Manager Community: Ooyala Community (community.ooyala.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Ooyala offers leading cross-device video analytics and monetization solutions, streaming over 1 billion videos to nearly 200 million unique viewers per month. The Ooyala Community was officially launched on 10/8/12. Since the launch we have seen 4,108 unique visitors with 20K+ page views. Our community is not open to anyone, only customers who have an account (Backlot) can comment. This limits the community to a low number of participants, but the community will grow as the company scales up.                                             My goal is to make the community a portal to everything Ooyala. A place to find solutions to technical issues, stay up on the latest trends ,and be informed of everything happening at the company. Since my start at Ooyala, I have implemented Google analytics into the site, giving us real-time information on who is visiting, OS, location etc.   I have integrated a Twitter feed for keeping up with the latest Ooyala mentions in social, and embedded Ooyala TV (video) on our home page where users can watch helpful videos. We are using the latest Lithium search (2.0) while building out our TKB with new content every day. I am excited to see our community grow in the months and years to come.  

Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jen Hitchens (JenH) Social Media Manager Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring MasterCard © is a very simple credit card product with a low interest rate, simple terms and no annual or balance transfer fees. But what sets Barclaycard Ring apart is its use of online communities in an innovative way to talk with card members about the product and how it should evolve. The Barclaycard Ring team also developed the industry’s first profit sharing program with card members, called Giveback™. This aligns the interests of both bank and card member like never before and opens the door for both to advance the cause of charities. And to help crystalize the trust, the team posts the financial statistics for the program on the website and discuss the results each month.   Barclaycard Ring possesses true integration in its overall marketing strategy by creating cohesive, branded messaging across all internal and external platforms. The primary focus of communications is centered on the engagement of the Barclaycard Ring community and is supported by a content creation strategy designed to build relationships with the card members. Barclaycard Ring provides multi-channel access for to this unique content through its Facebook page, Twitter channel, Google + page, YouTube channel as well as email marketing messages. The ‘public-facing’ site, BarclaycardRing.com also enables visitors (without logging in to the secure account servicing site) to consume and share out blog content via Facebook, Twitter and Google+.     Social Media Integration   Social Sharing and Referral   Social Sharing via External Site   Social Media Marketing   Integration with Email Marketing ‘The weekly’ email provides a summary to community members of the latest activity within the community. This high level recap has yielded a consistent CTR and provides a lift in site visitation and engagement. ‘The Weekly’ email features blog content, trending discussion thread, “Quote of the Week” featuring a specific community member, their avatar and rank, a recent comment, recent statistics, current survey or voting option as well as the Top 4 contributing community members and links to all of the Barclaycard Ring social media platforms. Through our social media marketing initiatives, Barclaycard Ring has been able to improve our card member experience, provide a new platform for servicing our customers, and has built new advocacy programs and increase brand loyalty. Our objectives focus on: Improving customer experience by leveraging the community for digital servicing Increase loyalty and usage of the card Create content and build relationships to positively impact the financial literacy of the community   Improving Top Line Revenue & Loyalty Barclaycard Ring has only been live for 10 months and generated over $500K in revenue.  The future looks even brighter for Barclaycard Ring, as the customers engaged in our community close far less often and are remaining loyal to Barclaycard at record levels.     Industry Recognition for Improved Customer Experience

Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring’s community design is aesthetically beautiful and additionally there are 3 important elements that differentiate the site from other communities.   “Barclaycard Ring” is not only the name of the product but a Ring graphic also visually plays into individual member identity while symbolizing that the member is part of a community. We’ve designed the Ring to be a functional object that not only denotes individual accomplishment but encapsulates the community experience created in the site itself. Ring is a site within a site and the design represents a visual integration of a community inside a credit card servicing site. The visual elements of the two sites are perfectly blended and the resulting single site has its own identity, navigation and rules. The design is simple and elegant and requires almost no learning curve for the user. Even though the site concept is completely new and innovative members know exactly how to navigate between the various features on the site. Between the beautiful elegance of the design and the 3 differentiating elements above, we believe Barclaycard Ring’s community provides a step-change vision for the way digital communities will be designed in the future.   Beautiful “Pinterest-like” timeline gives members a snapshot of Barclaycard Ring’s ongoing story.     Card members can see their private information and then click over to participate in the community. As members navigate from servicing to community they move from a blue to orange background.                                       We show our members the financials for the product in an elegant and simple way.  Even more financial details are revealed to the curious community member.                                       Members can easily elect to donate all or a portion of their Giveback™ to charity by using the slide rule function.                                               Members vote on product features and evolve the core product.                                                     Member achievements are displayed in their “ring” and are illustrated by a wide assortment of colors that represent potential activities to improve the community.