Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: Cisco Entry submitted by: Juana Dehanov (jdurande) Community Strategist Community: Cisco Tech Zone Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Tech Zone is Cisco’s in... See more...
Company: Cisco Entry submitted by: Juana Dehanov (jdurande) Community Strategist Community: Cisco Tech Zone Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Tech Zone is Cisco’s internal engineer community that was built by engineers for engineers. Our users are extremely engaged in driving Tech Zone’s collaboration and content creation to the next level.   With this in mind, Tech Zone launched the “Best Greasemonkey Widget Contest” in which we asked all our engineers to create a widget that would enhance the Tech Zone user experience.   (Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that allows users to customize the behavior and display of a webpage using Javascript).     The idea behind this contest was to give engineers an opportunity to innovate within Tech Zone. In addition to the prizes the winners had their scripts natively integrated in to Tech Zone.  One big advantage of the Lithium platform is that taking these scripts and integrating them as native features is a relatively simple process.   This initiative triggered the engineers to experiment and enhance a platform to make it more their own. They developed some incredible new features such as:   A Table of Contents option on the rich text editor                         A Tech Zone Navigator that will show in all the pages                             A "Kudo Givers" widget to allow users to view the list of kudo givers for a thread or TKB article               Over 300 engineers submitted, commented and voted on the contest entries. After much deliberation, the Tech Zone community selected the winners.   “You know, what people like today is to have very powerful tools that are very easy to use. If the tools are amazingly powerful (as Tech Zone is), but not easy to use, then people might not use it which is really sad. Also, it will make Tech Zone a bit faster, as users can jump directly to the category they need, without the need of an additional jump to the homepage. I know that it is only a matter of a few seconds, but the difference between Usain Bolt and an average person on a 100 meter run is also a matter of a couple of seconds :-)” - GreaseMonkey Winner Tristan Van Egroo.  
Company: Spotify Entry submitted by: Rocio Guerrero (rociogc86) Community Manager Community: Spotify (community.spotify.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _______________________________________________________________... See more...
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: SFR Entry submitted by: Sandie Hodiesne (SH) Social Media Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (forum.sfr.fr) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   SFR Forum, an online ... See more...
Company: SFR Entry submitted by: Sandie Hodiesne (SH) Social Media Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (forum.sfr.fr) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   SFR Forum, an online Adventure, a great Human Adventure!   SFR Forum exists since 2008. It’s a place where web advisors used to respond automatically to customer requests either in a public or private mode.   During spring 2012, we faced a big challenge: Moving from an online customer services model to a 100% peer-to-peer Support Community model. A new way of thinking and managing information - a complete break and a real step forward into the world of online peer-to-peer Communities.   We decided to give to our future community as much space and autonomy as we could provide them with. We decided to take drastic decision. We kept the name but started from a white sheet without capitalizing on the old threads and existing content which could remind us of our previous operating processes.   We identified about thirty Super-users on our various social media properties (“Atelier SFR”, old “SFR Forum”, “HUB”). With the active help of our community managers, we gathered contact details for all of the super-users. A first contact was made through email. Afterward we contacted them all by phone and explained them this huge new project. Out of the 30 contacts, 29 were very enthusiastic and immediately ready to engage in this Adventure. Sandie (SFR’s Social Media Manager) set up 2 video conference meetings to discuss with the super-users in order to decrease the growing fear regarding the new community, to answer to remarks such as “it was better before with the old forum”, and to create the first relationships between participants. Fabien and Manuella, two community managers from the beginning, were collaborating with Sandie during these meetings and suggested a Beta test phase of one month. We explained to our super-users what would be their role and why it would be beneficial for them to be part of the New Forum beta phase. During this month, they would be able contribute to the community editorial content, create their own content, find new ways to communicate with the community management team in a public mode and embrace a heads-on the philosophy of the new Forum.   The day before the D-Day, the enthusiasm and the engagement of our “Founders” was very big. Dartagnan, Michel2, DocMac, RafCorDel, Rebel, Kendokanne and all the others were very excited to be launched in the open and exposed to a new audience and a new community.   January 15 th at 5pm, great emotion and vibes: first discussions, first ranks reached, first Private Message conversations… The SFR peer-to-peer Community where users could share their customer experiences and help each other was born!   Our “Founders” were recognizable with their specific “Founders” badges created for them and quickly took care of the new users. The SFR community is their community and they are deciding everything about the choice of discussion to highlight, what to post on the blog or the Wikisphere … These super fans defend strongly this new philosophy. We could witness comments like « But where are the SFR advisors?” or “Here, there is only us, the community, satisfied customers happy to help and support others. If you need to access your confidential customer data, the community won’t be able to answer.” When the community is unable to answer you, we guide you to the right contact points after the diagnostic is made. In this community, we always try to find a solution!   Our super-users have a dedicated space, a “private room”, invisible from the other members. Through this private room, we inform them about cases that members face regularly and the answers we have and that they can be spread out across the community. They can also give us their feedback on what is working or not with the platform and further needed developments… It’s also in this private room that we discuss about our next video conference, meetings, special events such as call for topics for the blog.                                                                                                   To transmit these values across the community, members must have taken the ownership of this online space. For this magic to operate, the online community needs to resonate with the members. Each members needs to feel comfortable navigating this online community. The customer experience must be positive.   The video launch takes the advantage of this simplicity: the ability to create something great together.   The ranking starts in a reference universe known from all but gradually draws references from the gaming world, while relying on the values of the Forum:                 - The “Builders” who by their contributions and exchanges secure and solidify the base of collective knowledge:                 - The “Enchanters” are recognized both for the quality of information they provide and the benevolence that radiates around them:                 After only 1 month and a half, our community has now 40 super-users with a high level of posts - Vindedious (1600), Kendokanne (1700), Boriswap (1300), Dartagnan (1400)…  They are some of our heroes you can visit in the “Forum SFR” community.   Discussions between all the community members and the super-users give us the opportunity to detect very quickly any malfunction and to inform the community when a problem is solved. For example, Kendonkanne initiative helped to qualify a problem with sms billing, to solve it very quickly and to relay the information in a public mode. This enabled to reassure our customers that have send us a lot of sweet words.                             40 Super-users provide 50% of the Community content   In addition of this efficiency, pleasure of sharing and conviviality moved in : Almost 2,100 posts shared within our Community on the “Discussion du Comptoir” pages. In a month and half, discussions are as well about music and cinema as Art in general.   The strength brought by our Community Management team are: Sincerity and authenticity, the wish to humanize the online relationships, the genuine desire to develop and reward anonymous expert by making them shine under the limelight. We will meet for real and for the first time our super-users on March 22 nd . It’s our way to celebrate Spring!   Goal : The official launch of our super-users program and share its content – Virtual Workshop and meeting with SFR experts, SFR site visits, game to participate to events such as new mobile launch, celebration and more.   Their first mission, find a name to the program. And to close the day, a great surprise is waiting for them. One of the founders of the Manau Group will be there to explain the story of “La tribu de Dana”, a very well known song in the 90’s, before we capture a great picture of all our superusers with our Polaroid.   The relationship between and with our super-users is essential and strong. The idea for this year is to offer them a customized T-Shirt with their username, a way for us to build a story together… See you soon with more input about this great Adventure.   Sandie & the community management team : Cindy, Manuela, Fabien, Fanja & Emmanuelle   http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/Les-news/Qui-est-la-Social-Media-Manager/ba-p/18598 http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/Les-news/Qui-sont-vos-Community-Managers/ba-p/9936  
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Company: BSkyB Entry submitted by: Jenny Stewart (JST03) Community Content Manager Community: Sky Help Forum (helpforum.sky.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________    ... See more...
Company: BSkyB Entry submitted by: Jenny Stewart (JST03) Community Content Manager Community: Sky Help Forum (helpforum.sky.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________     Best Superfan Story/Insight BSkyB 2013   In July 2012 we introduced our innovative Super User Program on the Sky Help Forum Community, recognising the super contributions from some of our forum members. Our Sky Help Community Super Users are individuals from within our Community who are the ultimate Sky boffins. Their technical prowess, detailed knowledge and broad range of expertise mean that they are the most valuable commodity in sourcing answers to our Customers questions. Whether they are technical aficionados looking to get the optimum performance of advanced applications or a technophile looking to simply decipher the jargon our Super Users can offer insight and support across our Customer base. All of our Super Users are independent of Sky and offer a true Customer insight in how to get the best from our products and services.   We wanted to implement a Super User program which truly recognised those active members within our Community who were advocates of sharing knowledge and best practice and wholeheartedly encompassed our methodology of peer to peer support and inclusion.   In being an advocate of our Customers and understanding their viewpoint our Super Users can offer a definitive insight into the sentiment of our audience and work with us to envisage a cohesive community built upon our core values. Our current base of 12 Super Users, have been recognised not only by Sky but by their peers as frequent, knowledgeable contributors with the Kudos and Accepted solutions to prove they are ‘worthy’ 🙂   To recognise the contribution of our band of expert Superfans we provide them with enhanced access to encapsulate them as part of the Sky team. “The Boardroom” our Private Community boiler room allows us to engage with our Super Users at a unique level understanding their views, ideas and feedback on new product trials, services and general discussions about almost everything. Not only that, but their contributions to our dedicated Knowledge Base and Monthly Blog articles truly gives a unique view of what it means to be a Super User and a true Sky Superfan.   One of our original community members on the Sky Help Forum was Annie+UK who registered on 27th October 2010 and has become a mainstay Sky boffin across our Help Forum offering insightful help and support to our Customers.     As a respected senior member within our community Annie+UK is our ultimate Superfan and was a first choice to join our Super User Program when launched.   However, it wasn’t always that way. During the early days, Annie+UK felt frustrations with regard to issues she was having related to her service provision and how this was handled from a customer support point of view, all of her frustrations were evident in her posts. A lot of this had to do with transparency, product development and honest communication. In case managing the issues experienced by Annie+UK we began to develop a foundation of open communication and feedback which offered us key insights into the sentiment of our wider community. Her insight was invaluable as a true testament of the value of our Customer’s knowledge and experience. Cultivating a strong relationship based on a mutual support and shared knowledge has integrated Annie+UK and our wider Super Users into the Sky team.   Being part of the Super User program and having the opportunity to build relationships with the Sky team allowed us to be more open and honest and along with having the opportunity to be involved in beta trials has helped change Annie+Uk’s opinion and rather than leaving the community she has become an advocate, this is evident in her having read 90%of all posts across our Community Forum and in supporting her peer customer group has responded to in excess of 2,750 Customer queries.                                             Her continued support of our Community members in sharing her knowledge and advice has assured her respected status as one of our key Super Users. She is not afraid to ask difficult questions and pose feedback directly to us based on Customer experiences which, assures that we can continually improve our service for our Customers. Her inspirational and engaging manner has assured she is an advocate of both our Customers and Sky which, has been key in the continued development of our Community and indeed our service provision.     In essence, Annie+UK has spent over 1 ½ years logged into the community, for a community that is less than 3 years old…making Annie+UK our ultimate Super Fan.      
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 ____________________... See more...
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: 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 _______________... See more...
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: LEGO Systems Inc. Entry submitted by: Mark Fothergill (MarkF) Head of Children's Community & Moderation Community: LEGO Community (community.lego.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ______________________________... See more...
Company: LEGO Systems Inc. Entry submitted by: Mark Fothergill (MarkF) Head of Children's Community & Moderation Community: LEGO Community (community.lego.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   Girl members of the LEGO.com community had been a rare breed. On our old message board platform, we had around a 5% female portion of active users. Since we upgraded the platform, we’ve been enabled to improve our ranking structure and better reward both active and creative participation. Girls have become very active in our story-writing forums, as an example; reading, writing and providing encouragement to others. Since the changes, we’ve seen an increase in activity from girls and they currently make up around 15% of the active community user base.   We have stories about passionate role players who know the finest details of the Lord of the Rings movies and help to keep the forum role plays “canon”/on story. We also have brother and sister pairings who have grown up building LEGO together and write stories, role play and submit creations both separately and together. Possibly one of our best user stories centers on a user who couldn’t be considered anything less than “super”! The user in question is JayZX535.   JayZX535 had been a non-active browser/reader on the old forums, having registered in July of 2012, and was 13 years old at the time. When we migrated our community from our old forums to the new Lithium platform, we were able to create a new ranking structure. We set up participatory ranks whose levels were based on LEGO through the ages, so that you begin at Caveman, move to Pharaoh and upwards and onwards through Gladiator, Samurai Warrior, Ninja and many more.     In addition, we were able to create reader ranks that were based on more passive participation such as reading posts and liking content. The first rank of which is “Apprentice Reader” and the second of which is “Master Reader”.   In December 2012, a month after launching the new forums, we could see we had a solitary Master Reader on the forums and both users and staff began speculating about it. The users asking what criteria were necessary for reaching the rank and the community team wondering why a user might be so highly passively participatory but have never posted a single comment (at the time, JayZX535 spent 4340 minutes online, with 546 likes/kudos given and had read 16551 posts). We were all intrigued.   Shortly after, we had begun a user interview initiative where we would identify positive and pro-active community members and ask them questions to publish their answers in full view of the rest of the community. This provided the users selected with some community celebrity status and also acted well for us to be holding such positive members up as role models.   We decided that we couldn’t resist inviting this intriguing “lurker” to participate in an upcoming interview and so we sent an email to the registered address with the interview questions. We immediately received an automated security response that said:   “To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.   If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.   Click the link below to fill out the request:”   With some slight trepidation, we continued to fill in the form and sent in the request, only to receive an error message. We thought that would be the end of our opportunity to have an interview with the enigmatic JayZX535.   The next day, we checked the mail folder for the other interview requests we had sent and found the following interview responses from JayZX535:       It seems we had lifted the lid on months of pent up desire to be heard and to participate and it was only parental approval that was previously holding the user back. Once the parents had received this request from us and could see we were a safe, creative and friendly community, they had given the green light not just for the interview but for ongoing active participation in the forums. The next revelation was that JayZX535 turned out to be a girl when everyone had assumed she was a boy! She began posting at an exponential rate and, with a lot of the active rank groundwork covered as a Master Reader, began shooting up the ranks faster than any other user we’d seen. Posting stories, roleplaying and generally making friends with all of the users who had wished her well via the interview, JayZX535 is now at Rank 8, a Samurai Warrior, and has submitted 1244 posts! Since the launch of the new platform in November of 2012, JayZX535 has now spent 40,059 minutes online and received 2290 likes/kudos! She has read 68,180 posts and given out 1663 likes/kudos, herself.                           She received an overwhelmingly positive reception from the other active users:     You can read some of JayZX535’s Ninja stories here: https://community.lego.com/t5/NINJAGO-Stories/The-Stroke-of-Midnight/m-p/4604354#M65411 https://community.lego.com/t5/NINJAGO-Stories/On-Borrowed-Time/m-p/4932432#M70559 https://community.lego.com/t5/LEGO-SUPERHEROES-Stories/Watch-for-Me-by-Moonlight-A-story-by-JayZX535/m-p/4871196#M3196  
Company: Google Inc. Entry submitted by: Agata Kryzsztofik (Agata) Community Program Manager Community: AdWords Community (http://www.es.adwords-community.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ______________________________... See more...
Company: Google Inc. Entry submitted by: Agata Kryzsztofik (Agata) Community Program Manager Community: AdWords Community (http://www.es.adwords-community.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   Our superfan story shows how like-minded and passionate Community members can take the lead and create high-quality, engaging content around their favorite product without any involvement of the Community Manager. All you need to do is to bring them together!                       After the Google AdWords Communities Summit (October 2013), when we brought all of our global Community superfans to California, our Spanish Top Contributors initiated a project aimed at creating AdWords performance user generated content. Project included:   1. YouTube channel with content around online advertising 22 videos, 2-9 min. each Channel location: http://www.youtube.com/user/proyectosem/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=da Fun fact: first videos were shot in Mountain View at the Google campus and in San Francisco straight after the Google AdWords Communities Summit.                                                         2. Integration with Community Top Contributors proactively promoting videos from the YouTube channel in the AdWords Community creating new performance content, engaging other users in discussions and providing advice on how to be successful with AdWords.                                                                                  
Company: Webroot Entry submitted by: Jim Murray (jmurray) Community Specialist Community: Webroot Community (community.webroot.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Trip... See more...
Company: Webroot Entry submitted by: Jim Murray (jmurray) Community Specialist Community: Webroot Community (community.webroot.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   TripleHelix (Daniel) is Webroot's biggest fan. He came to Webroot via one of our acquisitions, Prevx, back in 2011. On the old Prevx forum, over the course of about nine years, TripleHelix accumulated over 9,000 posts. When Webroot acquired Prevx, we embraced their core technology and made it our own. Accordingly, TripleHelix embraced us in a big Canadian bear-hug and never let go.   In only the single year the Webroot Community has been around, he’s already got 1,300 posts – putting him at over 10,000 posts just on our official forums. And not only is he the most active member of our forums - he actively travels the internet seeking out other security-related forums at which to talk about Webroot. Wilders, NeoWin, DSLReports - you name it - TripleHelix probably has an account there.   TripleHelix doesn't miss a single day on the forum. Each and every day, like clockwork, he signs in and stays on the forum almost the entire day. When someone replies on his threads, he almost immediately chimes in with a response. He contributes more forum content than anyone else, particularly to our Security News section.      TripleHelix is like a Security News machine who constantly churns out security-related news stories at a pace of a couple of valuable stories per day. He also keeps us up to speed on anything that is coming down the pike from Microsoft, Adobe, Java or any other companies that routinely participate in Patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday is TripleHelix Tuesday at Webroot.   He isn't just a news-specific contributor though. One of the best things about Daniel is that he will help other users solves their problems. With 93 accepted solutions under his belt (3.5x more than the next closest member), he rivals even our official technical support helpers on the forum in his skill, ability, willingness, and availability to solve problems. It's no wonder he is sometimes mistaken for official Webroot tech support. Other forum members love him too, which is shown by his collection of 700+ kudos.     The real icing on the cake with TripleHelix is that he isn't just a Webroot superfan. He's also a Microsoft superfan. What a great combination! One day, Daniel even volunteered to take a bunch of free Webroot trials and branded pens to the next Microsoft convention he attended. We never would have even thought of asking him to do that on our own, but he thought of it himself and will be doing it in April. Daniel is like a magical, traveling Webroot billboard that offers free tech support with a little bit of Santa Claus thrown in for good measure.   Speaking of Santa Claus, one of my favorite TripleHelix stories involves our company Christmas party. On the day we had the party, the entire social media department was going to be off to enjoy some free dinner and beverages. As a rule, we advise it's probably not a good idea to come back to work right after the party. In advance of the party, which was held during otherwise staffed hours, I happened to notice that TripleHelix was online, as usual. I let him know the party was about to start and that the Community would be unstaffed for a couple of hours. He volunteered to hold down the fort while we were off enjoying some holiday cheer. True to his word, during that time, he made a series of useful posts. When I returned after the party was over to check in and make sure there weren't any fires to put out, I saw the posts, and TripleHelix saw that I was online. He sent me the following message:      Flash-forward about a week, TripleHelix was posting on Christmas Day helping users who received the gift of Webroot for Christmas and had immediately installed it. There has never been a more hardcore superfan on the internet than TripleHelix, which is why he deserves this award!  
Company: National Instruments Entry submitted by: Jordan Groves (jgroves) Web Project Engineer/Forums Manager Community: NI Discussion Forums (www.ni.com/forums) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight __________________________... See more...
Company: National Instruments Entry submitted by: Jordan Groves (jgroves) Web Project Engineer/Forums Manager Community: NI Discussion Forums (www.ni.com/forums) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight __________________________________________________   “Are two Knights in one day better than two days in one night?” <Hint, the answer is yes.>   When the NI Discussion Forum was launched in 2004, we could not have predicted how successful it would be in fostering passionate, proficient, and accomplished advocates for National Instruments. Our super users are not only incredibly engaged, but they also constantly push the envelope and drive innovation. They are an extension of the passionate company culture we have built and strive to maintain internally at NI.   Our community members chose the ranking Knight of NI based on a shared love for the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Members who reach the 10,000-post milestone virtually receive the Knight of NI title and physically receive a shrubbery. This group has only seven members but is a respected and revered resource within our community. Collectively, the Knights have a vast wealth of knowledge. When we ask why they continue to engage in the NI Discussion Forums, we consistently receive the same response: They enjoy helping others, solving difficult problems, and sharing their knowledge to develop and empower future engineers. The Knights of NI participate because they truly recognize the value of our company, products, and industry.   We recently recognized two Knights of NI on consecutive days! Becoming a Knight does not happen every day; in fact, it does not even happen every year. However, in their race to Knighthood, these two loyal users have consistently been neck and neck for over eight years.               As a group, our Knights’ engagements make up 8 percent of our total community activity, and they receive more than 20 percent of the total kudos in the community. They frequently create quality content and have authored 12 percent of our total solutions. These numbers are extremely significant considering we have seven Knights in a community of over 200,000 users! The sheer volume of posts and solutions that the Knights provide significantly drive down support costs for our organization. We are thankful for their passion and strive to nurture their behavior through recognition, sneak previews before products releases, and direct channels to engage with NI engineers, just to name a few. The Knights lead by example and inspire fellow community members to engage to earn the greatest reward: knowledge.   There are many more examples and statistics we could mention to further sing the praises of this valued group, however one of the greatest outcomes of this recognition system is the bond our super users have built with one another. Their discussions are helpful, interesting, cutting edge, personal, and always entertaining. A great portion of the success of the NI Discussion Forums is absolutely due to these loyal SuperFans.    
Company: BT  Entry Submitted by: Kerry Gulloch (KerryG) Community Manager Community: BTCare Community Forums (bt.com/community) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story   Our superfans are transforming our business via the BTCare Communi... See more...
Company: BT  Entry Submitted by: Kerry Gulloch (KerryG) Community Manager Community: BTCare Community Forums (bt.com/community) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story   Our superfans are transforming our business via the BTCare Community Forums. They have been instrumental in driving the growth of our community by contributing numerous solutions helping our customers, which deflects contacts from our traditional voice or email channels.   The reputation of our CLs to understand and resolve customer issues is second to none amongst their community peers (evident via the kudos and accepted solutions awarded), the mods (what they see day in day out) and other internal business stakeholders (positive feedback from product managers right up to our MD of Customer Service!).   They have been key advocates for us within the community and their desire to help us improve both the community itself and our products and services is evident in the insight they give us. They have allowed us the opportunity for some of our product teams to get closer than ever to the ‘voice of the customer’ in order to drive product improvements by attending event calls and web chats. Identifying changes we can make for the benefit of all our customers, resulting in tangible business benefits…more about that later.   Firstly, let me tell you how we got there…   Our superfan story began in November 2010 and has continued to grow and evolve since then. We think our superfans, or as we like to call them ‘Community Leaders’ are incredible. We wanted to recognise and thank some of the members who really stood out to us. Those members who embodied the ethos of our community as a positive, productive place for customers to help each other with their BT products and services. We wanted to formalise how we recognised these people and let the rest of the community know how great they were.   We did that by creating the CLP – 'Community Leader Programme'.   What is the CLP? The CLP recognises members in the community who help other members in a positive way, they each have a ‘CL’ badge against their name, and have been announced as Community Leaders by the Community Manager. Over and above this we have given some additional privileges to our CLs such as access to a private forum board where they can interact with the Community Manager and moderator team.   We have regular conference calls or online discussions with them to discuss improvements to the community, and have also arranged for BT experts to share their knowledge with them on certain products, such as BT Vision. We have continued to evolve the programme over time, getting our CLs involved in specific product trials so we can use their feedback to improve products before full rollout, and more recently we held our first ever Community Meet Up which they were a key part of.   The Community Meet Up was an opportunity to meet our CLs face to face, cement the relationships we had built, and say thanks for the hours of help they put into our community. It also allowed us to have an open, honest forum with them to get their views on the community, our products and services and collaborate on ways we can improve things. We held this session at the BT Tower in London and also had lunch at the top of the tower as part of our way of saying thanks – the CLs were delighted to get the opportunity to visit the tower which is no longer open to the public. We had some exclusive new product demo’s and our MD of customer service also joined by video link to thank the CLs for their contribution to the community.   As a result of the meetup we refreshed our community homepage, made some board structure changes and fed back suggestions to improve the mobile community experience to the Lithium team. One further change was to introduce selective moderation privileges for our CLs at their request. They now have the ability to move posts, and use this to remove Spam and posts that are in the wrong boards. This has freed up moderator time and the number of abuse reports for spam have reduced dramatically as the CLs are picking them up and quarantining them quickly.   How else has it helped transform our business? The knowledge and advice shared by our CLs has resolved a huge amount of customer problems within the community and this helps us deflect calls from our service channels. The advocacy that is driven by our CLs also helps give a balanced view of issues raised, which is a welcome voice in a support community like ours where the majority of posts are about problems. The CLs are often an objective voice of reason that other customers respond well to.   The CLs have also been invaluable to us when they have become involved in product testing or focus groups to share their views. Their feedback has helped shaped product improvements via early insight and drive further product development before a product goes live to our customer base.   For example, their comments about a change to one of our TV services was fed back to the product team who implemented an update as a result. The CLs were then invited to join the pilot version of the change to give further feedback before the update was rolled out to our customer base. A great example of their feedback making a difference to all our customers.   Here’s some feedback from one of the Programme Directors within our Customer Services function after a call we had with our CL’s:   “As an avid reader on our forums I know their benefit well for our products, but I was blown away last night on a call with our community leaders. I am so impressed that you guys have grown and nurtured people who just want to help our customers, its brilliant …. More people like this definitely make it easier to deal with BT and get quick answers…”   We also have some quite staggering statistics for contributions by the CL group, who: Have contributed 18.7% of overall posts Have authored 28% of all accepted solutions  Have received 35% of all ratings awarded  Have spent 1,038,734 minutes online in our community – almost 2 yrs solid between them and the community itself has only just had it's 2nd birthday!  More recently, the CLs have also set up on a video-calling service so they can contact each other and maintain connections and relationships via video. This is something I have also taken part in as Community Manager. The CLs have used this as a way to share more knowledge between themselves helping each other help more customers – the knock on effect of this additional knowledge sharing has a positive impact on our customers.   Finally, we also asked our CLs what they think of the programme and here’s what a couple of them had to say:   “I have enjoyed getting to know the fellow CL members better and getting good advice/information from them. I also like having a better method of communicating with yourself and the other mods again makes it a more friendly atmosphere.” – imjolly   “CL has been interesting, getting to know the small group of other CL's, mod team and Kerry. I enjoyed testing a product, and solving some functionality issues. CL is about service not status to me, and I find I get a lot out of being part of it and this community.” – AllanQuatermain   Their commitment, passion and energy for helping other members is astounding and we wouldn’t have such a successful community without them. We wanted to enter this award as another way of saying thanks to our CL guys – they’re great! 🙂
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Company: Sephora Entry Submitted by: Candace Sims (candace_sephora) Community Manager Community: Sephora BeautyTalk (sephora.com/beautyadvice) Lithy Categories: Best Social Customer Experience   We are convinced that Sephora... See more...
Company: Sephora Entry Submitted by: Candace Sims (candace_sephora) Community Manager Community: Sephora BeautyTalk (sephora.com/beautyadvice) Lithy Categories: Best Social Customer Experience   We are convinced that Sephora has the best SuperFans on the planet, and also the most engaged.   They spend an average of 396 minutes online a month, and purchase 10x more than our average client! They also have created their own community and support system on BeautyTalk, outside of the usual chatter about beauty and makeup.     Aside from the wildly popular user-created traveling Sephora box program, they also offer each other support during troubling times, and give advice to each other on every subject from financial issues to favorite travel destinations.   That they feel so comfortable discussing so many different types of topics with each other is really a testament to how close the super users in our community are.   Our lounge boards are some of the most popular and active boards in the community, and every time one of our users hits a “hearts” (kudos) milestone in the community, our users throw them a (virtual) party!   It’s really fantastic to see our members rewarding each other and fostering a sense of accomplishment among each other in the community.
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Company: TomTom Entry Submitted by: Kenneth Refsgaard Community Manager (kendoji) Community: TomTom Discussions  (discussions.tomtom.com) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight When we launched TomTom Discussions on 1st M... See more...
Company: TomTom Entry Submitted by: Kenneth Refsgaard Community Manager (kendoji) Community: TomTom Discussions  (discussions.tomtom.com) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight When we launched TomTom Discussions on 1st March 2011 we knew that superfans would be important to the success of the community. And it didn’t take long before a few very actively engaged users emerged.   A few months after launch we created a private area for our top users, which marked the beginning of our superuser program. Since then we’ve been consistently awed by the knowledge and passion shown by these customers. We’d like to introduce a few of them.   Great Content:  In the early days of our community, one of our superusers was single-handledly responsible for 10% of the posts on the forums. The truly remarkable thing, though, is his encyclopedic knowle   dge of our products. It’s safe to say that he knows our products better than just about any of us! And we often - only half-jokingly -explain to colleagues that everything he posts should be assumed to be 100% correct.   In the year since we have been live he has authored 250 solutions and posted almost 4,000 times!   Creating that Community Spirit: Two of our superusers have been instrumental in helping us manage the community.   One thorny topic had become quite challenging to manage, when one of our superfans went on a mission to turn things around. He posted in the thread but also made great efforts reaching out in private to the most vocal troublemakers, urging them to be constructive. Most of them changed their behaviour immediately! These noble superfans have helped to maintain a friendly atmosphere on the community for everyone.   Above and Beyond: Several of our other superfans spend countless hours providing direct support to customers who are having problems.   This even goes to the extent of offering to provide help over the phone, or using Google Translate to help customers in languages that they don’t speak! And in our private area we receive a constant flow of valuable feedback from all of our superfans. This can be about product issues, website errors and much more. In fact, some of our colleagues from the product teams have learned that our private area is one of the best places to get timely and accurate product feedback, and have started monitoring it on a daily basis!   We all pay a lot of attention to the private area, and make sure that our superfans have a fast and direct line of communication to us.   There are many more examples we could mention, but possibly the greatest thing we’ve seen happen with our superfans is the warm and friendly relationship they’ve built with each other, and with us.   The private area is a board that’s full of laughter, honesty and mutual support. The bonds that our superfans have built with each other, and their relentlessly helpful and constructive discussions on the community, are infectious – they are really the ‘leaders’ of the community, and we often see new users starting to emulate their behavior (even if they started out as detractors!).   Our community is a great success, but we owe it all to our loyal superfans.    
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Company: HP Consumer Support Entry Submitted by: Dani Weinstein Social Media Support Manager (Dani) Community: HP Consumer Support Forum (http://h30434.www3.hp.com) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight   HP Exper... See more...
Company: HP Consumer Support Entry Submitted by: Dani Weinstein Social Media Support Manager (Dani) Community: HP Consumer Support Forum (http://h30434.www3.hp.com) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight   HP Experts rock! What’s better than one super fan? Try 140!   In March, more than 140 HP enthusiasts (known as HP Experts) from all over the world gathered in San Francisco at the first-ever HP Social Support Summit to share best practices, explore HP technologies and build relationships.     These top contributors to HP’s award-winning Consumer Support Forums are the strongest influencers within HP’s community. Collectively, they tackle more than 50% of the problem resolution despite making up less than 1% of the forum community membership. They are the life blood of HP’s Forums, and their active participation directly influences the vibrancy and vitality of the 7 HP forums communities.     The global conference showcased the technologies, strategies, and best practices that underpin HP’s social media philosophy. Experts were invited to tour HP’s headquarters in Palo Alto, CA to get a sense of HP’s history and culture.    Speakers from the top ranks of HP and Microsoft, as well as social media and customer service industry experts, treated HP Experts to informational and entertaining talks, while a motivational speaker kept energy levels high throughout the conference. Lithium’s own Chief Community Officer, Joe Cothrel, also jumped on stage for a deep dive on the specific challenges and trends that lie ahead in social media.     There was also plenty of time for fun and conversation as HP Experts joined in morning “fun runs,” collaborated with peers during group dinners, and shared ideas in the HP Oasis break room.  Last but not least, Experts were honored at an awards presentation recognizing the top forum contributors to wrap up the three-day event.    As the highest ranking forum member across all languages, DavidPK received top honors.      The Social Support Summit was a grand event for HP to recognize and reward these volunteers and say ‘Thank You’ to the people who freely give their time to help HP customers.    After the event, HP Experts shared their thoughts on the summit:   ”To do the simplest of things well, and to get a thank you means everything.”   ”This was a beautiful moment and a wonderful experience to meet all the fantastic, talented people from everywhere!” “SoMe team thank you so much for the most extraordinary adventure of my life.” …Daniel_P “Yes, thank you so very much to everyone involved in organizing and attending the S3 events!  It was a grand experience for me in both a personal and professional aspect!” …Kalt “All I can say is WOW! The forum was such a great opportunity to meet folks I have been working with here for years, to trade ideas and learn best practices. The speakers were excellent, the activities were fun and the organization and logistics were really well done.  Kudo's to all of you who made this possible.”…Bob_Headrick The HP team also is taking insights and suggestions from the HP Expert attendees straight to our product and service teams to improve our HP products and service offering. There is no shortage of ideas to share, either: HP Experts attached more than 90 ideas to the HP IDEA Wall at the general sessions.   Katie Harris, HP Summit Event Coordinator notes,”The first annual HP Social Support Summit surpassed all of our wildest expectations.  What a pleasure it was to meet our top members and thank them in person for their tremendous contributions to the HP Communities.”     To encourage ongoing dialogue with and recognition of the Expert volunteer team, HP is committed to continue its ongoing meet-up events around the world.   The meet-ups are informal face-to-face social gatherings that include HP global and regional teams and Experts. The smaller events are just another way to let the Expert teams know they are valued and important to HP and to the HP community.    When asked why they dedicate so much time to the forum, Experts’ answers are almost always unanimous: “We simply like to help and enjoy the challenge of solving issues and spreading a smile around.”    
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Company: A1 Telekom Austria Entry Submitted by: Claudia Religa Customer Interaction Manager (A1_Claudia) Community: A1 Telekom (http://www.a1community.net) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight     As we prepared for the ... See more...
Company: A1 Telekom Austria Entry Submitted by: Claudia Religa Customer Interaction Manager (A1_Claudia) Community: A1 Telekom (http://www.a1community.net) Lithy Categories: Best SuperFan Story or Insight     As we prepared for the launch of our A1 Support Community, we decided to run a beta test with our customers – the output was amazing! – we had 16 users who wrote 450 postings in just three days!   That was also the start of our special SuperFan story – about our community member, Simon. He joined the beta test and called our attention to small bugs that we would never have found without his support in this short time.   After the launch we organized a design game workshop to define the future of our community together with our customers. Simon didn’t miss the chance to be part of it, although it was hard work for him to get there: As he is only 15 years old he had to ask his parents for permission to join the workshop.  It’s a four hour train ride from his home to our headquarters in Vienna. His parents weren’t impressed about the idea, but finally they agreed – on one condition – he had to pay the ticket from his pocket money! When he told us his story we were really astonished and proud about the fact that we have committed Super Fans like him who care so much about our community. Without hesitating we refunded the costs for his train ticket and additionally donated a goodie bag for his dedication.   After the workshop he wrote us the following kind words:   "I just wanted to say thank you again for giving me the opportunity to join your workshop yesterday! It was a great day for me and I won't forget it for a long time. I’ve really learned a lot, such as what other users think about A1 and what suggestions they have to improve the community. I got my train back home just in time – one minute later and I would have had to spend the night in Vienna ;-)” From this time on Simon wrote 150 posts and got 56 kudos in the community. He also applied for a job at A1 and is going to support us as a trainee in his summer vacation.   Even the three week house arrest that he got after returning home from our workshop couldn’t keep him from being part of our community!   The story of Simon was spread across all the departments of our company. Everyone who heard about it was impressed by his dedication to our online community. Therefore, he is now known companywide, throughout A1 Telekom as 'Simon, the Super Fan of our hearts'.
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