Company: Centrify Corporation Entry submitted by: Anton Chiang (Sr. Manager, Community & Support Program) Community: Centrify Community Lithy category: Community Design of the Year   Centrify is the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats that target today’s hybrid IT environment of cloud, mobile and on-premises. The Centrify Identity Platform protects against the leading point of attack used in data breaches ― compromised credentials — by securing an enterprise’s internal and external users as well as its privileged accounts. Centrify delivers stronger security, continuous compliance and enhanced user productivity through single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, mobile and Mac management, privileged access security and session monitoring. Centrify is trusted by over 5000 customers, including more than half of the Fortune 50.   Our community goals   The Centrify Community’s mission is to provide our customers with a world class peer to peer collaboration space and technical resource center. By doing this, we aim to improve our customer journey by providing them with a positive support experience and deflect support costs. With Centrify’s website re-launch in 2015, we wanted to make sure that the community experience is an extension of our overall digital brand experience. SEO is one of our major go-to market strategies, and the rich technical content in our community is a great way to showcase Centrify’s identity solutions when prospects search for iDaaS solutions. When prospects and customers arrive at our community in search of solutions, we want to provide them with an excellent UX, allowing them to easily collaborate with Centrify Experts and other technical peers.   Our unique design elements    Centrify’s new community design is an excellent example of how to maximize screen real-estate utilization while improving aesthetics that’s consistent with the corporate brand. Our re-design mission was centered around two major themes: showcasing the rich community content with a new dynamic home page, and improving UX with a new skin that includes the most useful community elements laid out in a logical and visually pleasing manner.   From the top, the hero space of the community utilizes embedded videos to present useful rich media content to community members. In addition, a text announcement bar below the hero space points to the latest community news or notifications.   New global navigation lets users access the community from any page without taking up excessive space. We have simplified our community nodes to make it easier for user to get to the conversations they are looking for.     The user alias button acts as an options dropdown, with utility links for users and community dashboard for the community managers. This allows admins and regular users to access these frequently used links on every page.     “Ask the community” widget is a helpful new addition to help users quickly find community answers or post their questions. This widget dynamically display suggestions as the users type their questions. If answers are not found, the question can be quickly posted in the relevant forum.     To showcase our high quality community generated content, we placed 3 new widgets on the home page to show announcements, solutions and recent blogs from community. In addition, latest posts are also shown on the home page and category roots.     A right hand side scrolling marquee with a call to action enables us to promote company events.     How we executed our community design   We’ve started the re-design project by compiling community user feedback and creating a list of improvements and issues to resolve. The internal community team combined user feedback and industry best practice to create initial wireframes, requirements and node structures for our design and implementation partner Grazitti. With this initial sets of requirements, Grazitti provided us with mockups, feedback and additional recommendation to formulate the final design. Finally, Grazitti rapidly developed the new community design and structure on staging for UAT, and the entire project was done on time and on budget with an extremely aggressive deadline.   Our metrics Our new community design was launched on December 20 th , 2015. Following are some of the success metrics from 12/21/2015 to 3/7/2016 after launch: 78490 visits, 5.4% year to year increase (from 74,445 a year ago) Forums visit show a larger year-to-year increase at 9% (from 51163 to 55817) New forums topics increased by 38% yty (92 to 127) From 1/1/2015 to 2/29/2015: Registered user sessions (2435) saw an 64% year-to-year increase (up from 1483), showing a much stronger intent to interact. Completed registration also saw a year-to-year growth of 42% (546 from 385 a year ago)  

Company: MEO Contact: Vanessa Simão (Community Manager) Community: MEO FÓRUM Lithy category:  Support Savings MVP   MEO is a fully owned subsidiary of Altice group, and a leading telecommunications and multimedia operator based in Portugal. The company’s activities extend across all telecommunications segments: fixed line, mobile, multimedia, data and business solutions. In the Portuguese market, MEO is the leader in all segments it operates, with over 8 million mobile subscribers, 2.5 million wireline voice customers, 1.4 million pay-tv customers and 1.4 million broadband customers. MEO is the pioneer and the market leader of convergent services, with a comprehensive offer of 3Play and 4Play bundles. In 2015, domestic business revenues amounted to Eur 2,533 million.   PT Portugal's focus on the customer   In the Portuguese market, PT Portugal is a customer-oriented company, focused on innovation and execution to meet the needs of the digital consumer. PT Portugal is organized by customer segments, promoting collaboration between functions and platforms to ensure the best customer experience. PT Portugal’s priority is to create sustainable value for all customer segments.   In order to answer ever-changing consumer habits, the company has directed its provision towards convergence, mobility and virtualization of content and services.   How the Forum meets our customer care business goals   Helping people find solutions to their problems in a simple, fast and virtually free way, is the main purpose of the Forum, available 24x7 in the PC or smartphone. Good and credible aid is given either by peers or by selected moderators and company’s employees.   Recognizing that Meo’s site is still the first online place where customers try to find a solution to their problems, we incorporated the Forum into the site’s search results in September 2015. This means that people searching within the Meo site will also see any Forum posts, which are relevant to their search.   This change brought a 40% increase in referral traffic coming from the Meo ecosystem, when compared to the previous year.   Example of Meo site search with community content results.   In addition, we noted that one of the categories with more page views - Mobile Phones - required reorganization. So, we created an index of mobile phones that gathers every phone model and any written posts about them.     We also noticed that many users used the Forum to get their mobile phone’s instructions manuals. Thus, proactively, we created a new board, within the category of mobile phones, which serves as a repository for all manuals. The content is provided by company’s employees who are responsible for mobile phones certification, hence bringing them into the community, and then published both by company staff and Forum moderators.   Another way for costumers to get these manuals was through the self-care portal. We were getting 120 requests a month that had to be answered by our front office employees. Since the creation of this new board, we started redirecting these customers to the Forum, instead of allowing them to create a request that had to be analyzed and answered manually. With this change, we were able to free front office agents, allowing them to perform functions that are more complex.     Keeping Meo Forum present along the customer journey, we spread Meo Forum’s image throughout meo.pt and our self-care portal, with banners, and promoted the community in every email sent by our online store, after a purchase. We also promoted it in some of our online store’s weekly newsletters.   How our community has changed our customer care organization   We felt the need to connect our customer care assisted help with our community. So we integrated information about Meo Forum in every email sent to our customers, either through our CRM system or our self-care portal.   Both when the contact involved a complaint or a simple information request, in the footer of the email the customer would see a reference to Meo Forum with a simple message stating its purpose and a link to the community.   Pergunte, responda, contribua. Aceda já ao MEO Fórum. Ask, reply, contribute. Access MEO Forum. Moreover, we highlighted Meo Forum on the Meo Login dashboard, putting the community inside the Meo services’ ecosystem.     Today, our help and support team and customer care teams are regularly updating their contents and processes based on insights from this community, which demonstrates how the Meo Forum helped transform the way we serve our customers, beyond the digital frontier.   Our customer care business results   Call deflection   Since we launched Meo Forum, we recorded a decrease in the percentage of customers who need to use another customer care channel after visiting the Forum, either for posting or just browsing for a solution. We call this “Leakage” – nowadays, less than 13% of Meo Forum visitors have to contact a traditional customer care channel in the next 7 days.   Since peer-to-peer help was the focus of Meo Forum, we started directing personal customer inquiries and requests that concerned access to private information (such as invoice’s analysis or contracts’ end dates) to their self-care portal, where they could get a more personalized assistance. We have the Moderators for this purpose. They moderate the community by controlling the behaviour of members and providing support in most community questions, besides generating new content.   The majority of post replies are now provided by community members and only 10% of replies require company’s staff intervention, making the information richer.   Technical tutorials created by our Moderators and other loyal and more active members, are appreciated by the community and contribute greatly to this decrease. They have a high number of page views and are also used by our technical staff.   Search Engine Optimization   Meo Forum’s contribution for total organic search traffic in Meo site increased considerably in 2015. The community was responsible for 10% of all traffic coming to meo.pt.   Problems Scanning   Meo Forum is increasingly sought after by customers as a channel to seek solutions and post questions, increasing customer feedback. This allows us to monitor the conversations in a better way, contributing to the rapid identification of problems.   ROI   Based on the outcomes of a 667 online survey we conducted on the community website, during the period from March to October 2015, we built a ROI model where we estimate savings in customer contact deflection of approximately €550.000 in 2015.   The online survey is showed to each user who logs in to Meo Forum, and tries to determine if the original questions they had were solved during that visit. If the answer is positive, we also ask them if they would have used an assisted channel if had not found the answer in Meo Forum. With this model we can measure the amount of customers that solve their issues in Meo Forum without requiring a telephone or in person contact.      

Company:  ScottishPower Entry submitted by: Chris Brennan (Senior Search and Social Strategy Manager - Digital Marketing) Community:  https://twitter.com/sp_energypeople https://twitter.com/ScottishPower https://www.facebook.com/ScottishPower Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   ScottishPower supplies energy to over 5 million homes and businesses in the UK, as part of the Iberdrola Group, a global energy company and world leader in wind energy.   As the number one European utility by market capitalisation we are helping to change the energy market for the better, driving innovation from the way we generate and supply energy to how we interact with our staff and customers.   Social Media is at the heart of our strategic growth and our constant drive to be an Energy company you would be happy to recommend to friends and family.   Our  customer satisfaction initiatives: 360 o Customer View   During 2015, we faced a challenge in managing the perception and reputation of our customer service after a sustained period of instability post implementation of a new Billing and CRM system. Prior to this, our Social Media landscape was a healthy and vibrant small community of engaged advocates. This community rapidly grew and became steadily more negative as customer service complaints and media focus increased. With only two full-time staff operating during business hours our situation quickly became unmanageable and added to the negative perception around ScottishPower at the time.   Faced with this challenge, we conceived, developed and began implementation of our Customer 360 O program focusing on re-engaging with customers and improving satisfaction and reputation scores. Central to this was bringing social media closer to our tradition customer touch points with a truly Omni-channel approach to service. In delivering this approach, we embarked on three key social initiatives utilising LSW to deliver a truly exceptional Social Customer Care experience.   Filter out the noise: Utilise LSW tags and routing to allow our small customer service team to focus on real customer engagements   Prioritise those who need help the most: Energy is an important part of our daily lives. Utilising priority rules in LSW we have refined key word routing to ensure when someone loses their electricity supply or are a vulnerable customer we are able to intervene quickly to help.   Reducing repeat contacts: From social listening, we identified a pool of repeat customers. Using LSW we have been able to revise and resolve issues through improved end-2-end case management to minimise the reputational damage from serial dissenters.   The most important customer issues we were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation   Focusing on delivering excellent customer service on social We have always had a proud history in delivering exceptional service to our customer and that had been impacted somewhat by the migration to our new billing system. Through social it was important that we re-engaged with our customers and restored their confidence in ScottishPower as their energy provider.   By embarking on the Customer 360 0 project, we have been able to improve our customer service performance on social dramatically. LSW has been central to this strategy and has provided the platform to re-engage with our customers and restore confidence in our brand. Through the metrics that we track regularly we have seen a significant improvement and with a 13 point improvement in our social sentiment post LSW implementation it is clear that our customers are also seeing the benefits of our enhanced social service.     The robustness and confidence we have been able to install in our team since implementing LSW led us to re-open and cleanse over 2.5k pervious social service cases reducing our repeat contacts by 30% and restore faith in previously dissatisfied customers.   Due to our increased focus on measurement and performance management, we have now extended our coverage to 24/7 and our team has trebled in size. Internally Social First is our new approach with Monitor Wall visible in key departments such as THE Digital Innovations team, Customer Services and shared with all appropriate C-Suite leaders.   Making it easier to do business with us In-depth routing and reporting capabilities have allowed us to focus on the root cause issues to drive service improvement. As such, we are now able to embark on a pro-active engagement campaign to educate and help consumers and reduce the need for them to individually contact us.     Metrics  Positive and neutral sentiment improved from 77% pre Lithium to 90% post Lithium Repeat social complaints reduced by 30% Average response time for Priority 1 cases reduced from 1 hour to 20 minutes. 80% of mentions responded to in less than 1 hour with 98% within 2 hours. 200 repeat customer cases fully reworked and helped through re-engagement using Lithium Recent Independent Industry benchmarking by Social Bakers showed we had the 2nd highest number of service engagement in the industry (highest of the major suppliers by customer base) yet the fastest response rate of all suppliers Overall Customer Satisfaction scores are improving with the percentage of Very Satisfied increasing by 20 percentage points over the last 6 months    

Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Lois Townsend (loisT) Director, Social Media and Community Community: Autodesk Community (Forums.autodesk.com) Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries—including the last 19 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects—use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created. From blockbuster visual effects and buildings that create their own energy to electric cars and the batteries that power them, the work of our 3D software customers is everywhere you look.   Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art 3D software for global markets. Through our apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android, we're also making design technology accessible to professional designers as well as amateur designers, homeowners, students, and casual creators. Whether it's a kid looking to build a new contraption, a seasoned pro sketching out a great new idea, or someone who just wants to amp up their creative output, we're taking technology originally built for movie studios, automakers, and architectural firms, and making it available to anyone who wants to create and share their ideas with the world.   Autodesk, one of the world leaders in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software is delivering on customers’ needs before they ask. Autodesk drives customer loyalty and product affinity through a Total Community strategy. The strategy includes activations on Facebook, nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter, more than 40 million views on YouTube, and a branded community, running on the Lithium platform, which has seen its unique visitors grow by 34% in the last year, with a membership of 2million+ customers. One of the pillars of the Autodesk social strategy is its branded community which is the main hub for directly connecting with customers.  Dating back to 1986, with Compuserve, Autodesk has leveraged community to foster peer-to-peer to support, drive greater brand affinity, and solidify relationships with its customers. It has evolved to focus on collaborating with and anticipating the needs of customers. Now its nine communities in multiple languages offer customers unique experiences by industry, region, and expertise level. The company shares product use information, solves potential product issues, and promotes best practices to proactively supply customers with the tools and information needed for a successful product experience supporting Autodesk’s customer care goals which are centered on rapid, relevant, service, support and learning for every customer.   Autodesk’s recently-launched Knowledge Network (AKN) as a place for users to find product solutions, learn more about products and link in to the community. When looking for support, top knowledge based articles appear in search results, which even include accepted solutions from the community. This speaks volumes to the importance of the Autodesk Community participation for quick problem solving capabilities, not to mention the Expert Elites our Super Users of Autodesk Community who answer support questions directly.  In the last 12 months, nearly 20 million unique visitors came to the AKN site to learn and explore, troubleshoot an issue, or download software.   Autodesk’s Expert Elite are the Super Fans and lifeblood of the Autodesk Community. The Autodesk Expert Elite program was created to recognize customers around the world who have contributed a significant amount of time, knowledge, and assistance to fellow customers.  These people have demonstrated a strong sense of leadership and use an engaging style of collaboration that contributes to a healthy and valuable customer community. The program now has over 200 members representing 23 different countries. They have delivered 7,000 accepted solutions, received 17,000 kudos and posted 60,000 replies. Autodesk has also recognized the importance of video content on the community, and last year piloted and launched a webinar program to proactively offer customers another way to learn about and experience Autodesk products. For instance, the Installation and Licensing Community hosted “Troubleshooting Desktop Subscription Licensing issues” webinar to give users the information they need to get the “software up and ready.”  The Autodesk Help webinar series is a virtual studio house, with regular, and in some cases weekly offerings.  Webinar attendance can be as high as 200 live attendees and videos posted online can reach over 5,000 views. Over 50% of webinar attendees are repeat participants because they derive continued value from the webinar content.   These programs provide information that helps our customers get their products up and running quickly.  Our goal is helping customers to optimize productivity and with these programs our service and support professionals can begin to shift reactive help to providing more proactive solutions to our customers.   Our business results   Autodesk’s collaborative and proactive approach supported by several key programs, including Expert Elite, Knowledge Network, and Autodesk Help Webinars. The tactics have delivered the following community success metrics: Autodesk Communities received over 27 million unique visits in the last 12 months. Autodesk Community successfully serves answers to millions of customers, yielding a multimillion dollar value to Autodesk and its customers. Customer success is tracked and measured via surveys to ensure that the community is providing actual solutions, and at an increasing rate. The community has more than 2 million registered members that have shared more than 135,000 kudos and over 20,000 newly accepted solutions in the last year.  

Company: Centrify Corporation Entry submitted by: Anton Chiang (Sr. Manager, Community & Support Program) Community: Centrify Community Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Centrify is the leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats that target today’s hybrid IT environment of cloud, mobile and on-premises. The Centrify Identity Platform protects against the leading point of attack used in data breaches ― compromised credentials — by securing an enterprise’s internal and external users as well as its privileged accounts. Centrify delivers stronger security, continuous compliance and enhanced user productivity through single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, mobile and Mac management, privileged access security and session monitoring. Centrify is trusted by over 5000 customers, including more than half of the Fortune 50.   How we are implementing Community to meet our customer care business goals   Centrify provides unified identity management for end users and privileged users, with flagship products addressing needs for identity management across cloud, mobile and data centers. Our support team interacts with IT admins with diverse skills sets spanning across *NIX, Windows, Active Directory and SAML, just to name a few.   The Centrify Support team believes that building a Community of Centrify admins across the globe plays an important role in providing world class support to our customer base. With a vibrant community, we are able to increase customer satisfaction with an ever growing library of user generated solutions, tech blogs and videos. In addition, we’re able to reduce support contact cost across all regions yet meet SLA’s and responsiveness by leveraging the community.   Our community consists of product forums, tech blogs and Ideas Exchange. All users have read access across all product forums and tech blogs. With our newly implemented “Ask the Community” widget, customers can quickly find existing answers in a wealth of accepted solutions and tech articles. All registered users are welcomed to post in our free Centrify Express forum. This enables Centrify to provide a positive user experience for our free product users, potentially leading to paid upgrade when their organizations expand.   For our paid customers, they have the option to ask questions in the premium product forums. These questions are automatically escalated to an internal “A-Team” of superusers if the community does not answer within 24 hours. This ensures that our paid customers receive timely responses while Centrify reduces support contact volume.   Our paid customers can also to post product enhancement ideas and vote on them in the Ideas Exchange. Here, Centrify’s product team members regularly engage in discussions with customers, providing them with an exclusive channel to share valuable feedback to the Centrify product team.   Changes we implemented  because of cost reductions based on Lithium Community    At Centrify, we value support as a team that adds value to our customers and not a cost center. That being said, just like every successful and customer centric organization, we keep a close eye on our costs every year. The savings in headcount to support our customers are re-invested to make the Community and Support Portal more interactive and resourceful. With new products, new customers we are always innovating and ensuring that every type of customers who come to us for a help can easily find their answers. We have re-launched our community several months ago with an improved design and structure, focusing on making the community easier to use for new and returning members alike. In the future, we will be enhancing the UI further to provide a single pane of glass for all existing customers to address their technical and product needs. The success of Community for our customers has also encouraged our internal teams to increase participation. Technical teams across Centrify now regularly create useful tech blog articles, how-to’s and videos to increase the value of this every growing library of user generated content.   Our customer care and business results    Centrify Community started as a platform for our freemium product (Centrify Express) users to ask their questions. Since then, we have opened up additional product forums, tech blogs and customer Idea Exchange.   In spite of growing our customers base and revenues by 2x, our team has been able to successfully support 5000+ customers and continuously achieve a 92%+ customers satisfaction*. Without enabling peer-to-peer community help, we would not be able to sustain such rapid growth while maintaining a high score for customer satisfaction. Support Management at Centrify is always looking at metrics to drive more self-service, engineer efficiency and content creation (Knowledge articles and how-to videos).   *Customer Satisfaction is derived from 5 survey metrics that we collect from our customers. Every time a case that is opened with Technical Support team at Centrify, the customer will have an opportunity to provide their feedback on the products, people, and features / functionality of Centrify Solutions. Customer are asked to rate us on the 5 parameters (1) Case Owner Satisfaction (2) Overall Product Satisfaction (3) Product Quality (4)Features and Functionality and (5) Overall Support Satisfaction.     We’ve seen steady community growth in the past 4 years. Q1 2016 we saw a year over year increase of user sessions by 38%.   More than 30k visits per month in indirect contact deflection. 40+ technical topics are answered and turned into searchable community knowledge for future use. 15+ technical blogs / video blogs are created monthly for our community member’s consumption.   Rich Multimedia Content in the community tech blog:     Wealth of technical information and resource in the community. “Ask the Community” widget makes it easy for users to get started:     Idea Exchange:        

Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   StarHub Community, together with our social media agency Vocanic has put in place a marketing strategy to promote use of Community on digital platforms. Each campaign we embark upon is angled at obtaining user-generated content. This then becomes a searchable bank of useful opinions that remains relevant after the end of the campaign. The content is amplified beyond the Community when it is shared on StarHub's social platforms Facebook (250,000 fans), Twitter (20,000 followers), Instagram, YouTube and Line. Through the Sparklers Club we nurture advocates who spend countless hours on our site helping other members with their queries. Our initiatives have been recognized and we have won industry accolades in Singapore: Best use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) at the Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 and Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver) at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2013. Read the details below.   As Singapore's fully integrated info communications company, StarHub offers a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. With the aim of providing every person, home and business in Singapore with world-class multimedia services and content, StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services, manages an island-wide HFC (Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial) network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services, as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services.   In a bid to further enhance our relationship with customers, it was decided that improving and reinforcing the way we handled customer service, was key. Simply put, the traditional customer service call-centre system needed to be revamped, to take advantage of the power of Social Media. In so doing, StarHub was able to tap into the vast prowess of peer-to-peer support, eliminating the need for customers to call in. The strategy unearthed unlimited potential going beyond customer service to touch on topics relating to Human Resource, Content Marketing, Sponsorship Deals, Marketing Communications and Direct Marketing just to name a few. We have worked with various departments within our organization to run campaigns for their activations. As each department adds StarHub Community to their activity scorecard, we become a vibrant platform that integrates into the different layers of our organization. The results across the board have been phenomenal, with the industry recognizing the value and effectiveness of our Lithium-supported Social Strategy as evident from the following accolades: • Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 – Best Use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) • Marketing Excellence Awards 2013 – Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver)   Business Goals   The launch of the Lithium based StarHub Community presented us with the opportunity to develop a whole array of campaigns and activations that strived towards a singular endpoint – to drive brand advocacy. StarHub embarked on an enthusiastic digital marketing programme. The Community gave us the fans and an avenue for us to engage in a meaningful 2-way conversation with them. Further to that however, we were able to tap into their likes and dislikes, problems, issues, challenges and even suggestions to improve our offerings. The wealth of information garnered allowed StarHub as a brand to tailor our marketing strategies to meet, and more importantly match our fans interests – to give them what they want, not what we want to sell. It gave us the ability to: • Roll out Social and Community activations for sponsorships • Develop content based on popular television programmes, translated to offline activities (Social TV) • Perform segment marketing and social sales, e.g. listing a Recontract thread to ask questions and harvest opinions before putting forth a call-to-action for consumers to renew StarHub services • Provide a channel for customers to “self-help”, with crowd-sourced expertise on troubleshooting. Here are the some of the campaigns we have embarked upon to promote use of StarHub Community:   Sparklers Club Among the thousands on StarHub Community, there lies a select few who shine. A select few who spend countless hours on the Community for the sole purpose of helping others – through troubleshooting, moderating conversation threads, and even defending the brand when “bashing” arises. These heroes – influencers and brand advocates - are recognized by the brand and invited to the Sparklers Club. We put in place a gamification framework identify Community members and advocates and invite them into the Club in order to be groomed as brand guardians. To encourage this behavior, a value-exchange was set up. As a Sparkler, one would be able to attend get-togethers to meet, greet and share ideas for improving the Community. Sparklers are also regularly engaged for co-creation, ideation and market research, giving them the opportunity to feel like a part of the brand, making the Community a fun and meaningful place to be and contributing to its ultimate growth and success.     Sparklers members are also selected for their expertise on different topics which tie back to StarHub’s goals: Android and Blackberry experts help people in the Community and drive StarHub’s Mobile agenda. Beauty bloggers talk about fashion, hair and makeup to drive StarHub’s content leader agenda, particularly the Lady First TV show which StarHub has franchised from Taiwan.   We also hold meet-ups with our Sparklers members. Check out the video of the 2014 meet up: Watch this video introducing the Sparklers Club!  When we hit our 1 millionth unique visitor, we wrote a post on Community acknowledging our topic experts and created an infographic to highlight our top users and achievements. Check it out here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Blog/StarHub-Communitywelcomes-its-1-000-000th-unique-visitor/ba-p/58529   Some of our community Experts:     HITS campaign Best way to make fans happy? Give them what they want. That’s exactly what HITS TV set out to do, by crowdsourcing all-time favourite TV shows that may have ended their runs but which people love and miss. Contest mechanic: We asked people to submit and vote for the TV shows they’d like HITS to air in the coming months. The idea should fit HITS’s DNA: epic characters, riveting stories, cult following, multiple seasons. Top Prizes: A Samsung GALAXY Tab 3 7.0, vouchers to Resorts World Sentosa, Sephora vouchers As part of the contest promotion we received airtime on the HITS TV channel on StarHub! Watch the TVC here:  TVC Screenshot driving viewers to StarHub Community:     Lady First Background: At the beginning, it was found that StarHub Community was rife with male-skewed content, e.g. mobile phones, routers, gadgets discussions and more. This campaign was launched to drive females to the site. We sent out emails that led customers to perform a simple survey in order to ascertain interests. We targeted females whose interests included beauty, makeup, fashion, hairstyling and write their own blogs. The survey acted as a filtering process to find legitimate female bloggers. 20 bloggers were then invited to attend a briefing where they received topics and social tasks to share with their followers that in turn led to activities, conversations and buzz on the Community. Results: - 7,143 unique visitors to StarHub Community’s Lady First board - 470 Topics written - 1,274 replies to topics - Out of 20 original bloggers, 5 remain active to this day, close to 1 year after the activation. 2 of them are members of our Sparklers super user group.   The success of the drive to include the female target audience in the conversation prompted the brand to plan for and launch a sequel activation set to take place mid-2014. Link to Winners Announcement post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/Lady-First-Bloggers-Challenge-Winners-Announcement/m-p/36223#M10 Oscars Background: The Academy Awards is a big annual event, televised live globally and watched by many in Singapore. In order to ramp the viewership up on the programme further, we decided to tap into the crowd in the Community for their Oscar predictions. The mechanic was simple. Fans needed to submit their predictions for the winners of 4 categories – Best Actor, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. Get them right, and they would stand a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. In just 5 days we received: • 259 Entries (from original target of 5) by 151 participants • 448 votes • 1,700 Likes, 141 Comments and 57 Shares on our Facebook post about the campaign   Check out the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-2014-Oscars/idb-p/2014-Oscars   Posts on StarHub’s Social Platforms Each week, we put up posts on StarHub’s social platforms. We leverage on StarHub’s 250,000 Facebook fans and 20,000 Twitter followers to drive awareness and engagement for the Community by highlighting useful posts on Community and encouraging followers on our social accounts to visit and share their reviews. These posts are boosted by a Facebook media budget. We also use Instagram and Line as additional platforms to drive awareness for Community campaigns.     Community presence on main StarHub.com With a link on StarHub.com to the Community, we have seen an increase in traffic to our site. Refer to screenshot below:        

Company: Google Glass  Entry submitted by: Sarah Price (sarahprice) Social Media & Community Lead and Teresa Zazenski (tzazenski) Community Manager Community: Glass Explorers Program (http://glass-community.com) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch    Entry for 50 States video:     The Glass Explorers Program started in April 2013. We made Glass available to bold, creative individuals from different walks of life to help shape the future of Glass. People don’t just buy Glass, they become a “Glass Explorer.” Through the Explorers Program, we seek to empower our customer community to introduce the world to Glass and share their feedback to make Glass better.   On October 12, 2013, we announced that we would be expanding the Explorer Program. Customers would be able to refer up to three friends to buy Glass and join the Explorer Program.   There are countless public fan communities for Glass, but our official community is hosted by Lithium, with private discussion areas restricted to Glass Explorers. This enables customers to have open and honest conversations about Glass and the Explorer Program. Our team uses our Lithium community to get direct feedback and input from our Explorers in many ways, including through a “Glass Wishlist” ideation board. We also use Lithium Social Web to monitor and engage with feedback and Explorer-created content across the web.   Our community of Explorers is the heart of our program, so for certain key Explorer Program milestones, we have invited our Explorers to share content with us that we used to create a community-driven launch video for our marketing efforts. These videos focus on the Explorers and show the world who makes up our community. They also show our Explorers how important they are to our team and to the program, especially in times of change: both milestones involved expansion of the Explorer Program. This makes the change a bit less scary and helps our veteran customers to welcome our new customers. We directly asked for new submissions in our community, and also used Lithium Social Web to identify additional Explorer content that fits into our theme.   50 States [Through Google Glass] announced the launch of Explorer referrals, where each Explorer was allowed to invite 3 friends to join the Explorer Program. Explorers had been asking for invitations, and were also a key driving force in bringing new Explorers to the program. We wanted to illustrate the diversity of our Explorers and thank them for their feedback and participation. The creation of this video also was an experiment to see what would happen if we asked our Explorers for help: would we see increased engagement?     We were very pleased with the engagement that resulted from the campaign, and the finished product reflected our values and the heart of the Explorer Program. We saw a dramatic increase in community engagement during the campaign. When we were falling short of our goal to get a video from each state, our community rallied to find customers in the missing states, demonstrating their deep engagement and passion. We eventually received the 50th state shortly after the official end of the campaign, in time to include all 50 states in the final compilation.         Video was released on October 12, 2013 and has 128k views as of April 24, 2014 (live for 6 months).       For all community members who viewed the call to action, we saw a submission rate of 18%.       While we were taking submissions, we observed a 7x boost in community engagement, with a 21% increase in engagement from key customers.       Our stated goal was to obtain submissions from each state in the US within two weeks. We achieved 49 of 50 by the end of the campaign, with the 50th state arriving the following week, in time to be included in the final video compilation.    

Company: Breast Cancer Care Contact: Anna Brown (Digital Community Officer) Community: Breast Cancer Care Forum Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   The Breast Cancer Care Forum is the largest single cancer forum in the UK.  It was the first peer support forum of its kind, originally launched in 1999/2000.  Our Lithium powered platform enables users to safely share their personal stories and receive emotional support from other people affected by breast cancer. Central to the success of the forum is an environment from which trust can develop, thereby encouraging empathy, human connections and interactions, albeit virtual; this in turn creates a safe space that lessens isolation and anxiety.  Real people-virtual connection:  Overcoming isolation using accessible technology. There are many ways to face breast cancer, we help people find theirs.   Our organization’s customer satisfaction initiatives in 2015   In 2015 we aimed to increase registrations, user engagement and widen our reach to be accessible to everyone affected by breast cancer. As a charity we looked at ways for delivering more for less and reduce our expenses whilst maintaining safety and integrity.   We are a user centric organisation and incorporate all user feedback, input or direct data from LSI to inform improvements to customer experience and user journey on the forum. By listening to our users in workshops and reading comments in posts, we know they want instant access to online support at the time they need it, for this reason we have removed first post moderation and implemented SSO so users only need one account for our Forum and breastcancercare.org.uk.   To support this reduced moderation we have customised the keyword and smut filter systems, as well as activating the abuse notifications and spam quarantine.  By doing this we have reduced our moderation team from 6 sessional moderators and 1 Coordinator to 1 Digital Community Officer and 1 Digital Community Assistant. Through this careful implementation we have not only preserved our outstanding reputation of being a safe and risk free environment, we have significantly built on it. We can safely rely on robust Lithium technology, and through all these changes we have simultaneously increased and expanded our customer engagement and service provision. To illustrate, below are our targets and achievements for the year.     User engagement and satisfaction We know that the ‘midnight terrors’ are real for many people, both newly diagnosed or further on in their treatment of breast cancer.  A popular thread used by many during the ‘witching hours’ is ‘The Night Birds’; where members of the community chat and reduce isolation when everyone else is asleep.   The community is an invaluable source of support and information regardless of the stage of breast cancer journey:  At the beginning when it is all new and frightening;   “i have been reading the forums since waiting for my results and found it a tower of strength. Thought it was time I joined in........”   Experiencing side effects of treatment;   “ I think the side effects affect us more than people realise and that is one reason why these forums help so much”   Coming out the other end of treatment and wanting to support others;   “EXTOLLING THE VIRTUES AND BENEFITS OF THIS WONDERFUL FORUM AND THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE ON IT. ALL OF WHOM, BASICALLY "SAVED MY LIFE". Our users regularly share their experiences both of online and offline services.  Increasing user engagement with the rest of Breast Cancer Care is important to us and our users are the best sources of referral:   “I’m part way through a course called Moving Forward run by Breast Cancer Care – it’s four morning sessions with other ladies who have recently finished treatment and we are covering topics such as diet, exercise, relationships, menopause symptoms, recurrence etc, and to be honest the most powerful thing is being in a room with ten other women who, just like you guys, absolutely get how I am feeling and thinking.  If this is your thing then I’d urge you to have a look and see if there is a course running near you.”   We recognise that for many users they receive the information and support they are looking for by reading posts rather than by actively contributing.  We wanted to encourage this group of forum users to still feel a member of the community and achieved this by introducing Hugs, customised from Kudos. Users are now able to connect with each other as well as show compassion and empathy by sending Hugs in response to a post.  This function has been very popular and from launch in December to the end of March a total of 3,948 Hugs have been given.     Another recent user focussed innovation has been the implementation of Community Champions.  We identified 21 possible users who naturally offer support and empathy as well as support new users and signpost to other areas of support.  100% of people contacted accepted the recognition:   “I’m knocked out ‘cos all i do is out of love and passion for my fellow womankind.  How wonderful.”     We have noticed a steady increase in engagement since this implementation and plan on building on this success.     Our plans for the very near future include a forum restructure. Using the data and analytics from LSI, we have identified areas of the forum which are underutilised.  The flexibility of the Lithium platform enables us to move categories and boards to reflect the needs of our users and to enhance the ease of user journey. Removing inactive areas allows us to introduce new areas which have been requested, such as a ‘Coffee Lounge’ where users can still connect in a safe online environment but in conversations which are cancer free.   Other new areas include a closed private group for our Community Champions and an innovative category, ‘Ask Our Nurses’. This is where users can directly ask questions to our highly regarded clinical specialists enhancing our Helpline and ‘Ask the nurse’ email service.       In the last 12 months our forum has grown by 40% and we have no intention of sitting back and settling for that.  With the ability to be reactive to our users’ needs and having the data, both quantitative and qualitative to support and underpin decisions, we will continue to grow from strength to strength.      

Company: ING Direct  Entry submitted by: Nicolas Hun (nicolashun) Brand Content and Social Media Manager Community: Le Web Café ING Direct (https://communaute.ingdirect.fr/) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   ING Direct has launched its Lithium community to give visibility and highlight the good relationship it has with its customers, but also to reduce the costs of customer relations mainly services by call.   In December 2013, ING Direct France, the leader of online banking in France, launched its Lithium community, "Le Web Café".   This community, 100% integrated in ingdirect.fr website enriches the existing ecosystem "Web Café" of the brand composed from a Facebook Page, a Twitter account and 2 physical coffees in Paris and Lyon.   It was really important for the brand to use the name of "Web Café" as "Web Café" is the link for all the places where clients and prospects can discuss and share each other and with ING Direct, but also to give a possibility for the clients to tell and share their satisfaction and good relation with the bank.     The Lithium community is composed of three bricks. 1) A forum where clients and prospects can directly and freely discuss with the bank's customers, allowing customers to share their experiences and expertise with the community. 2) A lab where members can test and share their ideas to improve and build the bank of tomorrow. 3) A blog to decrypt, give tips, and share all useful informations to members to complete their projects.   For the launch of the community, we produced a video explaining in detail the community created by the agency. This video respects ING Direct's graphical guidelines and is in line with ING Direct philosophy.   A voiceover presents all the sections of the website and all that would be possible to do. The tone is light, and reflects the state of mind and the positioning of the bank. On screen, we follow a discussion between François (a client) and Jeanne (a prospect) who wishes to learn how to join ING Direct.   VO : In principle, the atmosphere of a coffee is very different from that of a bank.   Maybe not that much after all. ING Direct creates its "WEB CAFÉ". A community where you can discuss, exchange and share with us your ideas.   In the "Web Café ", it is you who have the floor.   Finally, you and the whole community gathered around ING Direct. There is a forum where you can ask questions or respond to those of other clients. It's by helping each other we make a difference.   Simple, isn't?   "Web Café " is also a blog: articles and analysis to help you save, invest or manage your budget. In the blog you will find tips for your projects.   WEB CAFÉ is finally a lab where we create the services of tomorrow together​. You propose ideas, big or small, and we submit ours...   And you vote for the ones you prefer.   Share your ideas and together build the bank tomorrow   Join the ING Direct "Web Café " community now.​   The community is a real success. In 4 months, the community has about 2 800 active members and more than 73 000 unique visitors. 741 discussions have been raised and more than 270 ideas to improve the lives of customers and build the bank of tomorrow have been shared.   Our business results: "Le Web Café", with more than 466 247 pageviews and 741 discussions. 69% - Topics posted by members generated reactions from other members. 45% - Topics posted by members received answers from other members. 21% - Discussions related to the category "Become a customer" 62% of these discussions are about the process   Watch our launch video here:   

Company: Google AdWords Entry submitted by: Akshay Nair (Akshay) Global Project Manager, AdWords Communities Community: Google AdWords Community https://www.ru.adwords-community.com (Russian Community) https://www.pt.adwords-community.com (Portuguese Community) https://www.es.adwords-community.com (Spanish Community) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   AdWords, a flagship product of Google, accounts for the majority of the company’s revenue. Utilized by millions of businesses in over 40 languages around the world, AdWords penetration is accelerating while its features become increasingly sophisticated.    Google recognizes the opportunity to help SMBs improve their businesses through adding features that improve their advertising campaigns. AdWords customers range from multi-million dollar companies to tiny mom-and-pop businesses. Our aim is to provides a feature-rich advertising platform suited to all types of advertisers and advertiser needs.   Google AdWords has leveraged the power of the Lithium platform to drive our customer education efforts on some of our fastest growing AdWords communities - Spanish (ES), Portuguese (PT) and Russian (RU). To educate our customers on AdWords and all it’s features, we use webinars (executed through the Hangouts On Air technology) and various video formats that we host on the Lithium platform. We’ve built in functionality that allows us to track the impact of our video content. This includes actions performed by our customers on their AdWords accounts after they have watched our webinars and engaged with our video content on these communities.   Our marketing program   We care immensely for our influencers and understand the value they bring to our 1:many efforts. The Google Partners Academy in the PT/ES markets and the “Boost IT” program in RU allowed us to reach and engage online marketing professionals, advance their product knowledge, educate them and share advice on how to improve their online marketing efforts.     Google Partners Academy - is a customer education program targeting Google Partners (certified AdWords agencies and certified marketing professionals). The program consists of a series of Hangouts On Air, where Google specialists (AdWords support team, account managers) guide users through a range of product-related and online marketing-related topics.   “Boost IT” - is an educational program targeting Ukrainian large advertisers from the IT sector. This program consists of a series of Hangouts On Air where account managers answer advertisers’ questions online, give presentations on product-related topics and share best practices that are relevant to our IT clients.   All discussions, questions and user conversations during and after the webinar happen on the respective communities where the Hangout On Air is hosted.   To scale our efforts further, these customer education models and initiatives were later launched in other market communities. We’ve partnered across Google with Large Client Services, Small & Medium Business Account Managers and Marketing teams based in Dublin, Wroclaw, Sao Paulo, Kiev, Buenos Aires and Mexico City to ensure we touch as many advertisers as possible. Also, we feature our Top Contributors and Rising Stars in our webinars who share their experience and insights in a live environment by answering questions in real-time.   Our results   Community growth: All three communities (ES/PT/RU) doubled their size from 320k to 630k annual visits on average. User impact: We had a 232% increase in certified individuals in our Spanish speaking markets in 2014 29% of all actions taken by our customers who visited our 10 Communities around the world were driven by these three communities alone Cost savings: Our training efforts with the Google Partners Academy program recorded a cost saving of 91% per attendee

Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Lois Townsend (loisT) Director, Social Media and Community Community: Autodesk Community (Forums.autodesk.com) Lithy category: Social ROI Titan   Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries—including the last 19 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects—use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created. From blockbuster visual effects and buildings that create their own energy to electric cars and the batteries that power them, the work of our 3D software customers is everywhere you look.   Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art 3D software for global markets. Through our apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android, we're also making design technology accessible to professional designers as well as amateur designers, homeowners, students, and casual creators. Whether it's a kid looking to build a new contraption, a seasoned pro sketching out a great new idea, or someone who just wants to amp up their creative output, we're taking technology originally built for movie studios, automakers, and architectural firms, and making it available to anyone who wants to create and share their ideas with the world.   Our 2014 objectives   Autodesk is undergoing a business transformation: the growth of the business and transformation to a cloud based service generates product support needs that must be met at scale. The multi-language Autodesk Community plays a significant role in the support strategy to ensure the availability of quality answers from expert members and in a timely fashion, for all customers, regardless of a paid service option.   Autodesk supports its customers in 3 major ways: Self-help: Anyone can visit the Autodesk Knowledge Network, a repository of Autodesk-generated and carefully curated content, available to all customers, 24x7 Engage online in the Autodesk Community. The Accepted Solutions from the forums integrated with and automatically part of the Autodesk Knowledge Network Contact us: Call / email /chat with a support representative, available only for some types of customers   In order to increase the value of the community for our customers and Autodesk, we had 3 goals in 2014, and were able to exceed our results for each:   Traffic - Increase visits to the forums by 25% vs. actual result: 34% increase Quality content - Increase accepted solution rates by 10% vs. actual result: 13% increase Initial response time- We had specific goals depending on the platform inquiry:   The Community has many benefits: it helps shape the image of the company, contributes to our customers decision to purchase certain products, informs the product development teams of possible issues or wishes for future release, etc. But the Autodesk Community is at the core a product support operation.   The community sits between the Autodesk Knowledge Network and the technical support agents as an online interactive platform. It quickly provides solutions to our customers, and deflects calls that would otherwise be addressed to Autodesk service representatives. They provide a one-to-one service that is difficult to scale. The average cost associated with a customer service or technical support representative, who interact over the phone is carefully monitored. It serves as a primary cost basis to estimate the scope of savings that Autodesk realizes.   Based on volume of visits from customers who could have called an agent, the success rate (result of an ongoing customer survey), we estimate the total call deflection value in 2014 to be in the millions of dollars.  Even more impressive is that we have been able to provide answers to over 10M customers per year, including students and educators that have free access to both our software, and to our community based support.   The Autodesk community is growing at an accelerated pace. In 2014: We recorded growth in community membership of 30% in 2014 to pass 2 million registered members. It is the result of organic growth and an effort in SEO but no paid advertising. It grew by 22% in 2013 and 16% in 2012. Community visits increased 34% to 27.3 million annually. RSS feeds to the community grew by 471%. Autodesk’s Expert Elites are the Super Fans and growing in importance. The Autodesk Expert Elite program was created to recognize customers around the world who have contributed a significant amount of time, knowledge, and assistance to fellow customers.  These people have demonstrated a strong sense of leadership and use an engaging style of collaboration that contributes to a healthy and valuable customer community. The program now has over 200 members representing 23 different countries. They have delivered 7,000 accepted solutions, received 17,000 kudos and posted 60,000 replies.   The unique aspect about the Expert Elite program is that it doesn’t stop at community; it is the concept of Total Community. The program not only values a user’s contribution within the community, but outside of it as well. Autodesk looks at the contributions people are making on personal blogs and other social channels, as well as at offline events such as training seminars, to really see the conversations happen full circle.  

Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader   StarHub Community, together with our social media agency Vocanic has implemented a stellar digital strategy which no other brand on the Lithium platform has done before. We have made StarHub Community the go-to platform for user discussion on all things StarHub: Social TV, Social Sales, Engagement of Segments, Sponsorship, cultivating Influencers & Advocates, nurturing Loyalty and building Partnerships. Our initiatives have been recognized and we have won industry accolades in Singapore: Best use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) at the Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 and Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver) at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2013. Read the details below.    As Singapore's fully integrated infocommunications company, StarHub offers a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets.   With the aim of providing every person, home and business in Singapore with world-class multimedia services and content, StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services, manages an island-wide HFC (Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial) network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services, as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services. In a bid to further enhance our relationship with customers, it was decided that improving and reinforcing the way we handled customer service, was key. Simply put, the traditional customer service call-centre system needed to be revamped, to take advantage of the power of Social Media. In so doing, StarHub was able to tap into the vast prowess of peer-to-peer support, eliminating the need for customers to call in. The strategy unearthed unlimited potential going beyond customer service to touch on topics relating to Human Resource, Content Marketing, Sponsorship Deals, Marketing Communications and Direct Marketing just to name a few. The results across the board have been phenomenal, with the industry recognizing the value and effectiveness of our Lithium-supported Social Strategy as evident from the following accolades: • Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 – Best Use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) • Marketing Excellence Awards 2013 – Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver)   What were the goals? We wanted to position StarHub as a company that listens, understands, cares for our customers and the Singapore community. At the same time, we acknowledge that endorsements are often regarded to be more credible and objective when they come from third parties that do not have a stake in the business. In creating a new platform, it was crucial that it be instrumental in cultivating brand advocates, where in times of need, users could step in to defend the brand on our behalf from the “bashing” conducted by others. It was to also be a sanctuary for frank opinions, transparency and a hotbed for equipment testing by our loyal customers. Hence, the aim was to create a community managed by consumers, for the consumers and moderated by StarHub. StarHub Community would present a centralized platform for existing customers to turn to should they have any StarHub product or service-related problems. There, they would be able to access to a wealth of user-generated trouble-shooting tips, solutions, general information and more.   In harnessing the community for support, the secondary goals were to reduce budget spent to hire and train call-centre personnel, and at the same time increase efficiency in addressing technical issues. In addition, the community would serve as the go-to place for StarHub news updates regarding new handset releases, promotions, cable television show discussions and more. For the ladies, it served as a rallying point to take part in contests and promotions tied in with Lady First Singapore – franchised from Taiwan’s leading lifestyle magazine show. StarHub Community as a whole would stand as a lifestyle hub for the masses. The launch of the Lithium based StarHub Community presented us with the opportunity to develop a whole array of campaigns and activations that strived towards a singular endpoint – to drive brand advocacy. StarHub embarked on an enthusiastic digital marketing programme. The Community gave us the fans and an avenue for us to engage in a meaningful 2-way conversation with them. Further to that however, we were able to tap into their likes and dislikes, problems, issues, challenges and even suggestions to improve our offerings. The wealth of information garnered allowed StarHub as a brand to tailor our marketing strategies to meet, and more importantly match our fans interests – to give them what they want, not what we want to sell. It gave us the ability to: • Roll out Social and Community activations for sponsorships • Develop content based on popular television programmes, translated to offline activities (Social TV) • Perform segment marketing and social sales, e.g. listing a Recontract thread to ask questions and harvest opinions before putting forth a call-to-action for consumers to renew StarHub services • Provide a channel for customers to “self-help”, with crowd-sourced expertise on troubleshooting.   1) Social TV StarHub cable television provides a colourful and energetic tapestry of entertainment that constantly engages with consumers. The proposition for Social TV was to tap into this buzz, taking it offline to drive participation on StarHub Community.   As part of the brand’s 2-year SCRM roadmap, we aimed to promote product and service launches through Social Media. StarHub has gone into production of its own content and StarHub Community was seen as the perfect opportunity to drive exposure and engagement. Lady first Background: At the beginning, it was found that StarHub Community was rife with male-skewed content, e.g. mobile phones, routers, gadgets discussions and more. This campaign was launched to drive females to the site. We sent out emails that led customers to perform a simple survey in order to ascertain interests. We targeted females whose interests included beauty, makeup, fashion, hairstyling and write their own blogs. The survey acted as a filtering process to find legitimate female bloggers. 20 bloggers were then invited to attend a briefing where they received topics and social tasks to share with their followers that in turn led to activities, conversations and buzz on the Community. Results: - 7,143 unique visitors to StarHub Community’s Lady First board - 470 Topics written - 1,274 replies to topics - Out of 20 original bloggers, 5 remain active to this day, close to 1 year after the activation. 2 of them are members of our Sparklers super user group.   The success of the drive to include the female target audience in the conversation prompted the brand to plan for and launch a sequel activation set to take place mid-2014. Link to Winners Announcement post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/Lady-First-Bloggers-Challenge-Winners-Announcement/m-p/36223#M10   Oscars – Predict the Winners Background: The Academy Awards is a big annual event, televised live globally and watched by many in Singapore. In order to ramp the viewership up on the programme further, we decided to tap into the crowd in the Community for their Oscar predictions. The mechanic was simple. Fans needed to submit their predictions for the winners of 4 categories – Best Actor, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. Get them right, and they would stand a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. In just 5 days we received: • 259 Entries (from original target of 5) by 151 participants • 448 votes • 1,700 Likes, 141 Comments and 57 Shares on our Facebook post about the campaign   Check out the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-2014-Oscars/idb-p/2014-Oscars   HITS TV – crowd source for which shows to air next   Best way to make fans happy? Give them what they want. That’s exactly what HITS TV set out to do, by crowdsourcing all-time favourite TV shows that may have ended their runs but which people love and miss. We asked people to submit and vote for the TV shows they’d like HITS to air in the coming months. The idea should fit HITS’s DNA: epic characters, riveting stories, cult following, multiple seasons. Top Prizes: A Samsung GALAXY Tab 3 7.0, vouchers to Resorts World Sentosa, Sephora vouchers In addition to posts on StarHub’s social media platforms, the HITS channel on StarHub TV even ran a TVC promoting the contest: http://youtu.be/09GdqFRdP_Q   Results:   Post on Community http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/CONTEST-ENDED-HITS-Pick-a-TV-show-and-stand-to-win-a-Samsung/m-p/65113   2) Social Sales   Background: To encourage recontracts, customers needed to feel the want to. Social Sales put into place a process to help existing customers make that informed choice during their zero-moment of truth (ZMOT) i.e. the step they take right before they make a purchase. Direct mailers and eDMs were utilized to present a recontract offer that encouraged the customer to head to the Community to ask questions about the offer and get opinions. Community managers on Community then responded to their queries, helping them make the choice to stay with us. This thread garnered 88,000 views.     Posts on Community: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Broadband-Recontract-Offers/StarHub-Broadband-Recontract-offer-HomeHub-and-more/m-p/21994#U21994 http://community.starhub.com/t5/Hubbing/100-Mbps-Cable-and-200-Mbps-Fibre-HomeHub-plans-now-available/td-p/39663 http://community.starhub.com/t5/TV-Recontract-Offer/StarHub-TV-Recontract-Offer/m-p/35619#U35619 3) Segment Engagement Strategy Background: In order to diversify conversation threads and subjects in the Community beyond technology, the brand tapped into the various likes and interests harboured by fans to create and list lifestyle content. This produced two long-term advantages. First, we were able – through the information gathered – develop a knowledge base that gave us an insight into our customers. This would allow us to tailor marketing strategies accordingly. Secondly, with this knowledge at our disposal, we were able to effectively take the conversation to our customers, speak in a language they appreciate, and harvest a meaningful relationship. Food segment – Auspicious dishes Background: StarHub’s Hubalicious - a gastronomic extravaganza that celebrates all things food – is a testament for the brand’s love for food. And since food holds a special place in the hearts of Singaporeans, the opportunity presented itself, to reach out to consumers via gastronomy. StarHub leveraged on the Chinese New Year festivities to invite fans to share their celebrations with food. It was a call for foodies to unite, to showcase home-made treats and dishes. The top-voted entry walked away with a Samsung GALAXY S4 (LTE), while consolation prizes were made up of 8 $50 Resorts World Sentosa vouchers. Results: - 252 unique visitors - 20 entries   View the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/ideas/v2/ideaexchangepage/blog-id/CNY-AuspiciousDishes-Contest/tab/most-kudoed Female segment – Ask the beauty experts and Lady First community activation Lady First didn’t just fulfil our Social TV agenda (above). It also served as a content piece to drive participation from the Female segment. Please refer to the Social TV segment above for results.   Travel Segment - Crowdsourcing of itineraries In conjunction with the year-end holidays, travel plans follow with fervor. StarHub recognized this and tapped into the myriad of vacationers planning their getaways. Through Community, StarHub encouraged members to share their upcoming travel itineraries and get their friends to vote for them. However, no touristy itineraries were allowed. Anyone can head to the Eiffel Tower. Plans shared had to unveil lesser known foreign destinations like jungle trekking in Cambodia and local coffee shops in Vietnam, and more.   3 winners snagged a total of $2,000 Chan Brother Travel Gift Vouchers. (3rd prize: $400, 2nd prize: $600, and 1st prize: $1,000.) Results: - 1,404 unique visitors - 29 entries After the contest ended, we created an Interest Group on StarHub Community with the crowd-sourced travel itineraries so visitors can continue to discuss and share their ideas. http://community.starhub.com/t5/General-Travel-Discussion/bd-p/travel   Elderly segment – Active Ageing Hackathon Phase 1   The StarHub Golden Gurus initiative saw campaigns rolled-out on the Community targeted at including senior citizens in the online conversation. The brand appreciated that seniors often felt left behind and clueless when it came to IT, new media, the internet and the likes. Golden Gurus sought out seniors who were well versed in the intricacies of technology to coerce and train their peers.   The Active Ageing Hackathon paired StarHub Community members with UP Singapore members to bring together experts, researchers, marketers, designers and developers over one weekend from 16 - 18 Aug 2013 to develop prototypes of solutions to improve the lives of our Seniors in Singapore. 2 best ideas clinched a Samsung GALAXY Tab 2 7.0 Tab each.   Results: - 988 unique visitors - 97 entries - 2,305 votes   View the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-Active-Ageing-Hackathon/idb-p/activeageinghackathon   Elderly segment – Active Ageing Hackathon Phase 2   In a follow-up to the submissions from phase 1, we displayed the submitted prototypes on the Community and asked people to vote for their favourite ones on the forum, giving them the power of influence in helping the prototypes become a reality. 10 $50 StarHub vouchers were given away to lucky voters.   Results: - 106 unique visitors - 381 votes   Community post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-Active-Ageing-Hackathon/idb-p/activeageinghackathonphase2   4) Sponsorship - Digital Engagement Strategy Kim Soo Hyun In a typical sponsorship deal where a celebrity is involved, fans rarely get the chance to revel in the thick of the action. StarHub Community however, gives them a unique digital platform where their shared content is logged, consolidated and seen by all – giving them the airtime to unabashedly show off their love for the star. Popular Korean celebrity Kim Soo Hyun commands legions of fans in Singapore. We set out to give his fans an avenue to shout about their adoration by showcasing their “die-hardness”. All they had to do was to get creative with photos, videos and more and the best entries would win a pair of passes to an exclusive fan-meet. Total entries: 60 within just 4 days http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/CONTEST-Get-Your-Wish-Granted-by-Kim-Soo-Hyun/m-p/74663#U74663   For those who had passes in hand, we leveraged the selfie trend to get fans to take creative photos of themselves with ticket stubs for a chance to have Kim Soo Hyun call them on their phone during the event to join him on stage and grant their one wish with him. Total entries: 181 within just 9 days http://community.starhub.com/t5/Get-Your-Wish-Granted-by-Kim-Soo/I-m-a-Ticket-Holder/idip/ 74679#U74679 5) Influencer and Advocacy strategy Among the thousands on StarHub Community, there lies a select few who shine. A select few who spend countless hours on the Community for the sole purpose of helping others – through troubleshooting, moderating conversation threads, and even defending the brand when “bashing” arises. These heroes – influencers and brand advocates - are recognized by the brand and invited to the Sparklers Club.   We put in place a gamification framework identify Community members and advocates and invite them into the Club in order to be groomed as brand guardians.   To encourage this behavior, a value-exchange was set up. As a Sparkler, one would be able to attend get-togethers to meet, greet and share ideas for improving the Community. Sparklers are also regularly engaged for co-creation, ideation and market research, giving them the opportunity to feel like a part of the brand, making the Community a fun and meaningful place to be and contributing to its ultimate growth and success.     Watch this video introducing the Sparklers Club! http://youtu.be/luUmeumI5YQ More info: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Blog/StarHub-Community-welcomes-its-1-000-000th-unique-visitor/ba-p/58529   6) Loyalty strategy StarHub Community Rewards Phase 1   In conjunction with the 1st anniversary of StarHub Community, we partnered with 15 different lifestyle and F&B brands, with exclusive members-only offers. For purposes of the redemption, we created a mobile browser app, from which fans could flash offers to merchants (following a sign-up through Community) in order to enjoy respective perks. Results: - 3,606 participants, 2,547 new SHC members through this app, 434 offers redeemed across the period of 3 months (Oct – Dec 2013) - 11,601 unique visitors, 14,550 visits, 753 StarHub Facebook page likes Jackpot Bonanza   The objective of Jackpot Bonanza was member acquisition. A total of 198 prizes worth $10,000 were up for grabs through a specially designed digital slot machine. Every player was given 10 chances to spin. The catch was this – if they’d run out of chances, they were then required to perform social tasks like tweet, invite friends or sign up on StarHub Community to get extra chances. Results: - 6,205 people played Jackpot Bonanza, 1,752 new SHC registrations - 700 tweets, 1,331 Facebook invites. - 11,502 unique visitors, 21,299 visits     7) Partnership strategy StarHub entered into a partnership with Marina Bay Sands in support of the Annie Leibovitz exhibition. A contest will be launched on 5 May, targeting photography enthusiasts on Community, inviting them to reenact a rendition of selected Leibovitz works. The best photo will win tickets to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at ArtScience Museum and a night’s stay at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel including access to the rooftop infinity pool.

Company: Skype Contact: Claudius Henrichs (Community Manager) Community: Skype Community Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year   Skype is for doing things together, whenever you’re apart. Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.   With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you - on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it. It is free to start using Skype - to speak, see and instant message other people on Skype for example.   Our community goals   Since 2011 the Skype Community is the place for customers and employees to meet and exchange and learn about everything Skype. With topics ranging from technical support through ideation all the way to tips and tricks it’s the place to become a Skype expert.   Our product organization is using community insight to obtain customer lead steering for the next iterations of product and features. A vibrant global community covering 11 languages is crucial to ensure that we understand and prioritize what is driving customers, from the newly registered all the way to the 10+ year superfan. At the same time Skype Community gives customers the opportunity to learn about the people at Skype: What made us come up with a certain feature, how we built it and how we operate to deliver against our mission to be customer obsessed. Our goal for this year was to deliver all of this on an awesome mobile and more personal community experience.   Our unique design elements    Over the course of the last 12 months we have honed in on our strategy to everywhere put our community members and their content first. At the same time since our last redesign in 2014 we have been working closer with our design team to ensure the Skype Community reflects the Skype brand. Skype iconography and design elements You feel right at home at the Skype Community thanks to the familiar buttons, colors and layout elements. Particularly the orange dot as an indicator for unread conversations is what you will find across the community UI: From your personal notifications down to topic level:     Skype avatars and emoticons Everyone loves the Skype emoticons which is why we’ve replaced the Lithium profile avatar collections with a Skype one (which proved to be quite challenging with 3M+ registered accounts already having selected a Lithium avatar):     ...and we did the same for the editor emoticons:   Mobile optimized– Scroll to top & Browse menu   Our responsive design doesn’t only reshuffle widget placements on smaller screen sizes, but we have also put some thought on how you quickly browse within long topics and the community using a dynamic scroll to top and a browse menu: All conveniently placed in reach for your right thumb:       Skype Hovercards Hovercards are getting common at Lithium communities, but we’ve taken them a bit further with small tweaks that visually invite discovering them via subtle avatar zooms when moving the mouse over it. And of course they follow the Skype branding and give a nice showcase for the badge icons:     How we executed our community design   First phase: Inventory & spring cleaning We started with an inventory of all our components – stock and custom ones – per each page and applied a strict triaging following out “members and content first” rule to determine which of them were to be kept. According to that we built up the page layouts. Second phase: Airbrush & Spraypaint We started off from the plain white Lithium responsive base skin and had the developer team apply all the basic styling elements according to the Skype style guideline: Font families and sizes, buttons, boxes, colors. So we weren’t actually working off pixel perfect designs for each page, but invited our design team on to our stage server and have them identify the necessary detailed tweaks (“30px top margins above all panels!”). As an outcome to this within 2 weeks we had a solid basic styling across all primary page layouts. Third phase: Review, Optimize, Rinse & repeat We had then entered the phase of optimizing the interactions on actual devices, so we focused on model devices for each category – mobile, tablet, large screen – and gave the design the necessary fine tune in the following 3-4 weeks. We involved our super fans here to ensure that the new site worked for their everyday flow as much as for the casual visitor. And honestly: We never exited this phase and versioning wise have already reached “Responsive 1.6”    Our results   A few weeks in the new responsive design has shown the following impact: Mobile registration 23% up – across all device sizes up 12% 84% more images uploaded thanks to the new media experience 19% referrer traffic increase Subscriptions up 57% Expected 400-500K unique visitor increase monthly thanks to new responsive community unlocking option for in-client community links on mobile    

Company: Sky UK Contact: Graham Henderson (Community Manager) Community: Sky Community Lithy category:  Excellence in  Customer Satisfaction   Sky is Europe’s leading entertainment company. The group serves 21 million customers across five countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, the UK and Ireland. We offer the best and broadest range of content, deliver market-leading customer service and use innovative new technology to give customers a better TV experience, whenever and wherever they choose.   Our 2015 customer satisfaction initiatives   Community Oracle Programme   At Sky our service message is a simple one; “We want to offer the best service in the country”. The Sky Community was founded in 2010. Since inception we’ve adopted and tested a number of engagement models. At the outset we had a handful of staff and then moved to full service model with over 50 fulltime agents responding to customer posts in the Community. The long-term aim was for the Community to move to a peer to peer model when the user base was high enough. We felt the time was right at the end of 2015 when we had a staggering 1.5 million Community members. We now operate with a peer to peer model with strategic engagement from a team of 5 Community Engagement Specialists and one Community Manager. How can you go from 50 staff to 5 staff overnight while growing a community and out performing business KPI’s like NPS and call deflection? For us, the answer was simple! We had to empower our members by opening our doors and letting them look inside- a real challenge with multiple sites and over 30,000 employees across the UK. We had been running a community Superuser program since 2011 with a relatively small number of members, typically ranging from 8 to 12 members. Despite this small number, these particular members were responsible for creating the best engagement, sharing the best knowledge and generating balanced discussions. We’ve never had a formal Superuser structure in place. No events, no incentives, limited communication and no additional tools. We literally gave them a Superuser badge and said “off you go”. We realized that this had to change!   The most important customer issue we  were looking to solve via our Lithium implementation   We wanted to increase NPS, increase the number of accepted solutions and ultimately deflect calls. We wanted the community to become our customers first port of call, regardless of their interests and levels of digital platform usage. We had already identified our Superusers as the solution, but had to find a way to increase their contribution, offer them more support and grow our Superuser numbers. So what did we do? The first thing we did was listen! We asked our Superusers for feedback and spoke Lithium about best practice. Some of the feedback was great, but much of it was tough to hear. Our conclusion was simple; “we’re letting these members down and need to do more. We’ll never increase NPS or call deflection with this current model”. It was then that the “Oracle” programme was born. We launched in January 2016.   Features of the Oracle Program: Annual event – We introduced an all expenses paid annual event to show them how much we care. For the first time we brought the whole business together using our community. They viewed our product labs, touched Sky Q for the first time, toured our news and sports studios, sat in a McLaren F1 car and met some of our TV presenters.   Our Sky News HQ presenters left the studio to meet our Oracles. (from left to right: Natalie Sawyer (Presenter), Robbie (Oracle), Adam Leventhal (Presenter)   Our Oracles toured Sky studios and many fulfilled a lifetime dream to see and touch a real McLaren Mercedes F1 car.   Annual program that recycles every year. This allows us to keep the program fresh and current. It also allows us the ability to take time out to reward our best members. Incentives – for the first time our best members are rewarded. The annual program allows us to modify and improve the incentives as we learn through data and qualitative feedback. We also invite Oracles to adhoc events, such as the Sky Q press launch. Two Oracles attended and subsequently answered over 90% of all questions related to the product up until launch.   Andrew Olson (Director of New Products) presents Sky Q to the world during our London launch event. Our Oracles were there along with the press and VIP’s.   Quarterly hangouts – We jump on a call every quarter and tell our Oracles about our jobs what we’re working on. We also invite guest speakers from across Sky to answer their questions. They love the techie stuff! Badging- we implemented Lithium gamification and incorporated an Oracle badge to recognise their community contribution. Access to ALL product BETA trials. Our Oracles are the first customers in the UK to use our new products and apps. VIP access to priority customer service line.   Our metrics   After months of work, many late nights and a trip to SKY HQ we had to ask our Oracles for feedback. This is what they said about our first ever Oracle event held at Sky Studios, London:   A few quotes from our Oracles after our first ever oracle event:   “Great day”   “Lovely to see you all there Thank you for a lovely day. “   “It was great meeting you all and sure was a busy day. I’d just like to say a big thank you to all the staff involved in making this day possible, and to those of you who were able to come along”.   “Thanks again to all those there today, thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish”.   The Results   Our NPS rose by 71 points following the introduction of our Oracle programme.   Our accepted solutions more than trebled following the launch of the programme. We asked our Lithium Strategy Consultant to run a short session to explain how to write and structure posts. This was delivered to our Oracles in a fun and interactive session- the results speak for themselves!   Post volumes of Oracles that we invited to the Sky Q VIP launch. Following the event, they became advocates for our new product offering. The red line signifies the Sky Q launch and Sky Q comparison shown in relation to existing TV product..   In summary, we increased our net promoter score (NPS) by 1800%. Increasing accepted solutions by 467% was key to our uplift in NPS. We made solutions easier to find by installing the “featured thread” component and highlighting solutions at the start of all discussion threads- both Lithium features. Inviting Community Oracles to take part in our new product launch resulted in them responding to over 90% of all customer questions within that new product area. In addition, we promoted community blogs via our Twitter help handle by utilizing publisher in LSW. We focused on promoting digital services and Sky Q. This increased blog views by 682%.      

Company: TELUS  Entry submitted by: Scotty Jackson (deturbulence) Sr Strategy Manager Community: TELUS Neighbourhood (forum.telus.com)  Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction    At TELUS, we put customers first – This is underlined by our Customer Declaration.   We're not perfect, but our employees are deeply motivated to consistently delight our customers. We know that getting better means making sure we're listening to you.   That’s why we’re embracing new ideas that will make your TELUS experience better, everyday. We’re on a journey to build on your trust by being clear, helpful and dependable.   In other words, at TELUS, we put you first.   Within TELUS, our social media team plays an important role in bringing our Customer Declaration to life.   In 2010, we started listening and responding to customer mentions of “telus” on Twitter. This was done using our enterprise platform (Radian6) with a very small team of contact centre agents, looking at only our Mobility line of business. As we gained experience and the channel became more active, we found we could not only serve customers, but also exceed their expectations by listening to discussions and engaging.   In 2012, we added additional agents to support Home Services and created more robust processes to enable communication and hand-offs between operations, public relations/corporate communications, and marketing. These processes have evolved into meaningful partnerships, with the business aligning behind common goals of putting our customers first, and having teams that historically did not inter-operate collaborate on a daily basis.   Having established a uniquely agile and cross functional team, we have been able to consistently exceed our client’s expectations. By building relationships through Twitter, Facebook, and our online community, we have increased customer loyalty which is reflected in our 77% Top 2 Box Likelihood to Recommend and 88% Top 2 Box customer satisfaction client survey results.   Screenshot from http://twitter.com/telussupport   As we, from a social service standpoint, were getting more and more involved in delivering customer experience and support through engagement, we found that we needed tools and technologies focused on engagement to suit the needs of this growing channel.   To that end, in the back half of 2012, we undertook an evaluation of a multitude of social tools to not only underpin our engagement and customer experience needs, but also to grow our social capabilities. We selected Lithium Social Web as the best tool for our needs based on routing, case management, tagging, and reporting. These capabilities not only empowered the operational teams to really own social engagement, but also gave them credibility internally.   In early 2013, LSW was implemented, enabling our operational team with clear lines of accountability and responsibility on a case by case basis, also giving us insight to volumes, times, and topics of conversation. Supported by this capability, we opened our historically closed Facebook wall to customer posts, allowing customers another communication channel with TELUS, and in to a sustainable workflow process.   To further our strategy of putting customers first and our goals of delivering strong social experiences, we began work on the TELUS Neighbourhood, a Lithium community, in March of 2013. Launching in June, our community serves as an opportunity to ensure support content does not expire/evaporate as it does on Twitter (due to Twitter’s velocity), as well as to enable the growth of superusers and brand advocates. Further, we can leverage it as a draw to bring social experiences on-domain, closer to self serve capabilities and to shopping.   Screenshot from http://forum.telus.com   Our efforts in the social space have taught us the need to develop people and skillsets directly related to social service. To that end, we are developing a formalized team (outside of the typical contact centre agent pool) with a distinct mandate, learning and development track, and set of success metrics to properly grow and sustain our social service efforts. This team will own all operational activity, and will continue the active collaboration with PR and marketing teams.   As we move in to 2014, we are finding new ways to leverage social insights internally. We are partnered with web teams, as our community activities demonstrate content customers are most hungry for, based on authorship and views, which inform web development and content authoring/promotion. Operational enablement teams are also receiving our feedback and insights to better tune our processes.   Additionally, we are able to springboard off of our community design and internal partnerships to launch TELUS Ideas, providing us yet another stream of insights in to the customer experience, directly from customers. This, coupled with our work to introduce a gamification strategy, continues to unite the organization internally to better hear and serve our customers.   In 2013: Twitter 56k+ engagements Ended year by reaching an average total response time of 25 minutes in Q4 Quality survey results say: If a colleague, friend or family member were looking for services such as home phone, Internet, TV or Wireless, what is the likelihood that you would recommend TELUS to them? 77% Top 2 Box How would you rate the performance of the TELUS social media support agent for the level of service you received? 88% Top 2 Box After your experience with TELUS’ social media support team, how likely are you to share your experience with others? 86% Top 2 Box Facebook 6.3k+ engagements Ended year by reaching an average total response time of 118 minutes in Q4 TELUS Neighbourhood (Lithium Community) June launch 5.6k+ forum posts 1.3k+ Accepted Solutions Estimated 28.7k+ live contacts displaced 11k+ completed registrations, 254k+ logins  

Company: Indosat  Entry submitted by: Ghina Aliya (GhinaAliya) Community Manager, Forum ICITY Community: Forum ICITY (http://icity.indosat.com)  Lithy category: Most Creative Community Promotion or Launch   Indosat Tbk is a leading telecommunication and information service provider in Indonesia that provides cellular of prepaid services (Mentari and IM3) and postpaid services (Matrix), 3G services using HSDPA-technology, fixed data services including Multimedia, Internet & Data Communication Services (MIDI) and fixed voice (fixed telecommunication) services including IDD services and fixed wireless services. PT Indosat Tbk was established by the Indonesian Government on November 20, 1967 and now part of Ooreedoo Group (Formerly Qtel Group).   Our Community promotion goals   Strengthen Indosat commitment towards community as one of key differentiator within the services, on 2012 we became pioneer for telco customer support forum in Indonesia. We launched Forum ICITY (http://icity.indosat.com), The 1 st crowdsolution forum which covers discussion around gadget and technology, Indosat services also community. With the help from Lithium platform, we were able to do crowdsourcing and involve our brand-enthusiast since the early stages. From specify a new name, enrich forum content to design the new community logo ICITY has grown, on March 2015 we has gained more than 20.000 members, more than 115.000 postings, over than 9 million pageviews and 2.500 questions that have received a resolution or answer in the community. These valuable answers have received 2. 431.002 views resulting in direct deflections and support cost savings. Indonesia is at the forefront of the social media revolution in Asia, yet it is an unique market. We need both, online and offline approach to generate community engagement. This is the reason why we need to setup a Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies and one of the effective way to do it is to have an iconic brand activation for promoting ICITY as well as Indosat Community. We decide to have The 1 st Community Festival in Indonesia, with United Souls as the theme on December 13, 2014. Located at Senayan-one of the most hip venue in Jakarta, Indonesia-. We classify interest into zoning. Community members were invited to explore 7 Zones in form of exhibition: Indosat Community, Gadget Communities, Creative Communities, Lifestyle Communities, Automotive Communities, Sport Communities and Enterpreneurs which participate for providing FnB. This event was free of charge for Indosat users while other may register as new subs to join. Our Community promotion strategy   Having passion and close relation with prominent community leaders also key influencers are the initial foundation. Then we run the dynamic duo, synergize between online and offline activities. We involve community representatives since the beginning, from deciding venue layout, what theme will be used, which community will be invited and what kind of activities that interest them the most. The promotion worked in 3 key phases:   Pre-Event Objective: To raise awareness of community members   Online: Teaser through ICITY Forum as the main hub Teaser through ICITY, Indosat and community social media channels/mailing list Teaser through internal communication channel Digital Placement Offline: Promotion through radio quizzes & talkshow Promotion through below the line channels Small meetup with community leaders and key influencers     The Day Objective: To convert awareness into action   Online: Manage digital activation “coin collecting tweets” which convert tweets using hashtag #CommunityFestival2014 to donation for sent unprivileged kids back to school Manage digital activation “live blogging” to encourage bloggers capture #CommunityFestival2014 fanfare Manage digital activation “live posting” to encourage ICITY members reporting #CommunityFestival2014 excitement Offline: Organize community-centric activities: record breaking attempt, community convoy, community battle, community market, we-fie photo competition Invite press to join press conference and watch community performances, such as Duta IM3 (Indosat IM3 Ambassador), Indonesian Zombie Community and Jakarta Cosplayer. Entertain music-fanbase community by presenting Indonesian well-known artist Add interesting gimmick: from community wall of fame, gadget and official jersey auction, freebies to fun games Promotion using radio report & below the line channels   Post Event Objective: To maintain the word of mouth   Online: Publish event report on ICITY Amplify anykind of post related through social media/mailing list Offline: Small meetup with community participants and handover donation   Results of our Community promotion   More than 100 communities join the event to expand their network, discuss further collaboration and enjoy togetherness with friends also other community members.     We have gained 2655 original tweets using #CommunityFestival2014 hastag which convert into donation Rp 26.550.000 for supporting underprivilege kids back to school, collaborate with Coin A Chance Social Movement.     We set a new Indonesian Book of Record (IBOR): Most scooter parked on mall rooftop (Sky Dining, Plaza Semanggi Jakarta). We have gained more than 62.000 views on posts related to Community Festival 2014 on ICITY Forum, 58 million impressions on social media and more coverage coming from blog posts also online media articles.   Our video entry:      

Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer   StarHub Community, together with our social media agency Vocanic, has embarked upon cross-functional collaboration with 10 departments in our organization. Apart from Customer Service and Marketing, we have worked with our Network, Market Research, Marketing, Human Resources, Content and Mobile teams. Through collaboration within our organization, our initiatives have been recognized and we have won industry accolades in Singapore: Best use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) at the Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 and Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver) at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2013. Read the details below.   As Singapore's fully integrated info communications company, StarHub offers a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. With the aim of providing every person, home and business in Singapore with world-class multimedia services and content, StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services, manages an island-wide HFC (Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial) network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services, as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services.   In a bid to further enhance our relationship with customers, it was decided that improving and reinforcing the way we handled customer service, was key. Simply put, the traditional customer service call-centre system needed to be revamped, to take advantage of the power of Social Media. In so doing, StarHub was able to tap into the vast prowess of peer-to-peer support, eliminating the need for customers to call in. The strategy unearthed unlimited potential going beyond customer service to touch on topics relating to Human Resource, Content Marketing, Sponsorship Deals, Marketing Communications and Direct Marketing just to name a few. We have worked with various departments within our organization to run campaigns for their activations. As each department adds StarHub Community to their activity scorecard, we become a vibrant platform that integrates into the different layers of our organization. The results across the board have been phenomenal, with the industry recognizing the value and effectiveness of our Lithium-supported Social Strategy as evident from the following accolades: • Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 – Best Use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) • Marketing Excellence Awards 2013 – Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver)   What were the goals? We wanted to position StarHub as a company that listens, understands, cares for our customers and the Singapore community. At the same time, we acknowledge that endorsements are often regarded to be more credible and objective when they come from third parties that do not have a stake in the business. In creating a new platform, it was crucial that it be instrumental in cultivating brand advocates, where in times of need, users could step in to defend the brand on our behalf from the “bashing” conducted by others. It was to also be a sanctuary for frank opinions, transparency and a hotbed for equipment testing by our loyal customers. Hence, the aim was to create a community managed by consumers, for the consumers and moderated by StarHub. StarHub Community would present a centralized platform for existing customers to turn to should they have any StarHub product or service-related problems. There, they would be able to access to a wealth of user-generated trouble-shooting tips, solutions, general information and more.   In harnessing the community for support, the secondary goals were to reduce budget spent to hire and train call-centre personnel, and at the same time increase efficiency in addressing technical issues. In addition, the community would serve as the go-to place for StarHub news updates regarding new handset releases, promotions, cable television show discussions and more. For the ladies, it served as a rallying point to take part in contests and promotions tied in with Lady First Singapore – franchised from Taiwan’s leading lifestyle magazine show. StarHub Community as a whole would stand as a lifestyle hub for the masses. How has your company incorporated Lithium against those business goals? Cross-functional collaboration with StarHub Community with various departments in our organization: 1. Network dept.: The Network team has a Network feedback app where employees – on the private Employee Board – are asked to give feedback when they encounter data access problems so the Network team can take action to rectify issues. After a successful trial we intend to launch this to the public. This will greatly enhance customer feedback by pinpointing to us areas with network issues which we can then take action on. Link to post (private) http://community.starhub.com/t5/Employee-Network/Help-Us-Improve-Our- Mobile-Network/m-p/52905#U52905   Screenshot of Network post:   2. Market research dept.: Instead of conducting expensive focus groups, we now conduct them through Community and additionally develop long-term relationships with respondents. For confidential projects we use trusted, closed-group advocates for respondents. Link to post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/HomeHub-Survey/CLOSED-HomeHub-Bundle-Survey/m-p/73247#M1   Screenshot of post:   3. Corporate Communications dept.: We work closely with the Corp Comms team to manage crises. StarHub Community is a more positive environment for constructive feedback compared to Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter where customers may slam us. Here, trusted advocates who potentially have StarHub’s interests in mind give us fair and constructive feedback and step in to moderate other users who may troll us. Link to post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Mobile-Plans-and-Rates/RIPOFF-Starhub-will-startcharging-EXTRA-for-4G-from-1-June-2014/td-p/74241/page/5   Screenshot of post:   4. Human Resources dept.: StarHub believes in keeping employees happy and healthy and to show that the company cares, the HR team embarked on a program to deliver to our employees a package of fresh fruit every Friday. We leveraged on this to run a fun employee photo contest called the Juicy Smile contest. We asked employees to "flash your juiciest smile with the fruit of the day,” take a photo and upload it on the Contest page on the private Employee board on StarHub Community. The top 3 best smiles were rewarded with a $50 shopping voucher each. We previously tried other platforms to engage employees but these had little participation because employees could not access these platforms at home. Community however, is on the cloud and has an easy user interface, encouraging employee participation. Link to post (private board): http://community.starhub.com/t5/Employee-Hot-Topics/Juicy-Smile-Contest/m-p/70947#U70947   Some of our employees' entries:   5. Segment marketing dept.: Segment marketing used to be once-off tactical events but with the Community we can build long term engagement and sustainable interest groups for various segments Here are some of our successful segment marketing campaigns: Food segment – Auspicious dishes Background: StarHub’s Hubalicious - a gastronomic extravaganza that celebrates all things food – is a testament for the brand’s love for food. And since food holds a special place in the hearts of Singaporeans, the opportunity presented itself, to reach out to consumers via gastronomy. StarHub leveraged on the Chinese New Year festivities to invite fans to share their celebrations with food. It was a call for foodies to unite, to showcase home-made treats and dishes. The top-voted entry walked away with a Samsung GALAXY S4 (LTE), while consolation prizes were made up of 8 $50 Resorts World Sentosa vouchers. Results: - 252 unique visitors - 20 entries View the entries here : http://community.starhub.com/t5/ideas/v2/ideaexchangepage/blog-id/CNY-AuspiciousDishes-Contest/tab/most-kudoed   Screenshot of entry:    Female segment – Lady First Background: At the beginning, it was found that StarHub Community was rife with male-skewed content, e.g. mobile phones, routers, gadgets discussions and more. This campaign was launched to drive females to the site. We sent out emails that led customers to perform a simple survey in order to ascertain interests. We targeted females whose interests included beauty, makeup, fashion, hairstyling and write their own blogs. The survey acted as a filtering process to find legitimate female bloggers. 20 bloggers were then invited to attend a briefing where they received topics and social tasks to share with their followers that in turn led to activities, conversations and buzz on the Community. Results: - 7,143 unique visitors to StarHub Community’s Lady First board - 470 Topics written - 1,274 replies to topics - Out of 20 original bloggers, 5 remain active to this day, close to 1 year after the activation. 2 of them are members of our Sparklers super user group. The success of the drive to include the female target audience in the conversation prompted the brand to plan for and launch a sequel activation set to take place mid-2014. Link to Winners Announcement post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/Lady-First-Bloggers-Challenge-Winners-Announcement/m-p/36223#M10 Screenshot of winning bloggers:     Travel Segment - Crowdsourcing of itineraries In conjunction with the year-end holidays, travel plans follow with fervor. StarHub recognized this and tapped into the myriad of vacationers planning their getaways. Through Community, StarHub encouraged members to share their upcoming travel itineraries and get their friends to vote for them. However, no touristy itineraries were allowed. Anyone can head to the Eiffel Tower. Plans shared had to unveil lesser known foreign destinations like jungle trekking in Cambodia and local coffee shops in Vietnam, and more. 3 winners snagged a total of $2,000 Chan Brother Travel Gift Vouchers. (3rd prize: $400, 2nd prize: $600, and 1st prize: $1,000.) Results: - 1,404 unique visitors - 29 entries After the contest ended, we created an Interest Group on StarHub Community with the crowdsourced travel itineraries so visitors can continue to discuss and share their ideas.  http://community.starhub.com/t5/General-Travel-Discussion/bd-p/travel   Creatives for Travel Segment Engagement campaign:     Elderly segment – Active Ageing Hackathon Phase 1 The StarHub Golden Gurus initiative saw campaigns rolled-out on the Community targeted at including senior citizens in the online conversation. The brand appreciated that seniors often felt left behind and clueless when it came to IT, new media, the internet and the likes. Golden Gurus sought out seniors who were well versed in the intricacies of technology to coerce and train their peers. The Active Ageing Hackathon paired StarHub Community members with UP Singapore members to bring together experts, researchers, marketers, designers and developers over one weekend from 16 - 18 Aug 2013 to develop prototypes of solutions to improve the lives of our Seniors in Singapore. 2 best ideas clinched a Samsung GALAXY Tab 2 7.0 Tab each. Results: - 988 unique visitors - 97 entries - 2,305 votes   View the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-Active-Ageing-Hackathon/idb-p/activeageinghackathon 6. Content Marketing Dept: The StarHub Community platform allows us to hold creative contests e.g. crowdsourcing Instagram photos and your favourite TV shows which is more fun than other platforms. This contributes positively to our SEO as content is crowd-sourced, easily searchable and more engaging. Oscars – Predict the Winners Background: The Academy Awards is a big annual event, televised live globally and watched by many in Singapore. In order to ramp the viewership up on the programme further, we decided to tap into the crowd in the Community for their Oscar predictions. The mechanic was simple. Fans needed to submit their predictions for the winners of 4 categories – Best Actor, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. Get them right, and they would stand a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. In just 5 days we received:   • 259 Entries (from original target of 5) by 151 participants • 448 votes • 1,700 Likes, 141 Comments and 57 Shares on our Facebook post about the campaign   Check out the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-2014-Oscars/idb-p/2014-Oscars   Screenshot of contest:   HITS TV – crowd source for which shows to air next   Best way to make fans happy? Give them what they want. That’s exactly what HITS TV set out to do, by crowdsourcing all-time favourite TV shows that may have ended their runs but which people love and miss. We asked people to submit and vote for the TV shows they’d like HITS to air in the coming months. The idea should fit HITS’s DNA: epic characters, riveting stories, cult following, multiple seasons. Top Prizes: A Samsung GALAXY Tab 3 7.0, vouchers to Resorts World Sentosa, Sephora vouchers In addition to posts on StarHub’s social media platforms, the HITS channel on StarHub TV even ran a TVC promoting the contest: http://youtu.be/09GdqFRdP_Q   Results:    Post on Community: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/CONTEST-ENDED-HITSPick- a-TV-show-and-stand-to-win-a-Samsung/m-p/65113 7. Product Marketing Dept: Through our sponsorship of celebrities like Korean TV actor Kim Soo Hyun, we have run a StarHub Community pull-down campaign. In a typical sponsorship deal where a celebrity is involved, fans rarely get the chance to revel in the thick of the action. StarHub Community however, gives them a unique digital platform where their shared content is logged, consolidated and seen by all – giving them the airtime to unabashedly show off their love for the star. Popular Korean celebrity Kim Soo Hyun commands legions of fans in Singapore. We set out to give his fans an avenue to shout about their adoration by showcasing their “die-hardness”. All they had to do was to get creative with photos, videos and more and the best entries would win a pair of passes to an exclusive fan-meet. Total entries: 60 within just 4 days http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/CONTEST-Get-Your-Wish-Granted-by-Kim-Soo-Hyun/m-p/74663#U74663   For those who had passes in hand, we leveraged the selfie trend to get fans to take creative photos of themselves with ticket stubs for a chance to have Kim Soo Hyun call them on their phone during the event to join him on stage and grant their one wish with him. Total entries: 181 within just 9 days http://community.starhub.com/t5/Get-Your-Wish-Granted-by-Kim-Soo/I-m-a-Ticket-Holder/idi-p/74679#U74679 Promo Banner:   8. Mobile dept.: Reviews of latest Mobile phones on the market. We harness reviews from the crowd, bloggers and employees on a common platform that was previously not possible.   Blog link: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Mobile-Handset-Reviews/bg-p/MobileHandsetReviews   Blog screenshot:     9. Cross-bundling & Recontracting dept.: HomeHub & Recontract bits. Previously, ATL and BTLs were one-way communications which did not allow us to control the flow of information to customers searching for details on recontract promotions. With Community, we have put into place a process to help existing customers make that informed choice during their zero-moment of truth (ZMOT) i.e. the step they take right before they make a purchase. Customers can read the discussions and questions by others, ask questions and obtain answers from the Community as well as the Community Managers. Posts on Community: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Broadband-Recontract-Offers/StarHub-Broadband-Recontractoffer-HomeHub-and-more/m-p/21994#U21994 http://community.starhub.com/t5/Hubbing/100-Mbps-Cable-and-200-Mbps-Fibre-HomeHub-plansnow-available/td-p/39663 http://community.starhub.com/t5/TV-Recontract-Offer/StarHub-TV-Recontract-Offer/m-p/35619#U35619     10. Customer Service dept.: We work with the CS team to create articles for The Knowledge Base (TKB) on StarHub Community. We also feature How-To videos available on StarHub's YouTube channel. The CS team then direct people with queries to these resources for answers and discussions on solutions. This reduces reliance on call-centre personnel. TKB: 100,000 views over 55 articles How-To Videos: 29,360 views One of our articles on TKB:   Categories on our Knowledge Base:     Screenshot & Link of one of our How-To videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhlUa3zn034    

Company: Petco Contact: Melanie Morrill (Mgr, Social Media and Content) Community: Petco Community Lithy category:  Total Community All Star    With more than 50 years of service to pet parents, Petco is a leading pet specialty retailer that focuses on nurturing powerful relationships between people and pets. We do this by providing the products, services, advice and experiences that keep pets physically fit, mentally alert, socially engaged and emotionally happy.   Our road to Lithium   Having pets undoubtedly means having questions about pet care. As a leading pet care retailer, Petco understands that pet parents often turn to online search first when they have questions, but also that the internet is fraught with misinformation about proper animal care. The concept of a Petco owned community was born out a clear need for expertly crafted and reviewed content that is based on years of animal care experience and knowledge.   In 2012, after careful review and consideration, we chose Lithium as our platform provider and launched the first iteration of the Petco Community, called “Pet Talk Place.” Our goal was to live our brand values and realize our vision of being the “trusted source” for pet parents. In order to realize this goal, we needed a best in class platform that would allow us to connect with our customers, and connect our customers with each other—ultimately driving down customer service costs by providing a space for self-serve resolutions.   Despite fantastic results in the first few months following the launch of Pet Talk Place, we realized that we had run out of things to talk about, and there was growing need for fresh and relevant content. At the same time, we noticed a shift in customer expectations in terms of responsiveness. People wanted more content, and they wanted it fast. To address both of these issues, we implemented LSW in 2013. With LSW, we now have access to questions that are top of mind for our customers, and can determine the priority in which those questions need to be addressed based on frequency and influence of the person posting the question. We create at least five unique pieces of content each week, spanning all pet categories.   The benefits of having both Community and LSW   In 2012, we decided that if we were to going to successfully fulfill our goal of being the “most trusted source” for pet parents, we needed a clear digital customer experience strategy to help us shift from talking at our customers, to actively participating in conversations our customers wanted to have. In order to do this, we set out to rethink our approach and start with the basics—discover pet parent needs, put a plan in place to address those needs, execute based on those needs and then continue to reassess and build on our successes. The Lithium community platform—in conjunction with LSW—is what allows us to execute against that strategy.   The Petco Community combines expert information with peer-to-peer advice for a comprehensive site that provides blog content, forums, lead-generation contests and a unique knowledge base, each serving the range of pet verticals. LSW allows us to share community content with members, associates and prospective customers quickly and consistently. Having both tools means we are able to serve our customers wherever they are in the social web, on their terms, and in a consistent manner.   The enhanced reporting functionality offered by LSW not only enables us to better share our customer care story with leadership, it provides a more sophisticated reporting structure that demonstrates our support of the KPIs our social teams were goaled to achieve.   Our results   In short, with a Total Community approach, we have managed to meet digital customer expectations tenfold. One of our finest accomplishments this year was earning the “Facebook Responsive Badge” before any of our competitors, and before any other retailer, making us best in class in terms of social customer support. This means we are responding to 90% of our customers within five minutes of contact. To put that into perspective, four years ago, our average response time was 16 hours. Needless to say, our gains in efficiency have allowed us to respond to three times the volume of comments and questions, in a shorter time and in a manner that allowed us to build on each learning in the form of meaningful content.   Strong content and participation in our community has resulted in tremendous improvements year over year in terms of community health and traffic.   Community Health:   Average CHI score 2013 Average CHI score 2014 Average CHI score 2015 441 464 523   Traffic Totals for FY15: 62% increase YOY Total Page Views: 3,942,000 (FY14: 2,430,000) 68% increase YOY Visits: 2,852,000 (FY14: 1,702,000) 65% increase YOY Unique visitors: 2,533,000 (FY14: 1,538,000) 28% increase YOY Total Registered Member: 15,008 (FY14: 11,726) 22% increase YOY Completed registrations: 3,282 (FY14: 2,685)   An unexpected benefit from all of the content we have created for the community came in the form of efficiency in our social and digital ad spend thanks to pixels that allow us to retarget users with relevant promotions and sales that are based on content consumption behaviors. Our overall Facebook spend per ad has decreased by 60%, thanks to these efficiencies.

Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   StarHub Community, together with our social media agency Vocanic has worked to build a platform which is managed by consumers, contains info relevant to consumers and is moderated by StarHub. Visitors post their questions and topic experts from among our members step in to respond, thereby setting the scene for peer-to-peer support. Understanding that advocacy is the highest order in social media marketing, we have also built a team of super users – the Sparklers Club – who spend countless hours on the site for the sole purpose of helping others through troubleshooting, moderating conversation threads, and even defending the brand when “bashing” arises. Our initiatives have been recognized and we have won industry accolades in Singapore: Best use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) at the Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 and Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver) at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2013. Read the details below.   Customer sentiments have changed, leading to a growing preference for peer-to-peer over topdown customer-service assistance. With social media usage on the rise, it became easier for consumers to engage with their favourite brands, and in so doing sought to be a part of the brand’s activities – to have their voice heard.   Advocacy is the highest order in social media marketing but the brand had yet to explore the maximum potential of these advocates with the proper social media tools and platforms. We want to position StarHub as a company that listens, understands, and cares for our customers and the Singapore community. At the same time, we acknowledge that endorsements are often regarded to be more credible and objective when they come from third parties that do not have a stake in the business. In creating a new platform, it was crucial that it be instrumental in cultivating brand advocates, where in times of need, users could step in to defend the brand on our behalf from the “bashing” conducted by others. It was to also be a sanctuary for frank opinions, transparency and a hotbed for equipment testing by our loyal customers. Hence, the aim was to create a community managed by consumers, for the consumers and moderated by StarHub – functioning as a lifestyle hub for the masses. We required a platform that harnessed advocacy through positive customer support experience – thus, converting detractors to advocates.   StarHub’s social media strategy has always focused on engaging customers across all social media channels, hence establishing a dynamic social brand presence on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and occupies spaces on LinkedIn and YouTube. However, we found that a more intimate approach was needed to complement StarHub’s social efforts and amplify engagement with present and potential customers — to handle their issues individually and to foster communication between customers. While social platforms like Facebook and Twitter were excellent tools that encouraged brand to fan conversations, StarHub wanted a platform that specifically enabled consumers to talk to each other, and found that a forum-styled platform was the way to go.   StarHub Community was rolled out over a series of phases. The first phase from concept to integration took two months, including design, development, testing and debugging. It was also important that before launch, to ensure that the tone of the site was right: a strategy was mapped out to define the right tone, and approach, ensuring that this was a friendly place for consumers to raise their questions and/or offer their own solutions to others. As consumers today are heavily reliant on info-communications, StarHub and its counterparts in Singapore receive the most flak on social media, so StarHub's customer service team was roped in to manage customer complaints and guide complainants towards an understanding that the site was not a forum for complaints, but a place for a community to grow and learn together with a strong support from the brand itself. We then moved to identify and select topics that were frequently discussed on StarHub's social media platforms. This pre-populated the Community as a searchable FAQ bank. StarHub Community was launched with these initial content pieces. Once the site was launched, various marketing activities were carried out to create awareness, educate and drive registrations on the site. Every week, we created and managed wall posts on StarHub's two Facebook pages and two Twitter accounts to create awareness about the site among our existing fan base. To boost visibility and reach, Facebook ads were created from these wall posts to get more eyeballs amongst Facebook fans as well as interactions on our Wall posts that included comments, likes and shares. With our member base, we kicked off the influencer identification and activation phase. The objective was to get as many influential online personalities as possible to spread the word about StarHub Community and invite their fans and followers to visit the site. For this phase, we employed the theory of the 1-9-90 rule. 90% of the people on the site are consumers of content but did not participate much in discussions. 9% are people who consume content and also interact with it, for example sharing the content with their own networks and contributing their opinions. 1% of the people are very active on the site, contributing articles, blog write-ups, helping others solve their problems. We worked to identify and activate the 9%, to drive them into the 1% bracket. We invited these people first to contribute on the site and later created events so we could personally meet them, show our appreciation for them and invite them to help StarHub further strengthen the Community with their recommendations. One of these events was graced by StarHub's Heads of Customer Service and Marketing. Their presence further solidified the influencers' convictions that StarHub is indeed committed to listening to the public. The launch strategy was executed in a straightforward, two-phase process. Phase 1 – Establishing content: We began by populating the forums with existing articles like phone reviews, tech trends, general FAQs as well as information on all StarHub products and services.   Phase 2 – Creating awareness and recruitment: To drive visitors to the site to sample the content, we ideated and executed a contest hosted on a Facebook application, where participants had to register as a member of the community first before taking part. The mechanics were such that they had to search for an answer to a question that could only be found on StarHub Community. Prizes included a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and movie tickets. We also leveraged on existing fans on the StarHub Facebook to grow the user base on StarHub Community. One example of how this was carried out was to post a summarized review about a particular mobile handset on Facebook, and then encourage the reader to proceed to the Community for the full article. In addition, we tapped on existing databases collated from sales of products, for example, the iPhone. From there, we encouraged customers to log onto the Community to provide reviews on their handset. We also conducted a recruitment drive among our staff, inviting them to act as conversation starters and subject matter experts to address customer enquiries. StarHub Community boasts multiple access touch-points, which means that we were able to garner traffic across a multitude of channels that ranged from YouTube to monthly newsletters, over and above Facebook and Twitter. An application on Facebook was created to allow fans to have a taste of StarHub Community, by providing a “lite” version where they could have their account- or product/service-related questions answered. If they were keen to find out more, all they had to do was crossover to our brand new community. This encouraged users to find answers to their StarHub-related questions themselves instead of approaching our call centres or Shops. To continue the drive for awareness as well as recruitment, we staged regular contests during popular occasions such as Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year. The contests required submission of entries on StarHub Community. We also reached out to our senior and less technologically proficient customers via the Golden Gurus campaign. The aim was to get them involved in conversations that would answer questions they may have had about technology in general. We appointed eight tech-savvy senior citizens aged between 58 and 77, who stood as information technology (IT) champions for their peers. Acting as StarHub’s ambassadors, they were committed to giving back to society by imparting IT knowledge to other seniors using the Community portal. Our Active Ageing Hackathon showcased a contest to develop mobile apps that can and will enrich the lives of the elderly. For this, StarHub Community acts as the main platform for the call to action as well as idea submissions. In addition we have invited our Golden Gurus to mentor at workshops to educate contestants on what types of services and apps an older person might benefit. Active Ageing Hackathon Phase 1 : The StarHub Golden Gurus initiative saw campaigns rolled-out on the Community targeted at including senior citizens in the online conversation. The brand appreciated that seniors often felt left behind and clueless when it came to IT, new media, the internet and the likes. Golden Gurus sought out seniors who were well versed in the intricacies of technology to coerce and train their peers. The Active Ageing Hackathon paired StarHub Community members with UP Singapore members to bring together experts, researchers, marketers, designers and developers over one weekend from 16 - 18 Aug 2013 to develop prototypes of solutions to improve the lives of our Seniors in Singapore. 2 best ideas clinched a Samsung GALAXY Tab 2 7.0 Tab each. Results: - 988 unique visitors - 97 entries - 2,305 votes   View the entries here: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-Active-Ageing-Hackathon/idb-p/activeageinghackathon   Elderly segment – Active Ageing Hackathon Phase 2 : In a follow-up to the submissions from phase 1, we displayed the submitted prototypes on the Community and asked people to vote for their favourite ones on the forum, giving them the power of influence in helping the prototypes become a reality. Ten $50 StarHub vouchers were given away to lucky voters. Results: - 106 unique visitors - 381 votes Community post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Closed-Active-Ageing-Hackathon/idb-p/activeageinghackathonphase2   To engage our female audience, we leveraged on the popular lifestyle magazine show Lady First Singapore, which was localised from a Taiwan format and produced by StarHub. We engaged a targeted group of our influencers and advocates to begin seeding beauty-related content on topics such as skincare, fashion and make-up on StarHub Community. This, along with discussion generated about each episode of the programme, effectively sparked an influx of female chatter on the community. This successfully integrated online and offline engagement activities, thereby extending the “Lady First Singapore” experience beyond the traditional TV screen for its customers.   We sent out emails that led customers to perform a simple survey in order to ascertain interests.   We targeted females whose interests included beauty, makeup, fashion, hairstyling and write their own blogs. The survey acted as a filtering process to find legitimate female bloggers. 20 bloggers were then invited to attend a briefing where they received topics and social tasks to share with their followers that in turn led to activities, conversations and buzz on the Community.   Visit this link for a video of the event: http://community.starhub.com/t5/What-s-New/StarHub-Community-s-first-offline-event-Meeting-up-with-the/m-p/26076#U26076   Lady First Campaign Results: - 7,143 unique visitors to StarHub Community’s Lady First board - 470 Topics written - 1,274 replies to topics - Out of 20 original bloggers, 5 remain active to this day, close to 1 year after the activation. 2 of them are members of our Sparklers super user group. The success of the drive to include the female target audience in the conversation prompted the brand to plan for and launch a sequel activation set to take place mid-2014. Link to Winners Announcement post: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Announcements/Lady-First-Bloggers-Challenge-Winners-Announcement/m-p/36223#M10   Screenshot of winning bloggers:   We organised an event to strengthen ties between users, and more importantly between StarHub and our advocates. Among the thousands on StarHub Community, there lies a select few who shine. A select few who spend countless hours on the Community for the sole purpose of helping others – through troubleshooting, moderating conversation threads, and even defending the brand when “bashing” arises. These heroes – influencers and brand advocates - are recognized by the brand and invited to the Sparklers Club.   We put in place a gamification framework identify Community members and advocates and invite them into the Club in order to be groomed as brand guardians. To encourage this behavior, a value-exchange was set up. As a Sparkler, one would be able to attend get-togethers to meet, greet and share ideas for improving the Community. Sparklers are also regularly engaged for co-creation, ideation and market research, giving them the opportunity to feel like a part of the brand, making the Community a fun and meaningful place to be and contributing to its ultimate growth and success.     Watch this video introducing the Sparklers Club! http://youtu.be/luUmeumI5YQ Visit this link for a video and recap of the 2014 event: http://community.starhub.com/t5/What-s-New/Sparklers-Club-Gathering-2014/m-p/72923#M83   In 2013, we won these local marketing awards: • Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2013 – Best Use of Brand Advocacy (Gold) • Marketing Excellence Awards 2013 – Excellence in Loyalty Marketing (Silver)   In January 2014, we hit our one millionth unique visitor. We recognized and acknowledged our top super users:   Members of our community have commended our Community managers:   Our members were surveyed for feedback on the Community and this is what they had to say:   Visit this link for the infographic and full story: http://community.starhub.com/t5/StarHub-Community-Blog/StarHub-Community-welcomes-its-1-000-000th-unique-visitor/ba-p/58529 We also work with the Customer Service team to create articles for The Knowledge Base (TKB) on StarHub Community. We also feature How-To videos available on StarHub's YouTube channel. The CS team then direct people with queries to these resources for answers and discussions on solutions. This reduces reliance on call-centre personnel. TKB: 100,000 views over 55 articles How-To Videos: 29,360 views   One of our articles on TKB:   Categories on our Knowledge Base:       Screenshot & Link of one of our How-To videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhlUa3zn034