Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: Cortol Consors  Entry submitted by: Clemens Eckstein (CCornerstone) Senior Expert eBusiness Community: Die Wissenscommunity von Cortal Consors (https://wissen.cortalconsors.de) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   ... See more...
Company: Cortol Consors  Entry submitted by: Clemens Eckstein (CCornerstone) Senior Expert eBusiness Community: Die Wissenscommunity von Cortal Consors (https://wissen.cortalconsors.de) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   Cortal Consors is a leading direct bank for investment: from trading to long term savings.   With sustainable innovations and a modern interpretation of banking services.   Our mission statement – what is our attitude? As a leading direct bank for private investment, we liberate our clients from the restrictions of classical German banks.   We empower them to self-directed financial independence with all the support the client demands. Our know-how, our ability to innovate, the independence of our product offerings, and our unique passion are what drives us.   »Cortal Consors is the first address for self-directed investment.« Our Business Goals -       Financial Empowerment of Banking Customers -       Transparency and Trustworthy Relationship with Customers -       Innovation leader   The Lithium software builds the foundation for the three business goals described above.   Financial Empowerment:   Using the Tribal Knowledge Base we have the perfect platform for building and gathering trusted content.   The Forum offers real and up to date help for customers and place to discuss about financial markets. Since many long-term customers have gathered significant knowledge and experience in a wide array of banking topics the community allows us to tap this resource.   The Blog is another way for us to provide well-founded education to our banking clientele.   Transparency and Trustworthy Relationship:   Next to our presence in the forum and blog where we able to answer the questions of our customers we also provide the possibility to rate & review our products and services as one of the first banks in Europe.   This is a bold move for us since it puts great power in the hands of our customers. By allowing this open and public feedback from existing customers on our own platform we provide absolute transparency on our strength and weaknesses. The strong integration of our customer support in case of bad reviews allows us also to communicate, solve issues and build up a trustworthy relationshop.    Our Business Results:   As it's only been 1 1/2 months, we are still undertaking the first steps. However, below you'll find some KPIs which already show significant improvement in comparison to our old “Knowledge” area.      Most Creative Promotion or Launch (Video Entry):   The promotional video -       Array of possibilities within the community (Community, Wiki, R&Rs,…) -       The development of a newbie to successful investment -       Social interaction   Together we know more – The new Cortal Consors Websection Knowledge   No matter if beginner or professional: The new Cortal Consors Websection Knowledge gives customers a voice. It provides a platform to communicate and supports its users to make the best financial decision. The new Websection Knowledge is supposed to address a wide target group. Every user should be able to help others with their expertise or can ask for help – there are no stupid questions.It´s important that users have fun to exchange their knowledge and that they are empowered to push their financial concerns further.   We want to convey all these contents in an easy, comprehendible and entertaining way. This is why we transport our message with moving images.   Our storytelling focuses on personal stories because its more emotional and less educational. The idea is to show by means of a personal success story how the Websection Knowledge works. Furthermore it boosts the attention and also the capacity for remembering.   The concept "Open Kitchen" is based on the idea that cooking brings people together: beginners learn from professionals, ideas are exchanged, like-minded persons get together, people support each other. We think: This is what the Websection Knowledge stands for and this is why we chose it to build the frame of our storyboard.   View our video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0gAUDIIf5w&feature=youtu.be      
Company: EE  Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)  Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer     Organization Game Changer: Triage   As part of ou... See more...
Company: EE  Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)  Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer     Organization Game Changer: Triage   As part of our drive to become #1 for Service in our sector we recognized a need to make a step change in our social support experience. While our EE Community plays a big part of that step change, we recognized the need to take a step back and operate differently.   Since launching our various social web presences we have suffered from an inefficient, unscalable social support operation. This was leading to response times in excess of 24hrs. This was causing considerable negative sentiment within social, and as a result was unsustainable.   We developed the concept of a triage to be the first point of contact for social customers and direct them to the appropriate destination for their query. The destinations included Digital (to support a wider organizational ambition around driving adoption of self service), Community (to support the Community Strategy), Executive Office (for serious complaints/issues), Brand (for marketing engagement) and Press (for media/journalist queries). We also implemented an escalation to ‘click to chat’ to allow account specific (private) conversations to happen between support agents and customer.   This triage concept would take the operational burden off frontline Customer Service agents (and free them up to deliver their core skills).   The goal was to deliver an efficient, scalable operation that opened up customer interactions to the relevant parts of the business responsible for the interaction. Since we have implemented this new way of working we have seen very dramatic results. Average response time decrease from >24hrs to <1hr Real-time interactions for marketing Real-time interactions for Press (on media interesting topics) LSW has enabled us to bring to reality our triage concept. We have tried a number of social interaction tools, most of which are aimed solely at a support/contact centre environment. LSW is helping break down organizational silo’s/barriers and allowing front line support agents and head office marketers to collaborate and share the social customer experience seamlessly.   Through clear direction setting, shared purpose and determination we have developed a customer experience that changed our customers experience overnight. Whilst simple, it is proving to be a very effective method of providing a completely new social customer experience, much more akin to customer expectations.   Through the implementation of the social triage we have seen: Dramatic reduction in the time to respond to customer interactions – Time to respond has dropped by 95% Average Agent Handle Time for Social Interaction down by 8% Reduction in inbound customer service support calls Reduced level of operational cost (numbers confidential)       Organization Game Changer- SocialHub   As part of our launch of a completely new brand in the UK market we set a very clear ambition to deliver the Best Network, Best Service, so customers trust us with their digital lives. This nod to the changing expectations of consumers, and the prevalence of digital within the customer experience. As part of this ambition we developed the ‘Social Hub’. The ambition was to create a capability that provides the organization with real-time social insight, to enable us to act faster and act smarter. This physical focal point for social within the organization, not only tracks real-time social conversations, but turns that into actionable insight for the business, from customer services to marketing to press and product development, the insights we gather and provide are acting as a catalyst to enable the organization to work better.   We see Lithium Community and Social Web as fundamental tools to enable us to manage our social conversations, the tools empower staff from across the organization to engage with customers in a manner never before seen.   The Social Hub has fundamentally changed how we operate as an organization. Whether it is from a large product launch to crisis management, the Hub provides physical (and virtual) orchestration of the social experience. Bringing together Digital, Brand, Marketing, CS, Legal and Press teams in a highly efficient, factually informed manner to make timely business decisions.   Watch our video about the EE Social Hub: http://vimeo.com/63160747   Through the orchestration of the social experience we have seen a significant cultural change in how social is managed, with historically disparate departments now working collaboratively on the entire social customer experience.  
Company: CommSec  Entry submitted by: Ben Shute (Benshute) Manager, Social Business & Emerging Channels Community: CommSec Community (Commsec.com.au) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator   CommSec is Australia’s leading online trad... See more...
Company: CommSec  Entry submitted by: Ben Shute (Benshute) Manager, Social Business & Emerging Channels Community: CommSec Community (Commsec.com.au) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator   CommSec is Australia’s leading online trading platform and a subsidiary of Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank. We introduced CommSec Community in May 2013.   CommSec Community’s goal is simple - to be the largest active investor community in Australia. As a business, we recognized the potential to create a vibrant community where investors and traders can discuss trading strategies and ideas, and a place where  those new to trading could learn from each other and feel free to ask questions about entering the market.    Building on the out of the box Lithium platform, we introduced a number of customizations at launch, including:   Automatic Board Assignment   To facilitate a breadth of discussion, our Community has been divided up into a range of boards, including general markets, charting, sections for new and advanced traders and sector specific boards to discuss individual stocks.   To make it easy for users to find the right boards, we created a stock code field in the new post pages which automatically assigns the best board for a post, and turns the stock code into a tag automatically.     Most discussed Stocks   The automatic assignment of a stock code to a tag helps us drive the Most Discussed Stock module that runs across various parts of the site and allows users to get an insight into the stock discussions that are trending over the past 5 days (this time period was set at a period dictated by the community).   This is presented at a Community wide level on general pages and the Community homepage, and at a sector specific level on board relating to areas such as materials and tech stocks.     Stock Sentiment   A further enhancement to the post creation page is the ability to add a sentiment towards a particular stock. This is built on conditional logic, and will only appear if a stock code is added. Users can select one of 5 types of sentiment – buy, accumulate, hold, reduce, sell – depending on their opinion of the stock at that particular time.   We then add this aggregated sentiment to the most discussed stocks to give a rounded picture of the Community’s activity and discussions.     Live Stock Pricing   We have also integrated the ability to buy and sell directly from the discussions.   At the top of stock specific discussions, we have included live pricing information about the stock, covering current price, change, bid and offer, 52 week high and low and volume. From there we offer users the ability to add a stock to their watchlist and alerts, get a detailed quote, as well as buy and sell.       We see the Community as an important piece of the overall research customers should do in deciding what stocks to purchase.   We have integrated the ability to interact with Community from a number of our key areas of the site.   Watchlists:    Quotes and Research:      In the first 12 months, the CommSec Community now has over 10,000 registered users having made nearly 50,000 posts, and another 8,000 active guests who return each week to read the content.   We have seen in excess of 13,500 trading actions commenced from Community – either addition of stocks to watchlists, or quotes, and over 3,000 trades placed via the platform.  
Company: Constant Contact  Entry submitted by: Rosalind Morville/CTCT Community Team (rosmorville) Senior Manager, Community and Social Support Community: Constant Contact (https://community.constantcontact.com/) Lithy category: Lithium Plat... See more...
Company: Constant Contact  Entry submitted by: Rosalind Morville/CTCT Community Team (rosmorville) Senior Manager, Community and Social Support Community: Constant Contact (https://community.constantcontact.com/) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator   Constant Contact®, Inc. wrote the book on Engagement Marketing™ — the new marketing success formula that helps small organizations create and grow customer relationships in today’s socially connected world. Through its unique combination of online marketing tools and free personalized coaching, Constant Contact helps small businesses, associations, and nonprofits connect and engage with their next great customer, client, or member. Launched in 1998, Constant Contact has long championed the needs of small organizations, providing them with an easy and affordable way to create and build successful, lasting customer relationships.   Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Constant Contact also has offices in Loveland, CO; Delray Beach, FL; San Francisco, CA; New York, NY and London, England. Constant Contact has been honored with numerous industry accolades and has ranked on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 for five years running, most recently at number 179.   In 2013, the company continued to make significant product improvements across our offering of online marketing tools. Knowing that change can be difficult and feedback can only make our products stronger, we needed a way to harness our valuable customer feedback without incurring significant cost or introducing a new technology to monitor. We wanted the feedback to be readily available to the Product Owners and easily actionable for varied members of a multi-leveled support team.  As a company that highly values the customer experience and promotes transparency, we wanted the feedback to be public and accessible to all of our customers.  We also wanted our customers to be able to monitor the status of their ideas. Finally, as our early tests with other tools indicated, many of the “feedback ideas” our customers submitted were actually support issues that required moving out of feedback into a place where that support could be received in a timely manner. By knowing the areas where our customers had the most issues and using their ideas to further the products in the direction the customer wanted, we aimed to increase not just the usability of our products but also customer loyalty.   After evaluating out of the box products, we decided to develop our own “in product feedback widget” that would provide an avenue to learn more about our customers’ reactions to system changes and provide a quick way to incorporate feedback into the product development cycle. We decided to base this widget on the Lithium platform.   We determined that the idea exchange within Lithium provided the features we wanted:   the ability to vote and raise the most critical ideas to the top; a direct line to the customer making the suggestion to ask for more details when needed; the capability to rapidly move “Support” issues to the appropriate area of the Community to be answered by peers or our trained Community team; a way for our customers to easily see the status of their ideas; the ability for multiple people to view, edit and comment on ideas from all areas of the company be it product, support, or another; and an easy and visible way for our product team to demonstrate their empathy and involvement with our customers.   We added the widget to multiple pages within our current products and most critically to a new version of our Contacts Management tool.  With this widget, a customer clicks one button and provides their feedback directly to the people that can make the changes.   Due to the success of the widget in 2013, in 2014 we are implementing the widget across hundreds pages of our product and dividing this feedback across 16 idea exchanges in the Community.  The success of the widget is evident when you glance at how many posts exist today:   In Contacts alone (granted the most active area of our feedback forums, but also the most critical as we rolled out this new tool), we received 4600 ideas, 3498 comments and 274,056 page views to that area alone between July and December!  The product team has been able to deliver 71 implemented ideas that are directly attributable to the Lithium feedback widget.   Another area where we launched a redesign was in our Library area. The feedback through the widget was vital for improving the new design. The new design began rolling out on August 28 th , 2013. Between this date and December 2013 we received 949 ideas, 624 comments and 12,478 page views. So far, we have been able to implement 14 ideas based on this feedback.   Customers are given a “feedback” button within the flow of a task. Pop ups were not used to avoid distracting an engaged customer while the pervasive nature of the button on multiple screens allows a customer to enter feedback at any friction point.     When a customer clicks the feedback button, a pop up window appears. The customer selects a topic (labels), enters a subject, and then enters text (the idea body). They click “post to public forum” and the idea is posted to the idea exchange as a new idea with the right labels. There is also an opportunity here for the customer to identify that they need help. If the customer chooses “Get Help” from the drop down they post directly into a corresponding product board for help from the Community.      Once an idea is submitted, the window closes and a customer can continue wherever it is they left off. Feedback is a gift to us while not being difficult for the customer to provide.      
Company: Best Buy  Entry submitted by: Gina Debogovich (Gina) Senior Manager Community: Best Buy Unboxed (http://bestbuyunboxed.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design   Best Buy is the world’s largest multi-channel consumer elect... See more...
Company: Best Buy  Entry submitted by: Gina Debogovich (Gina) Senior Manager Community: Best Buy Unboxed (http://bestbuyunboxed.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design   Best Buy is the world’s largest multi-channel consumer electronics retailer with stores in the United States, Canada, China, and Mexico. BestBuy.com is among the top ten retail websites in the United States and we have the number one customer loyalty program of its kind. There are more than 1 billion visitors to our website and 600 million visits to our U.S. stores each year. Our Blue Shirts sales associates and Geek Squad Agents are committed to delivering on our Customer Promise:   1. The latest devices and services — all in one place 2. Knowledgeable, impartial advice 3. Competitive prices 4. The ability to shop when and where you want 5. To support you for the life of your products   Our online community brings our customer promises to life.  It is an online destination that connects our customers, Community Super Users, Blue Shirts and Geek Squad Agents together.  The Community provides impartial and knowledgeable advice that is crowdsourced through these peer-to-peer interactions.     In 2013, we re-designed our Best Buy U.S. online community (http://bestbuyunboxed.com) making searching for content even easier. We recognized that it was cumbersome for customers to locate helpful information embedded within earlier threads and that topics would sometimes repeat because the content was not easy to locate. Visitors are now served a large "ask a question" box which searches published content and peer-to-peer support.   The re-design resulted in a 500 percent increase in searches since November 2013. As a result, customers found the information they were looking for and we saw a twelve percent decrease in the number of posts. Through identifying hot topics and trends, we publish knowledge articles for customers to understand policies, procedures, buying guides and troubleshooting.      
Company: EE  Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)  Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader     As part of a company-wide program to become #1 for Service ... See more...
Company: EE  Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)  Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader     As part of a company-wide program to become #1 for Service within our sector, we have taken the opportunity to focus the EE Community and deliver clear (and ambitious) benefits to the organization. While our community is 18 months old, it is only within the last 6 months that we have made some real, demonstrable progress and are delivering operational savings back to EE.     Our strategy for developing the community is based on the Lithium benefits methodology of call deflection. At the start of 2014, we set out a clear ambition (dubbed our 2-3-4 strategy): 2 x Volume of topics created 3 x The volume of traffic Y-o-Y 1 in 4 topics resulting in an approved solution     Through this clear articulation of the targets, we have built a robust business case that has been shared throughout the organization and is tracked week on week. We are completely transparent with our performance and the benefits we are delivering. This simplicity and transparency has engaged parts of the business previously unaware (and skeptical) of the community and has garnered a large amount of support for our cause.   This support has opened doors to a new level of transparency between our brand and our customers. This transparency is demonstrated by our being open and honest with our community members when there are system/network issues, or when we recently changed terms and conditions and also when we announced a price rise. The benefits have been both intangible and tangible. Intangible: Real-time feedback from community on hot topics Platform for transparency when we are experiencing system issues Tangible Traffic is up 50% in 4months - Peaking at 300% uplift in traffic at certain points Best ever performing thread - 100k views in 24hour period Continuing on this trajectory we will see exceed traffic target by 30% in 2014 Topics started exceeding target by approx 30% Approved Solution Rate exceeding target week on week by up to 40% Number of customers no longer needing to call us  - Currently at 130% of YTD Target Without Lithium we would not have been able to act (and react) in real-time. The flexibility of the platforms allows us to publish content, manage interactions and provide real-time insight back to the business in order to inform better business decision making.   Our 2-3-4 strategy has provided a clear platform both internally and when working with Lithium. In our recent QBR, it allowed me to work with our Exec Sponsor to ensure that all parties are 100% on the priorities, opportunities and plans. This alignment aids collaboration and ultimately project delivery and business realization.   Through a simple, clear and consistent strategy we have seen: Dramatic reduction in the time to respond to customer interactions – Time to respond has dropped by 95% Average Agent Handle Time for Social Interaction down by 8% Reduction in inbound customer service support calls     
Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Zaira Pérez (Zperezp) Specialist, Self Management Channel Community: Foro Vodafone (http://foro.vodafone.es) Lithy category: Support Savings MVP     Vodafone Spain's aim is to provide bes... See more...
Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Zaira Pérez (Zperezp) Specialist, Self Management Channel Community: Foro Vodafone (http://foro.vodafone.es) Lithy category: Support Savings MVP     Vodafone Spain's aim is to provide best in class service to our customers with innovative and great value added offers and products. Vodafone Spain eForum Community serves the needs for those customers after product acquisition in order to provide a great experience and exploitation of their devices & acquired services.    Lithium provides Vodafone Spain the channel to enable direct communication with customers in order to satisfy their queries and incident resolution. At the same time, we provide customers with a Knowledge Center with loads of Tutorials and tips to engage and improve their mobile devices and DSL connection.   Vodafone Spain Heroes promotes both users as a support channel and new useful content creation. Those interactions and new content also engage user self-management and product knowledge. Furthermore, this Programme enables users to feel they are in a comfortable community where they may ask their questions and uncertainties, because many of the questions are either addressed or fully resolved by users on an equal level.     Since the Programme started back in November 2013, “Vodafone Heroes Programme” participants drove over 10k new interactions within the Vodafone Spain. In addition, over 25 contestants actively help out other users.  A great amount of kudos and new accepted solutions have been originated from those answers and users keep on recommending the Programme to their friends. As a result of the Vodafone Heroes Programme, we managed to deflect call volume by over 1.6m total calls. In addition, we enhanced our Net Promoter Score (NPS) by an average of 5 NPS points YoY and unassisted resolution rate increased by 10.2%.   More about Vodafone Spain Heroes Programme   Our Vodafone Spain Heroes Programme is focused on acquisition of new Community Members and Moderators outside the company employees to enable a real 2.0. approach.  Vodafone Spain Heroes is created with the intention to enable a Community where users can compete to get new badges and powers while helping each other solve their queries.   This gamification programme not only encourages greater customer/user participation but also promotes new useful content creation. Those new interactions and content also engage user self-management and product knowledge. This enables great Community growth for Vodafone Spain eForum users as a support channel to get helpful and resolute answers providing internal KPIs a real boost.   Vodafone Spain Heroes Programme is closely monitored on a weekly basis by the Spain Community Managers who provide Heroes with guidance and one-to-one follow up on their adventure. The Programme includes 3 role categories (Vodafone Hero Apprentice, Vodafone Hero and Vodafone SuperHero) and 4 power badges (speed, wisdom, aim and creation) that allow users to possess different strengths.     Programme is based on nomination of weekly winners for each power badge providing users with exclusive benefits and privileges as they get Points of Power along with their nominations. Benefits are also related with fame and pride such as allowing users to moderate or ban other users as well as collaborating on official content creation published within Vodafone sites. There is a Points of Power catalogue accessible to the users once they enter the programme where users can redeem and select their desired prizes. Offer range is very wide not only offering goods but also “benefits” and events participation or pride recognition.   Any Vodafone Spain eForum registered user is eligible to participate in the Heroes Programme. Users need to pass the initial challenge to get their first “hero Apprentice” badge and from then, new badges unlocked will move users up in the scale of roles. Once a user reaches to unlock the 4 badges, they are appointed Vodafone Superheroes.   At Vodafone, we truly think we deserve to become Lithys winners as this Programme has evolved and demonstrated the value of the Vodafone eForum community, resulting in support savings through call deflection.   
Company: AppDynamics   Entry submitted by: Steve Levine (appslevine) Senior Product Manager, Community                       Community: AppDynamics Community (http://community.appdynamics.com/) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator    ... See more...
Company: AppDynamics   Entry submitted by: Steve Levine (appslevine) Senior Product Manager, Community                       Community: AppDynamics Community (http://community.appdynamics.com/) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator     We are a leader in the explosive Application Intelligence space. Our users are very technical and we provide enablement to this audience through our Lithium Community. We strive to maximize customer satisfaction and adoption and see that clearly in the stats coming from Lithium Social Intelligence each week.    The community is linked from our .com site, directly through our software product and outbound e-mail marketing campaigns. We also obtain subscribers through organic search on the web. Our boards are divided into a small number of product categories. By creating hoards of new company-generated rich media content alongside user-generated, we now believe to have the algorithm for technical enablement and have measurable results coming in regularly.      In order to create a framework where product management, engineering, education, customer success and the SE orgs are able to create their own enablement content on Lithium, we devised an HTML/CSS widget scheme with some 40 different templates.  The framework allows Idea boards to be used to host completely custom page layouts implemented by widgets. This includes video embedded players, image lightboxes, styled titles and body text with standard layout rules. We stage new content right on production using a ‘curator’ role assigned to reviewers. Our own page code enforces this so it isn’t seen by the public until we unlock it.   We also moved all of our Studio components into an offline Ruby environment called ‘Middleman’ which is used in conjunction with GitHub to stage content and code outside of our Staging site before pushing it.  This way we created an optimized, development environment spanning multiple time zones and geos. We can now adjust and preview any Studio function offline in our Middleman environment before pushing to stage and then test in stage before using Studio Publish to push to prod.  Robots push the studio components back up from Github in seconds and can do it incrementally.      We provide what is represented inside the AppDynamics circle. Average users come in with questions and lacking knowledge, and the advanced/expert users and AppDynamics team help them become experts themselves. This is based around Content > Experts > Analytics as depicted in the below graphic.  We have measured increased subscriptions and higher engagement metrics in the new content areas. Our traffic in the 90 days prior, from September 2013 to December 2013 was 70k page views, 20k visits with 10k uniques.  In the 3 months since the new content went live, from Dec-20 2014 – March 20, 2014 views increased 15% to 80k, visits 18% to 24.5k and uniques by 24% to 12.9k. We have also seen heavy downloads of our product extensions which are hosted on the community. Product extension downloads went from 0 to approximately 600 in 3 months.  Extensions development grew from 0-62 in that same period. Sales have queried community engagement metrics during land and expand lifecycles in order to leverage user behavior against sales strategy.   Additional Technical Accomplishments   Front-End Development Approach In order to refresh and re-layout our community site from scratch, we needed a hi-fidelity approach to customization. Using studio with its myriad browser-based text editors was not going to provide the version control and scalability we required. We completely refreshed both the CSS and layout substantially and ran code on every page to hide most of the HTML coming down from Lithium and replace it with modified page code.  This allowed us to mash up REST calls to Lithium’s back-end with our custom layout code to get the pages to look like we needed them to, including the home page. We did this efficiently by timing DOM loads with code execution (JavaScript) so the user experience remained sub-1-second.   By using GitHub to maintain all development branches, we rarely experienced an out of sync codebase.  Teams in India and the US worked independently on separate branches with no conflicts, saving precious time during rapid deployments. (2-week agile sprints). We also maintained the ability to deprecate code and revert production in the event of regressions.  Our progress was hyper fast with an extremely low bug count and we refreshed and rebuilt the community in 6 months, faster than any other project of this magnitude in the company’s history.   Custom User-Based, Off-Site Analytics Facility Initially we did not have an API to retrieve user behavior against actual users at scale. However, we were able to implement page code that monitors button events for downloading product extensions. Each time a registered user clicks this button, we capture their user info, time/date and the extension they downloaded and store it in an offsite Django-based MySQL db.  We can then pull log files of these actions and generate dashboards of this behavior.  This is very useful to sales teams in the midst of upselling enterprise customers. In addition to our custom analytics we also instrument every page of the community with Google Analytics tag code and report it (minus user info) to GA.
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   Autodesk, Inc. is a l... See more...
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   Autodesk, Inc. is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created.    Like most software companies, Autodesk is focused on providing comprehensive solutions that our user base can rely on while also reaching new areas of the marketplace that were previously uncharted. Unlike other companies, Autodesk is also committed to reinventing our standard business model, moving away from standard licensing and into a flexible use anywhere, on any device, at anytime model.   With a very large portfolio of products, constant flow of acquisitions, emerging space in the consumer market, and increased access, our traditional support and feedback mechanisms no longer match our nontraditional business goals, nor are they able to keep up with the rapid customer base growth.   Lithium has provided us with an avenue to combat the above, providing a true peer-to-peer community space where users ask technical and subject matter related questions, share suggestions and answers, support overall product mastery, and collaborate on future product and service enhancement suggestions, all the while reducing the need for direct one-on-one support (forums) and Research and Development (ideastations).     In November 2013 the Autodesk Community site was rereleased, following an extensive redesign process which was supported by Lithium Professional Services.     The result was a new compelling, easy-to-use site & experience that: optimizes our customers' ability to help themselves as well as each other; accelerates collaboration and innovation with our products & services; enables easy content creation, curation and distribution; all the while extending customer relationships each other, and Autodesk as a whole.   Business Results           Video entry   This video was used as an internal resource to provide an overview of the background and future of the Autodesk Community. We distributed it to all employees during the marketing phase of the community launch, just prior to the public release in the beginning of November.    Watch our video: https://autodesk.box.com/s/lcod9ztxrxfm7jexjyfd    
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer   Autodesk, Inc. is a leade... See more...
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer   Autodesk, Inc. is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created.    Like most software companies, Autodesk is focused on providing comprehensive solutions that our user base can rely on while also reaching new areas of the marketplace that were previously uncharted. Unlike other companies, Autodesk is also committed to reinventing our standard business model, moving away from standard licensing and into a flexible use anywhere, on any device, at anytime model.   With a very large portfolio of products, constant flow of acquisitions, emerging space in the consumer market, and increased access, our traditional support and feedback mechanisms no longer match our nontraditional business goals, nor are they able to keep up with the rapid customer base growth.   Lithium has provided us with an avenue to combat the above, providing a true peer-to-peer community space where users ask technical and subject matter related questions, share suggestions and answers, support overall product mastery, and collaborate on future product and service enhancement suggestions, all the while reducing the need for direct one-on-one support (forums) and Research and Development (ideastations).     In November 2013 the Autodesk Community site was rereleased, following an extensive redesign process which was supported by Lithium Professional Services. The result was a new compelling, easy-to-use site & experience that: optimizes our customers' ability to help themselves as well as each other; accelerates collaboration and innovation with our products & services; enables easy content creation, curation and distribution; all the while extending customer relationships each other, and Autodesk as a whole.     Business Results          
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: Best Community Design   Autodesk, Inc. is a leader in 3D ... See more...
Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Michael Pascucci (MPascucci) Senior Community Engagement Manager Community: Autodesk Community (http://forums.autodesk.com/) Lithy category: Best Community Design   Autodesk, Inc. is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created.    Like most software companies, Autodesk is focused on providing comprehensive solutions that our user base can rely on while also reaching new areas of the marketplace that were previously uncharted. Unlike other companies, Autodesk is also committed to reinventing our standard business model, moving away from standard licensing and into a flexible use anywhere, on any device, at anytime model.   With a very large portfolio of products, constant flow of acquisitions, emerging space in the consumer market, and increased access, our traditional support and feedback mechanisms no longer match our nontraditional business goals, nor are they able to keep up with the rapid customer base growth.   Lithium has provided us with an avenue to combat the above, providing a true peer-to-peer community space where users ask technical and subject matter related questions, share suggestions and answers, support overall product mastery, and collaborate on future product and service enhancement suggestions, all the while reducing the need for direct one-on-one support (forums) and Research and Development (ideastations).     Autodesk Community Redesign   In November 2013 the Autodesk Community site was rereleased, following an extensive redesign process which was supported by Lithium Professional Services. The result was a new compelling, easy-to-use site & experience that: optimizes our customers' ability to help themselves as well as each other; accelerates collaboration and innovation with our products & services; enables easy content creation, curation and distribution; all the while extending customer relationships each other, and Autodesk as a whole.     Focus of redesign:          Update the look and feel        Improve the navigation        Increase offerings for interactions        Create a visually appealing and personal experience   We feel that we have taken a major step in accomplishing what we were set out to, after listening to our Community and what their needs were.   User Benefits:   The Autodesk Community redesign will deliver member-driven changes to enhance the structure, feature set and visual design of the community – all intended to deliver answers to our customers as quickly as possible and ease unnecessary overhead contributing to the community.   We have updated the look and feel, creating a true destination for our Community. We have improved the overall navigation, creating an intuitive interface for our Community to be able to find information easily. We have “up-leveled” our Idea Station and Articles to the front page for easy access. We are also highlighting our Community members (Expert Elites), which should help to increase our activity within member profile pages. We will also be updating the ToS of the Community to add Creative Commons licensing to all community content.   Business results           Watch our video showcasing our redesign: https://autodesk.app.box.com/s/lcod9ztxrxfm7jexjyfd
Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Zaira Pérez (Zperezp) Specialist, Self Management Channel Community: Foro Vodafone(http://foro.vodafone.es) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader   Vodafone Spain's aim is to provide best... See more...
Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Zaira Pérez (Zperezp) Specialist, Self Management Channel Community: Foro Vodafone(http://foro.vodafone.es) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader   Vodafone Spain's aim is to provide best in class service to our customers with innovative and great value added offers and products.Vodafone Spain eForum Community serves the needs for those customers after product acquisition in order to provide a great experience and exploitation of their devices & acquired services.    Lithium provides Vodafone Spain the channel to enable direct communication with customers in order to satisfy their queries and incident resolution. At the same time, we provide customers with a Knowledge Center with loads of Tutorials and tips to engage and improve their mobile devices and DSL connection.     Vodafone Spain Heroes was created with the intention to enable a Community where users can compete to get new badges and powers while helping each other to solve their queries. This gamification programme not only encourages greater customers/users participation but also promotes new useful content creation. The new interactions and content also engage user self-management and product knowledge. This enables great Community growth for Vodafone Spain eForum users as a support channel to get helpful and resolute answers providing internal KPIs a real boost.   Since the Programme started back in November 2013, “Vodafone Heroes Programme” participants drove over 10k new interactions within the Vodafone Spain and over 25 contestants actively help out other users. A great amount of kudos and new accepted solutions have been originated from those answers and users keep on recommending the Programme to their friends. In addition to this programme, Heros have created 134 helpful and resolute new posts. With these new posts, Heros have provided an increase of the Vodafone Spain forum visits volume by over 67K (an average of 500 visits per new Hero post). In addition, Heros helped to get an incremental 20% SEO in comparison with the previous year.   More about the Vodafone Heroes Programme   Our Vodafone Spain Heroes Programme is focused on acquisition of new Community Members and Moderators outside the company employees to enable a real 2.0. approach.  Vodafone Spain Heroes is created with the intention to enable a Community where users can compete to get new badges and powers whilst they help each other to solve their queries.   This gamification programme not only encourages greater customer/users participation but also promotes new useful content creation. Those new interactions and contents also engage user self-management and product knowledge. This enables great Community growth for Vodafone Spain eForum users as a support channel to get helpful and resolutive answers providing internal KPIs a real boost.   Vodafone Spain Heroes Programme is closely monitored on a weekly basis by the Spain Community Managers who provide Heroes with guidance and one-to-one follow up on their adventure. The Programme includes 3 role categories (Vodafone Hero Apprentice,  VodfoneHero and Vodafone SuperHero) and 4 power badges (speed, wisdom, aim and creation) that allow users to possess different strengths.   Programme is based on nomination of weekly winners for each power badge providing users with exclusive benefits and privileges as they get Points of power along with their nominations. Benefits are also related with fame and pride such as allowing users to moderate or ban other users as well as collaborating on official content creation published within Vodafone sites. There is a Points of Power catalogue accessible to the users once they enter the programme where users can redeem and select their desired prizes. Offer range is very wide not only offering goods but also “benefits” and events participation or pride recognition.   Any Vodafone Spain eForum registered user is eligible to participate on the Heroes Programme. Users need to pass the initial challenge to get their first “hero Apprentice” badge and from then, new badges unlocked will move users up in the scale of roles. Once a user reaches to unlock the 4 badges, they are appointed Vodafone  Superheroes.   At Vodafone, we truly think we deserve to become Lithys winners as this Programme has evolved and demonstrated the value of the Vodafone eForum community. Since the Programme started back in November 2013, “Vodafone Heroes Programme” participants drove over 10k new interactions within the Vodafone Spain and over 25 contestants actively help out other users. A great amount of Kudos and new accepted solutions have been originated from those answers and users keep on recommending the Programme to their friends. In addition to this programme, Heros have created 134 helpful and resolutive new posts; with these new post Heros have provided an increase of the Vodafone Spain forum visits volume by over 67K (an average of 500 visits per new Hero post). On the other hand, Heros helped to get an increment of 20% SEO in comparison with the previous year.  
Company: Telefonica  Entry submitted by: Emilio Rodriguez Menendez (UT04546) Community Manager Community: Comunidad Movistar (comunidad.movistar.es) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader     Telefónica is one of the world leading i... See more...
Company: Telefonica  Entry submitted by: Emilio Rodriguez Menendez (UT04546) Community Manager Community: Comunidad Movistar (comunidad.movistar.es) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader     Telefónica is one of the world leading integrated operators in the telecommunications sector, providing communication, information and entertainment solutions, with presence in Europe and Latin America. It operates in 24 countries. As of September 2013, Telefónica’s total number of customers amounted to 320.3 million.   Telefonica Spain’s 2014 goals focused on the following: Reduce customer support telephone calls Increase CSI in social environments Increase commercial leads to homepage Improve SEO positioning (especially for FTTH and 4G) Improve the tone of the Internet buzz towards Movistar Improve customer self-servicing  Through our Lithium-powered community in 2013, we made significant improvements in SEO, traffic, and acquisition. We also achieved big wins in support savings (see our Support Savings MVP entry), in addition to CSI and CHI.   Community has positioned us as the SEO authority versus our competitors and local tech forums. (source: Opensite.org)      We also rank highest amongst our competitors in metrics like best traffic and lowest bounce rate. (source: similarweb.com)        18% of our homepage visits are generated by the community (source: alexa rank)        Some additional quantifiable results: -       Due to our community, our SEO traffic reached over 80% (top SEO positions in key words such as FTTH and 4G) -       Community is responsible for an increase in commercial leads: 20,000 click-throughs from community to homepage (movistar.es) in 2013 -      Telefonica has added 2.2 million subscribers as of June 2013 with more than 3 million homes in Spain now equipped with Fusion, an integrated product offering that brings together broadband, mobile, landline, and television services all in 1 simple package. Not only did they see existing customers switch over to Fusion, but 56% of Fusion subscribers are newly acquired customers who took advantage of the wealth of information and peer advice on the community about the new product to help make their purchase decision. Web traffic referrals from the community to the purchase funnel increased by 20% during the 1 st month of launch.