Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: HP  Categories: Best Community Story or Anecdote Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum   Get to know Erico...   Retired from the US Coast Guard, Erico is a US ... See more...
Company: HP  Categories: Best Community Story or Anecdote Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum   Get to know Erico...   Retired from the US Coast Guard, Erico is a US expatriate living in the Netherlands. During his Coast Guard career, Erico participated in many rescue missions around the world... A hardware genius, Erico personally owns 6 personal computers and 2 monitors.  As a sideline, he operates a small PC repair shop.  He notes that it’s a way of keeping his skills sharp and staying in touch... Erico and the HP Forums...Erico is “addicted” to the forums.  Spending many hours conversing with HP users around the world, he loves helping others, and... HP loves having Erico as an true fan and valued enthusiast.   As a treat, the HP team got to meet Erico and say thank you personally - from L-R: HP EMEA Leads Sabrina Grollier and Wendy Schippers, Erico and Global HP Lead, Dani Weinstein.  
Company: HP Categories: Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum Seven HP Consumer Support Forums were launched between November 2008 and Febru... See more...
Company: HP Categories: Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum Seven HP Consumer Support Forums were launched between November 2008 and February 2010. HP Consumer Support Forums are available in seven languages and in more than 200 countries. Collectively these forums have grown exponentially and continue to grow significantly well in to their third year of operation.   HP customers have shown that online channels are a preferred method for finding answers to questions about HP products. To date, more than 20 million customers have resolved their issues via the HP Consumer Support Forum.     The HP Consumer Support Forum is easy to navigate, and visitors now have access to more than 600,000 forum posts on a myriad of technology topics. Discussion boards are broken out by topic area, such as Notebooks, Desktops and Printers, and offer search capabilities and advanced features like bookmarks, RSS feeds and rich multimedia.   HP also actively monitors the forum to identify common support issues and gain customer feedback and insights. This customer input is then used to improve future products and support. HP’s online service and support offerings include the HP Total Care Ambassador Program and a dedicated HP support video channel.   The HP Consumer Support Forum also features dedicated Expert Days where more than 100 experts across the globe spend 24 hours answering tech questions. HP will host the next Meet the Experts event from April 26 at noon ET to April 27 at noon ET. As part of a continued initiative to provide superior customer support, HP has added seamless mobile functionality to the HP Consumer Support Forum.   The HP Mobile Consumer Support Forum may be accessed anywhere, anytime from any mobile device – no app download required. Visitors can browse content, post questions and even assist other customers all while on the go.   Finally the HP Support Forums were recognized in Nov 2010 with a prestigious Groundswell award. The HP Consumer Support Forum is a free global interactive community where HP customers connect online with one another and exchange insights, tips and answers to each other’s questions.   The forum received the accolades in the award category of International Business to Consumer: Supporting. “We’re thrilled by the diversity and quality of the entries in this year’s International Forrester Groundswell Awards,” said Nate Elliott, principal analyst at Forrester. “With consumers worldwide embracing social technologies, the Groundswell is now global. The finalists and winners we’ve recognized – including local efforts on four continents and a number of truly global programs – are among the leaders in using social tools to reach and serve their customers.”   2010 Awards for the HP Consumer Support Community   • 2010 TSIA STAR Award for Best Online Community • 2010, 2009, 2008 TSIA Excellence In Service Operations • 2010 Forrester Groundswell Award for Social Technologies (Groundswell Award Press Release) • 2010 Mashable Award Finalist • TSIA Hall of Fame Life Time Achievement • 2010 Hay Group Top 20 Best Companies for Leadership    
Company: HP Categories: Best Community ROI Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum Highlights:   Exponential growth in page views across 7 language Forums Averaging more ... See more...
Company: HP Categories: Best Community ROI Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum Highlights:   Exponential growth in page views across 7 language Forums Averaging more that 65% year over year growth in forum visits  Global visits are approaching 20% of HP Customer Care Web Site  More than 20 million customers found solutions from 600,000+ posts Steady increases in problem resolution and call deflection rates   English launched Nov. 2008                               www.hp.com/supportforum m.hp.com/supportforum   Spanish launched March 2009 www.hp.com/foro     Simplified Chinese launched April 2009 www.hp.com.cn/get-answers     French launched June 2009 www.hp.com/assistance     Portuguese (Brazil) Sept 2009 www.hp.com.br/forum Portuguese (Portugal) www.hp.pt/forum     Korean Launched Nov 2009 www.hp.co.kr/hpcommunity     German Launched Feb 2010 www.hp.com/kundenforum  
Company: Research in Motio n Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program Entered by: Kerri Birtch (kerrib), Social Support Planning Team Community Name: Blackberry Support Community Forums  URL: supportforums.blackberry.com   ... See more...
Company: Research in Motio n Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program Entered by: Kerri Birtch (kerrib), Social Support Planning Team Community Name: Blackberry Support Community Forums  URL: supportforums.blackberry.com   In the three years since the launch of the BlackBerry Support Community Forums, our overall support community has grown exponentially, particularly in past year as our organization has rolled out even more avenues to assist with social support.    Our approach to social support has a focus on empowering our customers and offering the tools they need to find a solution to their query.   This is done in a variety of ways including:   Maintaining strong ties with our Super User members on the Forums; integrating our Developer Support Forums and Resource Centre into the platform; interacting via Twitter to provide links to Knowledge Base articles or YouTube videos, and continually providing connections to the BlackBerry Help blog and the BlackBerry Developer blog.   By ensuring that all resources are easily accessible to users and directing them to the correct resources, we are able to cultivate a support community that is not limited to just the Forums, but one that is based on strong, networked ties, allowing our customers to get social support from the channel they are most comfort with.       Our newly launched site redesign will assist in enhancing this network as we have created more prominent connections to all of our social support channels. New features of the redesign include a more clear break down of support categories to allow users to easily navigate to their area of interest, a real time blog and Twitter feed which is customized to that specific support area, (Developers Support Forums feed has the Developer Blog, Business Support has the @BlackBerry4Biz Twitter account etc.), as well as a dedicated section where users can find links to all of our other BlackBerry communities.      With our commitment to empowering users and creating social support channels to assist them, we are able to provide our customers with timely responses, reliable support information and some friendly interactions along the way. 
Company: AT&T Categories: Best Community ROI Entered by: Becky Woodworth (beckyww) Community Name: AT&T Community URL: forums.att.com Partnership – That’s the reason the return on investment for AT&T’s community has increased so drama... See more...
Company: AT&T Categories: Best Community ROI Entered by: Becky Woodworth (beckyww) Community Name: AT&T Community URL: forums.att.com Partnership – That’s the reason the return on investment for AT&T’s community has increased so dramatically.   In late October, 2010, AT&T and Lithium partnered to refine, polish and consolidate three different communities birthed at different times for different purposes from different AT&T business units. Our Wireless, DSL & Internet and U-verse communities operated largely independently without shared authentication, common design or similar structure.   After fixing “the outside” of AT&T forums in October, 2010, we then leveraged our Lithium partnership to address “the inside” in February, 2011.   Following Lithium’s advice on best practices, we analyzed months of customer data, board content, etc, to totally overhaul our community organization, categories and navigation.   The community likes the changes, and we like the ROI.   The ROI results to date include:   A steady increase in Board Replies since initial 2010 consolidation – in fact, an average of 310 vs. 164 Board Replies daily    Our members are more engaged – answering more questions – deflecting more calls.   A 16% increase in call shed savings January 2010 – January 2011  A 14% increase in call shed savings February 2010 – February 2011  A 14% increase in call shed savings March 2010 – March 2011    The mission of AT&T is to connect people with their world, everywhere they live and work, and do it better than anyone else. We believe our community is a growing contributor in fulfilling that mission.    
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   Verizon has always used our community forums as a main area of ... See more...
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   Verizon has always used our community forums as a main area of customer insight. Our nearly 90,000 members have been actively sharing their opinions on Verizon products and services for the past three years.    Our goal at Verizon is to go beyond simply gathering customer opinions. We want to collaborate with our customers, so we launched the Verizon Idea Exchange in July 2010 with three main objectives:     Identify new product and service enhancement opportunities Facilitate customer-driven product/service enhancements or new products/services Enhance the Verizon brand as establishing innovative ways to engage with and serve customers       Open Innovation   The excitement from our customers around the Idea Exchange started almost immediately. Customers quickly began submitting suggestions for our products and services. In return, the product managers for our main product areas have become fully engaged with the Idea Exchange, especially around our flagship product FiOS. The FiOS managers now review customer-submitted ideas weekly as part of their business processes, are more engaged with the Verizon Community as a valuable resource, and are interacting with customers on an almost-daily basis.   The Verizon Community and the Idea Exchange has helped change the way the FiOS product team does business—starting with incorporating customer feedback into our latest FiOS release, 1.9 Interactive Media Guide for set top boxes.      Giving the Community a Sneak Peek Our FiOS product director was so energized by the power of the direct collaboration he and his team had been doing with customers that he created a new program, Sneak Peek. The 1.9 Sneak Peek offered customers in designated areas a preview of our latest Interactive Media Guide (IMG 1.9) for set top boxes in exchange for their feedback. The program not only provided another opportunity to connect customers directly with Verizon product managers, but it also utilized our forums members as a private study group to provide feedback on this new product. Members of the Verizon engineering team spent time interacting with customer in this private forum discussion around the upcoming release, and our forums members were thrilled to be given this opportunity to share their thoughts with them.   “I would like to extend my thanks to the engineering team and Verizon for the opportunity they have afforded us in beta testing the new IMG and especially the programming team for all their hard word and attention to our ramblings. Being an engineer (for more years than I care to admit) I really appreciate the hard work and the difficulty of the task for something as complex as the firmware.” Keyboards, customer and Verizon Community Leader “I also have to give a big thanks to the Verizon’s Engineering and Programming team for working with us in the beta testing. This was a complex task to write and rewrite all the software and firmware… keep us in mind for the next beta. Great job, Verizon! Thanks! :)” johnf2, customer and regular Community contributor   Customers Directly Impact the Product In fact, through the Idea Exchange, the 1.9 Sneak Peek, and the Verizon Community at large, a staggering 70-80 percent of what was put into the IMG 1.9 release was tweaked, suggested, or refined by our customers.    Here are just a few of the customer suggestions from the Idea Exchange that were included in the 1.9 IMG release:   The ability to extend a current DVR recording by an extra 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours after the previously-established end time. Improved remote DVR management  from the Web (myverizon.com), mobile (DVR manager apps for Blackberry, Android, Apple, Palm and Windows Mobile platforms), and other STBs in the home. Improvements to DVR series managements and rescheduling logic that allow the DVR to better handle duplicate recordings.   Going forward, the FiOS product management team is also giving the community team access to their test track business customers, a FiOS business focus group. We’re working with the FiOS product management team on ways to integrate this focus group into similar product tie-ins on the Verizon Community, similar to the 1.9 Sneak Peek, so we can continue the close collaboration and customer insight. A True Engagement Community One of the most exciting areas has been the way programs such as the Idea Exchange and the Sneak Peek have increased levels of engagement with the Verizon Community. When the Idea Exchange first launched, our Community Leaders (CLs) grabbed onto it and started moderating the ideas, letting us know when they saw duplicates or customer questions needing attention. This was not a role we asked them to play, but they picked it up on their own as this new customer insight mechanism gained momentum. In addition, we have been seeing a lot of community “newbies” move from being lurkers to registered community members. Since our original community is a peer-to-peer support community, these customers may not have felt that they had anything to contribute to those technical discussions. However, anyone can contribute an idea, comment on another customer’s idea, or simply leave a vote. This has really helped fuel community growth and interest across our customer base. Results Since launch at the end of July 2010, we have seen the following results:   Over 1400 ideas submitted  Over 200 ideas are “in progress” throughout Verizon Already, 16 ideas have been implemented by the Verizon product teams Additionally, the Idea Exchange itself has been rapidly growing:   107% growth in comments 403% growth in votes 555% growth in visitors In summary, the Verizon Community has now become fully engrained in our product management processes. It has helped Verizon get closer to the customer, gain insights to help us take action, look for issues needing attention (early detection), and improve customer retention. We are truly changing the way we do business as a result of direct customer feedback from the Verizon Community!  
Company: HP Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Margaret Nugent (manugent) Community Name: Enterprise Business Community | HP Online Forum  URL: h30499.www3.hp.com/   HP Enterprise Business group consolidate... See more...
Company: HP Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Margaret Nugent (manugent) Community Name: Enterprise Business Community | HP Online Forum  URL: h30499.www3.hp.com/   HP Enterprise Business group consolidated 11 existing communities from HP.com legacy and external proprietary platforms to bring them together on one platform.   By consolidating our discussion forums to a single unified platform, we will be able to bring our community members new features and capabilities beyond what our legacy forums could provide. This also included combining our English and local language communities to the single instance.  
Company: National Instruments Categories: Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Laura Feeney (Laura) Community Name: NI Discussion Forums URL: forums.ni.com     National Instruments (NI) transforms the way engineers... See more...
Company: National Instruments Categories: Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Laura Feeney (Laura) Community Name: NI Discussion Forums URL: forums.ni.com     National Instruments (NI) transforms the way engineers and scientists around the world design and deploy systems. Often deemed the "Home Depot for Engineers," NI offers a wide variety of hardware and software products to empower technology leaders working on applications ranging from LEGO MINDSTORMS® NXT® software to hardware for the CERN supercollider. At National Instruments, we understand the importance of embracing our lead users and other customers when developing new product features for our flagship software platform, NI LabVIEW. While social innovation has been a hot topic among technology companies recently, we truly embrace this notion of co-innovation and have built user feedback into the development process. The LabVIEW Idea Exchange on our website (powered by Lithium) has been instrumental in our success. Customer Loyalty Survey Data As we began to think about building co-innovation into our LabVIEW development process, we knew we needed to gather more information about our community, because we intended for community members to be part of the process. We began by evaluating our community. We specifically wanted to embrace the audience of innovators and evangelists in our community, and to find these innovators and evangelists we used customer loyalty survey information.   The survey showed that 41 percent of NI customers are “active” NI community users. Additionally, the more active the customer is with the NI community, the more loyalty they are meaning they are:     likely to recommend to a colleague, repeat purchase the same product or or purchase new products.     This data, shown in the following graphs, emphasized the need for NI to embrace these customers for software development.     Objective One of our key social business objectives is to embrace our customers when developing new versions of LabVIEW. Using cutting-edge social technologies, we want to not only listen to their feedback but also incorporate it into our products. Because no industry represents more than 15 percent of our revenue, it is imperative that we gather feedback from various areas to prioritize new features and connect with lead users as we enter emerging markets or new vertical industries.   Strategies and Technologies After evaluating our audience and objectives, we came up with the following strategies: • Make it easy for NI customers to share, discuss and vote on new software features • Obtain feedback from lead users as we enter new markets  • Encourage customers to share their feedback in the community-driven software development areas • Launch customer-driven software developments at NIWeek 2010  • Integrate these ideas with traditional marketing  The LabVIEW Idea Exchange was born out of the need to implement the above strategies. Going beyond the typical beta program, it is one area of our website where the online community can interact directly with NI R&D and provide candid feedback about our products. We then work to incorporate their feedback into our products as much as possible, which results in increased customer satisfaction because they see that we pay close attention to their needs and suggestions.       We promoted the Idea Exchange on the NI home page.In the LabVIEW Idea Exchange , LabVIEW users can submit and vote on features covering topics such as user interface enhancements, performance improvements, computation capabilities, and hardware integration. Since August 2009, more than 2000 ideas have been submitted for consideration in future versions of LabVIEW. In August 2010, the newest version of LabVIEW launched with 14 new ideas incorporated into the product. This video shows some of the users whose ideas were incorporated.        The LabVIEW Idea Exchange includes ideas straight from customers interested in helping NI develop the next version of LabVIEW.   In today’s social environment many companies are interested in what their customers are saying, but do not know how to best gather this information. The most innovative characteristic of our activities is that we not only used social technology to listen to our customers, but we also incorporated their feedback directly into our products and gave them immediate access to our R&D team. Many companies are afraid of what their customers might say about their products, but by making co-innovation an important step in the product development cycle, we have been able to work with our customers to create better and more technical products.   Results Overall, the LabVIEW Idea Exchange has been a great success. One important measure is that it has decreased the number of customer complaints. Before the Idea Exchange existed, customers requested new features for the product by emailing a private database maintained by R&D, and if users had a complaint they often posted it to their own blogs. By launching an open, public idea board for users to share their feedback, we gave our customers a voice that they did not have before in the development of our software.   We have also seen an increase in our own productivity because we no longer have to guess on the priority of new software features. Now our community does the initial prioritization of these new features followed by our R&D team.   Some specific metrics follow: • 2,400 Ideas submitted across several software product lines (initial goal first year goal was 500) • More than 47,800 votes on product ideas • 9,470 customer comments on ideas • More than 45,400 unique visitors to the Idea Exchange, for a total of 99,100 visits  • LabVIEW 2010 included 14 new features from the Idea Exchange  • The LabVIEW 2011 beta (the new version will release in August) includes 13 new features from the Idea Exchange
Company: Silverpop Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Karen Marchione (kmarchione) Community Name: Silverpop Online Community URL: community.silverpop.com Launched: May 3, 2011 When Silverpop began sea... See more...
Company: Silverpop Categories: Best Community Business Integration  Entered by: Karen Marchione (kmarchione) Community Name: Silverpop Online Community URL: community.silverpop.com Launched: May 3, 2011 When Silverpop began searching for a Community Forum solution, many of the key requirements during the vendor selection were system integration related. Silverpop chose Lithium primarily by being able to meet those requirements better than any of their competitors we evaluated.   Silverpop was able to leverage Lithium’s Single Sign-On Solution (PHP) to allow for easy integration with our custom Customer Support portal. Using the Single Sign-On Solution provided by Lithium, Silverpop’s Customer Community was developed in a way that makes it easily accessible to our customers via our Customer Support Portal and direct URL all using their same login credentials.   Single Sign on functionality is a huge benefit to our customers in that they don’t need to manage/maintain multiple user name/password logins when doing business with Silverpop, which has also fueled the adoption of our private customer community by more than 50% of our customer base.   Another key integration feature offered by Lithium and leveraged by Silverpop is their REST API tool set. Silverpop uses the REST API to pass customer data/information between the Community and our existing external systems such as Salesforce.com. For example, Silverpop was able to better and more accurately use Lithium reporting & metric tools by passing client specific data from Salesforce.com into the client’s user profile in Lithium. And thanks to Lithium we finally have a means for effectively managing all the great product ideas we receive from our customers in our Idea Exchange.   Using Lithium’s rest API, we are able to collect all of the Ideas submitted by our customers through our Customer Community and export needed data for further review and analysis. This export and review process has become a key part of our release planning cycle as it allows us to group the data in a variety of ways (by feature, status, customer, kudos, etc) and quickly identify candidates for a release.   Silverpop has additional plans this year to leverage Lithium’s API integration for the following:   Build our own custom Twitter feed/functionality into our Customer Community.  Build out a more robust integration with Salesforce.com for customer support case utilization.  Build a custom integration with our QlikView Business Intelligence system to import relevant customer KPI’s.  
Company: BSkyB Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Stephen Marshall (stephenmarshall) Community Name: Sky Help Forum URL: helpforum.sky.com Launched: 25 October, 2010   Sky Support Forum launch... See more...
Company: BSkyB Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Stephen Marshall (stephenmarshall) Community Name: Sky Help Forum URL: helpforum.sky.com Launched: 25 October, 2010   Sky Support Forum launched on 25th October 2010 with the aim of creating an engaging and active community for Sky customers to connect and support each other with Sky products and services.   A team of dedicated Sky Experts is also at disposal when queries are a little too complex to be resolved by peers. Even with very limited promotional activities, the community has been growing steadily and we have exceeded 16,000 registered members in less than 6 months.   We have 5 established superusers who have consistently been helping members with their questions and technical issues, and supported by the team of Sky Experts.     The forum is also linked to Sky’s online Help Centre to support our customers journey online and there are a range of video tutorials on a variety of useful guides such as how to programme your remote control or set up your wireless router.   Examples where we have used pictures to guide the customer through their journey:       The forum has been positively received by our users and every day there is a constant flow of activity on the forum and we are averaging 67,000 page views per day, over 1,500 posts per week and as mentioned above, we have over 16,000 registered users since launch.   A recent post by a forum user below: “I think we should congratulate sky on setting up a forum, where on the whole they are likley to get a lot of flack. I for one was very dubious that we would get answers, especially those actually admitting some things are wrong. We did get answers and it appears we have got a fix. Result.”   Other results include:   Over 2,000 Accepted Solutions to date Averaging 700 new registrations per week CHI (Community Health Index) Score of 638  
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   Verizon has always used our community forums as a main area... See more...
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   Verizon has always used our community forums as a main area of customer insight. Our nearly 90,000 members have been actively sharing their opinions on Verizon products and services for the past three years.    Our goal at Verizon is to go beyond simply gathering customer opinions. We want to collaborate with our customers, so we launched the Verizon Idea Exchange in July 2010 with three main objectives:     Identify new product and service enhancement opportunities Facilitate customer-driven product/service enhancements or new products/services Enhance the Verizon brand as establishing innovative ways to engage with and serve customers       Open Innovation   The excitement from our customers around the Idea Exchange started almost immediately. Customers quickly began submitting suggestions for our products and services. In return, the product managers for our main product areas have become fully engaged with the Idea Exchange, especially around our flagship product FiOS. The FiOS managers now review customer-submitted ideas weekly as part of their business processes, are more engaged with the Verizon Community as a valuable resource, and are interacting with customers on an almost-daily basis.   The Verizon Community and the Idea Exchange has helped change the way the FiOS product team does business—starting with incorporating customer feedback into our latest FiOS release, 1.9 Interactive Media Guide for set top boxes.      Giving the Community a Sneak Peek Our FiOS product director was so energized by the power of the direct collaboration he and his team had been doing with customers that he created a new program, Sneak Peek. The 1.9 Sneak Peek offered customers in designated areas a preview of our latest Interactive Media Guide (IMG 1.9) for set top boxes in exchange for their feedback. The program not only provided another opportunity to connect customers directly with Verizon product managers, but it also utilized our forums members as a private study group to provide feedback on this new product. Members of the Verizon engineering team spent time interacting with customer in this private forum discussion around the upcoming release, and our forums members were thrilled to be given this opportunity to share their thoughts with them.   “I would like to extend my thanks to the engineering team and Verizon for the opportunity they have afforded us in beta testing the new IMG and especially the programming team for all their hard word and attention to our ramblings. Being an engineer (for more years than I care to admit) I really appreciate the hard work and the difficulty of the task for something as complex as the firmware.” Keyboards, customer and Verizon Community Leader “I also have to give a big thanks to the Verizon’s Engineering and Programming team for working with us in the beta testing. This was a complex task to write and rewrite all the software and firmware… keep us in mind for the next beta. Great job, Verizon! Thanks! :)” johnf2, customer and regular Community contributor   Customers Directly Impact the Product In fact, through the Idea Exchange, the 1.9 Sneak Peek, and the Verizon Community at large, a staggering 70-80 percent of what was put into the IMG 1.9 release was tweaked, suggested, or refined by our customers.    Here are just a few of the customer suggestions from the Idea Exchange that were included in the 1.9 IMG release:   The ability to extend a current DVR recording by an extra 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours after the previously-established end time. Improved remote DVR management  from the Web (myverizon.com), mobile (DVR manager apps for Blackberry, Android, Apple, Palm and Windows Mobile platforms), and other STBs in the home. Improvements to DVR series managements and rescheduling logic that allow the DVR to better handle duplicate recordings.   Going forward, the FiOS product management team is also giving the community team access to their test track business customers, a FiOS business focus group. We’re working with the FiOS product management team on ways to integrate this focus group into similar product tie-ins on the Verizon Community, similar to the 1.9 Sneak Peek, so we can continue the close collaboration and customer insight. A True Engagement Community One of the most exciting areas has been the way programs such as the Idea Exchange and the Sneak Peek have increased levels of engagement with the Verizon Community. When the Idea Exchange first launched, our Community Leaders (CLs) grabbed onto it and started moderating the ideas, letting us know when they saw duplicates or customer questions needing attention. This was not a role we asked them to play, but they picked it up on their own as this new customer insight mechanism gained momentum. In addition, we have been seeing a lot of community “newbies” move from being lurkers to registered community members. Since our original community is a peer-to-peer support community, these customers may not have felt that they had anything to contribute to those technical discussions. However, anyone can contribute an idea, comment on another customer’s idea, or simply leave a vote. This has really helped fuel community growth and interest across our customer base. Results Since launch at the end of July 2010, we have seen the following results:   Over 1400 ideas submitted  Over 200 ideas are “in progress” throughout Verizon Already, 16 ideas have been implemented by the Verizon product teams     Additionally, the Idea Exchange itself has been rapidly growing:   107% growth in comments 403% growth in votes 555% growth in visitors   In summary, the Verizon Community has now become fully engrained in our product management processes. It has helped Verizon get closer to the customer, gain insights to help us take action, look for issues needing attention (early detection), and improve customer retention. We are truly changing the way we do business as a result of direct customer feedback from the Verizon Community!
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   As digital entertainment and connected applications continu... See more...
Company: Verizon Residential Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program  Entered by: Becky Carroll (beckyc) Community Name: Verizon  URL: community.verizon.com   As digital entertainment and connected applications continue to generate excitement for consumers, more and more of them are looking for answers about today’s enabling technologies.     In response, we’ve added enhancements to the Verizon Community that include a new area called Verizon Room to Learn (http://roomtolearn.verizon.com).     Room to Learn is an educational site that offers relevant tips, shortcuts, and online workshops on hot topics such as apps and gadgets. It also links users to social media sites where they can share their practical application and experience with their social circle.   Tech Made Simple Verizon Room to Learn focuses on popular home networking and home entertainment topics that include introductions to digital entertainment, wireless networking, making sense of 3D TV, and organizing digital media. Note that these are not workshops on how to use Verizon products and services; rather, they are designed to help people participate more fully in a digital lifestyle. The topics are all around the core of what Verizon offers with our products and services, and customers and non-customers alike can find value in learning more about how to make their technology work for them – instead of the other way around. Industry Experts Contribute Room to Learn also features weekly posts written by industry expert Alfred Poor, who has contributed for over 20 years to technology publications that include PC World, PC Magazine, Family PC and Computer Shopper.  His posts complement the Room to Learn workshops and articles, and they provide fresh perspectives on timely topics. In addition to these weekly posts, Alfred regularly participates in discussions about these topics with our members directly in the forums.   Results Verizon Room to Learn has been successfully integrated into the Verizon Community. According to the latest Room to Learn metrics, visits and unique visitors are up over 100 percent from last October, registrations are up nearly 50 percent, and the email opt-in rate is up almost 40 percent. Product click-throughs are also up nearly 100 percent from last year, indicating that customers like what they are seeing – and want to find out more about how Verizon can help them live their digital lifestyle.  
Company: Rogers Communications Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Eryn Billings (erynbillings) Community Name: Rogers Community Forums URL: communityforums.rogers.com Launched: August 4, 2010 ... See more...
Company: Rogers Communications Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Eryn Billings (erynbillings) Community Name: Rogers Community Forums URL: communityforums.rogers.com Launched: August 4, 2010 Rogers Communications Inc.'s new Community Forums should win the Lithy Award because we are proud of the impact our community is making, and how our social customer strategies are changing the game for our company.   On August 4th, 2010 we launched Rogers Community Forums with a focus strictly on technical issues and a pilot employee ambassador program. Despite our limited resources, the community sprang to life immediately and was moderated by the help of tech savvy super users in the first three months.   We've now surpassed 20,000 registered community members and look forward to implementing more promotional tactics in the next year and revisiting the scope of our community to expand the topics to include discussions around pricing and devices.   In Rogers RedBoard blog, we heard positive comments such as:     These forums are going to be awesome… I have seen these work for other companies and you get very prompt and helpful responses to your questions. I am glad Rogers is doing it… good work with the video too!!! Nice!!! I love to see Rogers offering more and more ways of getting supoprt. I already like RogersHelp and other folks on Twitter. This is a nice addition. I dont think Bellus offer that.. Way to go!! Well I don’t always support everything rogers does I have been with the company for a number of years.. It’s about time a forums section was opened up.. Well done Happy to hear about the new technical forums Richard. Nice addition to helping Rogers clients  
Company: SlimGenics Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Best Community ROI Usecase Most Innovative Social Customer Program Best Social Insight Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Jennifer Fenske (pi... See more...
Company: SlimGenics Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Best Community ROI Usecase Most Innovative Social Customer Program Best Social Insight Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Jennifer Fenske (pisgah) Community Name: SlimGenics Online Community URL: community.slimgenics.com Launched: July 17, 2010   “You Can Do This!”: The SlimGenics and Lithium Experience   We are a small company compared to many of your clients. We are in two locations—Colorado and Minnesota—and expanding to California this year. Our weight loss program revolves around 30 brick-and-mortar centers where our clients receive high-quality weight loss counseling.Our clients are passionate about returning to good health and we have the privilege of helping them get there.     Launching our online community with Lithium last year has been a huge boon for our business and for our customers. As Community Manager, I have had a front-row seat watching community develop where previously there was none. Before our Lithium community, our clients would nod at each other as they waited to see their weight loss counselors.   After the community launched, a true “we’re in this together” camaraderie developed inside our private online community. A common refrain that users tell each other is: “You can do this!”     I was able to see our community members grieve with Matt (who lost 150 pounds) when he was unable to have surgery to remove excess skin.  The community helped one young woman who had suffered a miscarriage and was embarrassed to say she had understandably fallen off her eating program.  We cheered with Danielle when she got within a few pounds of her goal---she’ll hit that goal this week.    For our business, offering the online community is one more way we show value to our clients.   For our new Home Program weight loss option (which is solely online), the community is the only place where members can receive support. The community registration rate for Home Program members hovers around 50 percent---our members crave community. And we provide it, 24-7, with our Lithium community.   In early 2011, we launched a video blog in the community. Twitter and Facebook streams add to the community’s appeal.     In addition, our SlimWise Center offers helpful downloads, cooking videos and recipes. We have a regular counselor blog and post coupons in the community that drive traffic to our centers. A major community redesign will launch later this month. I’ve watched our community grow from a few posts per day to often almost 50.   For a company our size, these are amazing results. Our super users are passionate and committed to help others. We’re a supportive community, and I am proud to offer it to our clients.  
Company: Best Buy Canada Category: Best new Community Entered by: Heather Magee (hmagee) URL: www.bestbuy.ca/plug-in Launched: 16 Sept 2011     Entry: Best Buy Canada’s Plug-in community features lifestyle-centric content, while co... See more...
Company: Best Buy Canada Category: Best new Community Entered by: Heather Magee (hmagee) URL: www.bestbuy.ca/plug-in Launched: 16 Sept 2011     Entry: Best Buy Canada’s Plug-in community features lifestyle-centric content, while continuing to produce relevant and up-to-date material that speaks to the traditional tech enthusiast. We promote content that connects people with technology that makes life fun and easy, and helps alleviate techno stress as new technology trends emerge.  Technology eZine - comparable to an online magazine model, our community landing page plays host to all of Best Buy Canada’s social media streams, while leveraging Lithium’s Rest APIs to dynamically pull the most recent content from the community. www.bestbuy.ca/plug-in Member Engagement – by featuring our most celebrated community members in our Member of the Week widget, members are recognized for their contributions and participation in the community and thanked publically by the Community Manager on a forum thread each week.  Our objective is to nurture our Super Users and frequent contributors to encourage the organic growth of our user generated content. Targeted Integration – we’ve developed and are in the midst of implementing targeted integration strategies to leverage community content on our eCommerce website www.bestbuy.ca using Lithium’s Rest APIs and other tools and features.  We’ve also integrated the mobile version of Plug-in with the Best Buy Canada iPhone app and leveraged Lithium’s Facebook Connect and Facebook Q&A applications to mobilize our Facebook fan base and integrate this group of brand advocates with our community members.  
Company: Xerox Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Sandy Puglisi (spuglisi) Community Name: Xerox Customer Support Community URL: forum.support.xerox.com Launched: September 16, 2010 En... See more...
Company: Xerox Categories: Best New Community (Launched after June 1, 2010) Entered by: Sandy Puglisi (spuglisi) Community Name: Xerox Customer Support Community URL: forum.support.xerox.com Launched: September 16, 2010 Entering the world of social support is challenging regardless of who you are, but understanding and meeting your customers’ needs in a B2B environment can add some complexities that require expert advice.  Although we’ve delivered solutions to other businesses for over 100 years, Xerox is relatively new to social media, so we needed help… and we knew it.    The Community Management Planning Workshop was incredibly helpful.  First, it brought our virtual team together, and second, it brought the expertise of the Lithium team to our project.  We had done our homework, but learned some valuable lessons during the workshop.    For example, we were headed down the path to create a product-based forum structure to match the Xerox product offerings, and learned that when starting a new community, the broader the topic, the better.  So we went with only five distinct support forums, a far cry from one per product family!   Our planning process was completed in short order, but the road to a launch date got a bit bumpy at times.     We had challenges with Single Sign On and multiple sign on (we wanted to make sure customers could easily transition from the community to other areas of Xerox.com and vice-versa).  We struggled between branding guidelines and the lack of branding guidelines (we are the first community presence at Xerox so some guidelines and policies just didn’t exist).  But we made it.   The “Best New Community” was launched in September 2010 on www.xerox.com, and in six months time, we’ve come a long way.    We have had over 53,000 unique visitors and roughly 750,000 page views.  There are over 500 topics with 1,500 posts.   We have also launched new capabilities.   We gave customers the ability to add images to their postings.  We recently integrated our corporate Twitter feed within the site and have already seen evidence of the benefit of cross-channel integration of support content.  And next month we are going mobile!   But we aren’t stopping there.. we have lots more on our roadmap. Unchartered territory has become a charter for success as we forge ahead in our new endeavor. We are excited about our growing community and the many opportunities that lie ahead.   Our partnership with Lithium and the support of our community have been, and will surely continue to be, a recipe for success.  We look forward to seeing where this adventure takes us.
Company: Riverbed Technologies Category: Most Innovative Social Program Entered by: Evan Marcus (emarcus) URL: community.riverbed.com   Entry:   Our program is the Performance Hall of Fame. It's an opportunity for users to come onl... See more...
Company: Riverbed Technologies Category: Most Innovative Social Program Entered by: Evan Marcus (emarcus) URL: community.riverbed.com   Entry:   Our program is the Performance Hall of Fame. It's an opportunity for users to come online and share graphs and stories in their own words of how our products have improved their network performance.   Everyone who enters receives a gift from Riverbed, and once a month we award a prize for the entry that has received the most kudos. The real benefit, though, comes from the visitors to the site who see real customers telling stories of how they've received hard-to-believe benefits from implementing Riverbed products.   Our salespeople regularly send prospects to the site so that they can see the benefits for themselves. A typical entry to the to the Performance Hall of Fame is below.