Company: Virgin Media Entry submitted by: Jim Meadows (mrjimmeadows) Content Manager Community: Virgin Media Help & Support Forum (virginmedia.com/forums)   Lithy category: Total Community All Star   Since the invention of the internet, digital technology has had an increasing impact on the way we live. As a leading communications provider it’s not just the technology that interests us – what matters is how it can improve the lives and prospects of everyone.   Today, Virgin Media is a part of Liberty Global plc, the world’s largest international cable company. Together Virgin Media and Liberty Global serve 24 million customers across 14 countries, helping connect people to the digital world and enabling them to discover and experience its endless possibilities.   Our aim is to provide the best customer care experience in the UK through eService. And, as the UK’s most socially devoted ISP, scaling our social media presence to meet the demand of our customers has been our greatest challenge. In March we became the first ISP to have sent 1Million tweets to customers and we believe the application of Lithium / LSW has been key to achieving this milestone. Our road to Lithium was born out of three critical requirements. The first was a desire for our platform to do more. Lithium was responsive and met our demand for performance improvements. We were specifically looking for a platform with both skill-based and priority routing; a single desktop to extend across both social and community; and the product needed to be responsive to Facebook & Twitter developments, adapting swiftly to changes such as page threading. The second was a need to improve reporting. Here we were looking to identify trends and accurately measure sentiment, with the ultimate hope for real time reporting across the piece.   The third and most important requirement was to maintain and improve customer experience: to align one agent per customer, to reduce customer response times, to use rich media in responses, and to moderate our multi-channel offering through a single console – taking control of conversations to actively encourage peer-to-peer support and improve on social KPI’s.   Lithium’s continued commitment to evolving their platforms, and their ability to adapt effectively to changes in both social networks and social culture is key to our relationship. As Lithium continue to deliver on product, Virgin Media exceeds their operational and transactional goals.   Benefits of a Total Community The marriage of LSW and Community has enabled Virgin Media to reimagine a niche online space, delivering a dynamic central hub for online help and support.   The transformation of Community places it at the heart of eService. The ability to create optimized content immediately supports customer navigation from social as we drive customers to the right information at the right time, and benefits such as Social Integration within Community and integrating user generated content into online help and support, have driven peer-to-peer support across all touch points.   Through applying rigorous routing principles across LSW we’ve been able to limit risk to our online reputation –high profile accounts are identified using Klout, Conversational Key Words and Verified Status. In addition we’ve been able to harmonize social engagement and combine content streams on Twitter adopting a larger audience for our acquisition & content marketing strategy, whilst developing our care team’s skills to respond to both care and engagement.   Employing a 24-hour snooze rule, we’re now proactively reaching out to customers who have yet to validate our advice and can ensure we close the loop on the majority of conversations – and have increased agent productivity by 24.07% and response times by 25.57% across social and a 59% increase in baseline productivity.     The impact of efficiency has given us scope to activate a new look and feel with more features from our Community supporting our strategy. Using a single console, we brought moderation in-house, developing people and the job role. We were able to implement an archive, improve the effectiveness of Community search and dramatically increase the number of useful solutions viewed. Mobile optimization has enabled customers to navigate content on the go, a huge benefit when home broadband connectivity may be the contact driver.       Appointing a Community Lead has leveraged the effectiveness of our new Superuser advocacy program, increasing their time spent online and overall contribution to support, this coupled with a new ability to our members has given us the opportunity to successfully trial key products through customer outreach – all in a controlled environment.   Our Total Community results Over the last twelve months we’ve achieved our target of managing a single Twitter feed for marketing and customer care, leading to new brand records in engagement – whilst remaining devoted to customer experience; handling increases in volume, team size and improvements in sentiment across social.   Through Community we’ve seen incremental growth across all KPI’s. As a result of new member entrances up 23% and innovations driving increase in time spent online up 21% we’ve seen impact in kudos and accepted solutions marked up an enormous 76%.   The real benefit of this? The increase in accepted solutions viewed rising by 37%.   We’ve supported 5 major projects with trials including over 2000 triallists, delivering over 22,400 pieces of insight that have developed product ahead of launch and increased customer education – as a result, Superuser activity has hit highs of 37 hours per week (each) with replies from the group contributing to 18% of the overall volume leading overall peer to peer support to reach 80% across the last 12 months.   Whether it’s been the implementation of video content, ranking or board restructuring the technology has been key to giving us the freedom we need to adapt our channels yet the solidarity to manage one of the greatest social media workflows across one of the largest teams in the world, confidently.   “As we pass the milestone of our millionth tweet I am reminded of the amazing journey the Social Media Care team have been on over the last 4 years as we have grown from an ad hoc team of a couple of people to‎ our current 50+ team members.   Always championing our brilliant basics of being there for our customers when they need us, a virtual listening ear, heartfelt service and served up with a dollop of humour, the team continue to push the boundaries and lead from the front in the UK social care space.   The future is bright as we continue to grow and will evolve the social support to be more encompassing across the opportunities for Care, Marketing, Revenue and PR.” - Cormac Connolly, Director Channel Development, Virgin Media  

Company: KPN  Entry submitted by: Lourens Reijgersberg, Hugo de Vries, and Thomas Pel (ThomasPel) Social Innovations Manager Community: KPN Community (http://forum.kpn.com)  Lithy category: Most Creative Community Promotion or Launch   KPN is a leading Dutch provider of ICT services. With a wide range of products and services, we operate with different brands many different customer groups – both at home and abroad. From prepaid calling in the US, to interactive HD television in the Netherlands.   The goal of our Community promotion   At the close of 2014 the KPN Community team got together and aimed to achieve a number of goals simultaneously in the first quarter of 2015. All of these goals would prove to be beneficial for both our customers as well as our peers in other departments.   To support the communication of our brand message and to maximize conversation surrounding the added value of KPN services of products we would set out to develop a fresh version of the KPN Blog which would include a new design and a number of new features, which included commenting via Facebook, whatsapp sharing and a clear categorization by connecting with the company wide / marketing content strategy.   To make sure our customers got a community experience which would beat their expectations, we developed a customized theme header. This ensured they wouldn’t miss out on relevant,  new or trending content from any part of the community (eg. Forum, blog, co-creation platform or even the TKB). Relevancy was the key goal here, so the theme header would function contextual and content would be relevant to the environment you are in. Theme header would also function as a bridge between different parts of the community and connect them in a seamless way.   At last, but certainly not least, the new blog had to be fully mobile supported to service the mobile traffic which was already about 70% of the total traffic of the blog. This was an important  pre-requisite in this endeavor and had to be executed in a way that would rival the most popular Dutch blogs.   Our strategy     The strategy of executing this many innovations simultaneously was to go live with a big bang and overwhelm the community with a lot of added value at once. This was set for the Easter weekend at the beginning of april and ingenuously combined with an ‘Easter egg hunt’ which was promoted via our external social channels. This ‘hunt’ would take our customers through the entire platform and playfully introduce them to all the added value that was now available.   At the same time a co-creation project started specifically aimed at the mobile environment. Customers we’re encouraged to suggest new features and uncover bugs that we might have missed. After all, even though we are a telco we simply don’t have all the handhelds at our disposal .. but the community does!   Meanwhile the theme header would be populated with content that was partially handpicked by community members, thereby making sure that the highlighted content was supported by the community.   Our results   Despite only happening a couple of weeks ago, we are already seeing some very promising results from the innovations and the promotions that we used to launch them.   The first blogpost on the new blog received 16 comments in the first days it was live, which was huge compared to the average 1 or 2 comments that most of the ‘old’ blogs used to receive. This is accredited both the easter egg promotion which directed a lot of people from Facebook directly into the blog post and the Facebook comments which are now possible.   The content that was highlighted in the theme header saw on average a 40% uplift in visits compared to content that wasn’t. This was especially true for blog and TKB content highlighted in the heavy trafficked parts of the forum.   As mentioned before, these promotions have taken place very recently, so we’re expecting most of the results to follow in the next few months.   Our video            

Company: Telstra  Entry submitted by: Yannick Pierre (Yannick_P) Crowd, Help & Support Lead  Community: Telstra CrowdSupport (http://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/) Lithy category: Total Community All Star   Telstra is Australia’s largest Telecommunications Company and for over a hundred years we have connected Aussies with each other and the rest of the world.   At Telstra we seek to connect and engage people, our customers and employees. Our digital transformation starts with people, not technology.   Both customers and employees engage digitally with Telstra every day – at scale, seeking to have their questions answered or problems resolved – and share their experiences with our products and the rapidly changing technology landscape. Increasingly, our customers expect and deserve the same level of authenticity from interactions in digital environments as they have traditionally been offered in the offline world.   Telstra has leveraged Lithium Products & Services to build an entire digital eco-system that transcends incumbent boundaries of segment, device, employee and customer.   Building upon our award winning customer community  CrowdSupport® - we have extended our digital eco-system unabated to deliver employee collaboration, real-time omni-channel dialogue, complete visibility and measurement in social and a step change in customer help and support.   CrowdSupport® Through our CrowdSupport community customers can receive quick and reliable responses to questions from community members – both customers and Telstra employees. The contribution from our community members is the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’ – we recognise community members’ contribution with ‘meet-up’ events and exclusive access to products and services in addition to the established ‘gamification’ model.   Store Locator & Community – Unlocking Omni-Channel We’ve deployed a single search platform to enable real-time customer feedback and discussion for Telstra’s store network nationally. Team members in store can now directly connect digitally with their customers, helping to create an omni-channel presence.   Telstra Wi-Fi®  – a community of Wi-Fi Telstra is creating Australia’s largest Wi-Fi network.  Through the CrowdSupport community customers can locate their nearest hotspot, provide feedback and discuss tips and techniques at an individual access point level. Telstra has over 1,100 hotspots nationwide and over 1 million devices have connected to the network.   CrowdSupport Live – Taking community real-time We have taken our community connection real-time with an integrated capability between CrowdSupport (Lithium) and CrowdSupport Live (Needle). Our community members are now able to sign up to conduct live chat sessions directly with other customers considering the purchase of new mobile handsets – this has delivered 4000+ chats year to date with great positive feedback.   Klout Integration– A global first We have successfully integrated Klout into our CrowdSupport community – providing the next wave of gamification and customer value exchange for our community members.       Telstra’s In:sight community, powered by Lithium, is an enterprise community delivering premium access to the latest business thinking, technology, trends and exclusive events. There are now 2000+ registered members and our account executives are connecting in digital communities complementing a traditional face to face or telephone relationship model.   Peer Support In May 2014, we launched our Peer Support community, which enables our digital and telephone centre teams to connect and share their knowledge and experience. We have thousands of employees actively using the community. PeerSupport has enabled Telstra to connect the knowledge of our digital and telephone centres in a way the company has never previously achieved. Employees are able to find information faster and the collaborative nature is delivering informative and timely updates.   A step change in Customer Help & Support Telstra re-platformed our entire Customer Help & Support onto Lithium in 2015. Customers are now able to seamlessly connect company authored content (i.e. the ‘official source’) with community generated content. Through the power of the community customer feedback drives the creation of high value content – to date we have received over 12,000 content recommendations from our customers. This provides a great balance for our customers across a wide array of the trust and adoption curve.   Digital Customer Care – Total visibility On the back of a large-scale rollout of Lithium Social Web in May 2013 Telstra’s 24x7 Digital Customer Care Team have completely embraced the plethora of benefits LSW offers our customers and employees. With rapid onboarding, flexible working, easy access to help and support content, automation, total visibility and measurement– we are operating like a Swiss clock in the rapidly changing social media landscape.   Figure 1: The ‘proof points’ for offering a dedicated internal employee community   Figure 2: Growing our digital eco-system sees growth in the anchor tenants too   Lithium Social Web – the game changer   April 17, 2013 was the day Telstra launched Lithium Social Web (LSW) and transformed our customer’s service experience in social. The seamless workflow, simplistic user experience, social integration, prioritisation and immediacy saw expediential improvement to our customer’s digital service experience.   Pre-Lithium, Telstra manually tracked customer posts and replies via spreadsheets. This was, of course, not sustainable. A solution was needed to handle the immense growth of digital connections in social.   Adoption of the Lithium Social Web was the right solution.   Our digital customer care experienced has improved in six main areas:   Figure 3: The impact of Lithium Social Web on Telstra Digital Customer Care   LSW allows Telstra to provide authentic high quality customer service, create thriving digital communities and foster an internal self service culture.   What’s next?   We have made considerable progress on our digital journey – we must continue at pace as our customers’ expectations increase in a world gone digital.   At Telstra, we believe that in the next five years   5G will be standardised Networks will be optimised for traffic against specific services and media types Consumer devices will be dominant, but small devices for data sensing and processing will make up a significant percentage of mobile and Internet traffic. Telecom and other industries will be more platform shaped, with data becoming as important as products. The world will be faster, and more connected with a billion more participants in the global economy   For our digital eco-system and our communities we will continue at the pace our customers expect and we will deliver:   LinkedIn integration for business. Considering two new users join LinkedIn every second, it is central to the digital life of businesses, and we are implementing a system where users can login and register with Telstra through their LinkedIn profile.   Achieve a unified social ecosystem, integrating with the core enterprise social platform, to drive a self service culture.   Provide employees with the ability to access a greater repository of knowledge and address issues in real time.   In closing....   Telstra is over 100 years old and is now empowering customers and employees by democratising customer service through rich community peer to peer service.   We are increasing our investment in our digital service for customers through our multiyear Digital First program. This will give our customers even greater control of their accounts and services, technical appointments and support options   We are working to achieve an even more unified digital customer ecosystem through leveraging a wide range of Lithium’s products and services, as we continue our journey to deliver a brilliant connected future for our customers and Telstra.     Appendix: Telstra communities      

Company: Microsoft Mobile  Entry submitted by: Delfin Vassallo (DJVassallo) Social Media Operations Manager LSW social channels: Facebook- global, Twitter- global, plus local ones, in total 107 social presences managed Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.   In 2012, Microsoft Mobile (Nokia at the time) had a presence in social media with Twitter and Facebook accounts; however, many of the cases went unanswered and unaddressed. This was simply because they were not listening on social due to having insufficient tools with their first vendor and an inadequate team to manage social care requests.   Microsoft Mobile needed to invest in and get serious about social—and fast. They switched to a second vendor from 2012-2013, but their solution was falling short and they needed to operationalize their Social Care Practice on a bigger scale. That was the tipping point.   In 2013, the business—now Microsoft Mobile after Nokia’s acquisition—launched a critical quest for a new digital solution that offered multiple features and a stable platform that could grow with them over time.   GOAL Implement a new, long-term digital solution that can grow with Microsoft Mobile’s expanding needs on social media to offer customers top-tier customer service   In 2014, Microsoft Mobile chose Lithium Social Web (LSW) primarily because they needed a tool that they could trust in terms of stable, scalable technology.   To be successful on social, brands need three elements: 1) Adequate tools/technologies 2) Seamless processes for handling customer feedback 3) A team of people who are trained in the brand’s internal voice, as they are the stars of the show   If one of those three elements is broken, the whole solution doesn’t work. With LSW, Microsoft Mobile is now confident in the technology piece and that the tool will continue to evolve as the social media industry changes.   “LSW was implemented to provide social customer service across 100+ social media presences globally, in 24 languages with a 140+ staff working around the clock from 7 different locations. Our highly complex operation is coordinated by only four internal resources; Our LSW set up is one of the most complex of all Lithium clients,” said Delfin Vassallo, Social Media Operations Manager Europe at Microsoft.   Changes as a result of LSW implementation   Microsoft Mobile started this project with two Twitter handles in two languages and one Facebook page. Now with LSW, they are efficiently managing an entire expanded suite of social channels: 66 Facebook pages 34 Twitter handles 7 contact centers (working around the clock to service customers in 24 languages)   To organize and coordinate all of these channels, personnel, languages, and time zones is quite complex, but the LSW platform allows Microsoft Mobile to do it seamlessly.   They are handling 230% more volume of cases than before the adoption of LSW, while only increasing headcount by 15%.   LSW has given Microsoft Mobile the immediate ability to manage the astonishingly fast increase in volume (on average 70k unique cases per month) while making teams more efficient and productive in order to meet the target response times.   One of the most noticeable impacts to the Microsoft Mobile organization is the development of their Social Care team. In 2013, the global team comprised 90 staff members. Now they are at 145 full-time social media agents plus team leaders, quality monitors, and trainers.   With the right technology now in place, Microsoft Mobile is able to focus on developing and growing a very well-curated hiring and training program. Their management team saw the opportunity and decided to prioritize it by investing in the right tools and the right team to make their social customer support program world-class.   They predicted social would be big, but not THIS big. Through Lithium analytics and reporting, the Microsoft Mobile leadership team has been able to validate that they made the right decision to invest in social. Therefore, they continue to support the growing Social Care program due to the impressive results.   From a cross-functional perspective, LSW has allowed Microsoft Mobile to optimize resources in smaller, typically budget-constrained markets. Marketing now provides the content and creativity, and the Social Care team handles the social presence. The result of multiple teams working through one tool is that the customer receives one single answer through one unified brand voice.   “We could handle a 230% 2013-14 YoY volume increase by only increasing 15% our staff,” said Delfin Vassallo, Social Media Operations Manager Europe at Microsoft.   Business results   The Microsoft Mobile customers immediately saw a change with LSW. The Social Care team was flooded with positive comments, thanking them for the competent and quick responses on social.   Microsoft Mobile was able to get back to the customer faster than they expect (as quick as 4 minutes with an average response time of 2 hours vs. the industry benchmark of 7 hours)-- and with a meaningful and complete answer to their problem.   “Customers are becoming more demanding on social channels. They ask a lot of support questions and express doubts about products/services, so the key for brands is to answer fast. That sounds pretty simple, but if you don’t have the right tools in place, you aren’t able to do that. LSW allows us to service our customers quickly and competently. Lithium continues to stay ahead of the game with regards to customer behaviors and demands." Delfin Vassallo, Social Media Operations Manager, Microsoft Mobile Europe   Microsoft Mobile is able to resolve 95% of cases in-channel on social, which means they rarely redirect customers to other assisted channels such as phone or chat. As a result, their volume has skyrocketed, because the more they answer customer inquiries quickly and efficiently, the more customers trust them and want to ask additional questions.   Microsoft Mobile customers’ satisfaction is the ultimate metric of success— Microsoft Mobile is thrilled to receive overwhelmingly positive sentiments, indicating that they are making a huge impact on customers.   In summary, Microsoft Mobile agents’ productivity increased as they are now able to handle more cases and faster: First contact resolution rose to 95% (some languages keep a steady 100%) Average case handling time went down from 20 minutes to 9mins Response time was kept under 2 hours despite the overwhelming increase in demand. The overall cost saving of handling more cases in social rather than in traditional assisted channels was around 80%            

Company: HSN  Entry submitted by: Matt See (MattHSN) Director, Social & Games Community: HSN Community (http://community.hsn.com,http://blogs.hsn.com) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   HSN is all about making shopping FUN! Great products and unique experiences that you can’t find anywhere else, plus exclusive access to celebrities and sweepstakes. The HSN Community makes that possible by connecting them with all their favorite HSN Hosts and Partners and introducing them to fellow shoppers just like themselves who share their passion for great deals & shopping!   Lithium’s Community serves a vital role for HSN as the single owned destination for customers to post and engage with partners, brands and each other. It’s a tool for our customers to get a second opinion about a product and is a key aspect to driving boundaryless retail for HSN across all screens.   How we activated our influencers   1) We re-launched the Community with a new design and a new way to connect with HSN personalities called Q&A’s. 2) Lithium allowed us to engage our audience, which in turn is allowing us to organically reach others. HSN is a differentiated way to shop because, unlike brick and mortar, you’re shopping from the personality behind the brand, and with Community shopping on TV has never been more personal. The Lithium platform has allowed HSN to take that one step further by creating omni-channel Q&A’s that give customers the ability to have their own conversations with the brand. Instead of just shopping for jeans, HSN gives customers unprecedented access to stylists, fashion icons, and other experts to help offer a more personal and valued shopping destination; and the customer is front and center in the experience with the power of Lithium’s Community.   Our results Hosted 71 Q&A’s between August – December in 2014, creating a whole new way for customers to connect and drive meaningful, relevant conversation on HSN. +2,502.4% in Community Membership Y/Y +241.8% in Unique Visitors Y/Y +109.4% in Posts Y/Y +105.7% in Sessions Y/Y Stats are still growing this year. We’re seeing +40% in Sales Y/Y in Q1 this year.   Q&A Banner Example       Before / After Lithium Launch   Before: After:   Community Q&A Example    

Company: HSN  Entry submitted by: Matt See (MattHSN) Director, Social & Games Community: HSN Community (http://community.hsn.com, http://blogs.hsn.com) Lithy category: Total Community All Star   HSN is all about making shopping FUN! Great products and unique experiences that you can’t find anywhere else, plus exclusive access to celebrities and sweepstakes. The HSN Community makes that possible by connecting them with all their favorite HSN Hosts and Partners and introducing them to fellow shoppers just like themselves who share their passion for great deals & shopping!   Lithium Community & LSW provides a platform that empowers HSN to efficiently moderate, market, measure and scale conversation across owned and earned platforms including Facebook, Twitter and the HSN Community. It gives our customers a seamless experience across all devices to engage with HSN wherever they are and provides real business value back by driving quality conversation around HSN product, which in turn increases conversion through people looking for similar topics across natural search.   Benefits of a Total Community   Moderation work flows have become much easier to manage across multiple people on a team working 22-hours a day across multiple channels. Assigning moderation tasks and reviewing the analytics that LSW generates has provided more insight into the volume and sentiment of conversation happening, which has allowed us to be smarter as an organization and as a team when identifying new community guidelines, reacting to crises, and day-to-day community management. Lithium Community has allowed us to also remove redundant engagement platforms so that conversations are now ONLY happening on one platform, but integrated and optimized for all screens.   Our Total Community Results   +2,502.4% in Membership Y/Y +241.8% in Unique Visitors Y/Y +109.4% in Posts Y/Y +105.7% in Sessions Y/Y Stats are still growing this year. We’re seeing +40% in Sales Y/Y in Q1 this year.  

Company: SuccessFactors  Entry submitted by: Danielle Beeken (dbeeken) Global Director, Customer Adoption Marketing Community: SuccessFactors Community (community.successfactors.com) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   SuccessFactors provides the leading cloud-based SuccessFactors HCM Suite, which comprises solutions that are complete, beautiful, and flexible, and which can help you optimize your workforce today and prepare it for tomorrow. SuccessFactors solutions are supported by a global partner ecosystem and the experience and commitment of SAP. Our solutions are innovative, but we also deliver process expertise and best practices insights from serving our broad and diverse customer base. Today, with more than 4,000 customers and 27 million subscription seats, we serve organizations of all sizes, from the large enterprises to small businesses, across more than 60 industries, in more than 177 countries, and in 37 languages.   It’s time to love work again! This motto is at the heart of our business. SuccessFactors, an SAP company, provides workforce management software designed to support the employee lifecycle, from recruit to retire.  Our customers support over 20 million workers in 177 countries, making SuccessFactors Human Capital Management (HCM) software one of the most adopted cloud-based solutions in the world. Our customers have a vision and vast goals to attract the best talent, align their workforce, optimize employee performance and gain workforce insight to make strategic decisions about their business.   Like any world-class technology company SuccessFactors develops applications that are relevant to our consumers. However, we understand that having great products is not enough. Without customer support built into the core of our business we would not be considered the leader in our industry. Lithium’s online community platform has played a significant role in helping us provide true support to our customers. Our Customer Community is a competitive differentiator and an important part of our marketing strategy. It is the gateway to fully realizing the value of our products and services and as marketers we shout this fact from the rooftops.   In our Community we bring together customers, product and support experts, industry thought leaders and implementation partners from around the world.  The knowledge exchanged in our Community is an indispensable resource for both new and established customers.    Our Community is a hub for training, implementation resources, documentation, events, and user group interaction. Members stay informed on new features, product updates, and news on HR trends and predictions. This is the place where product-enhancement ideas are shared and discussed with our product managers, providing critical feedback for advancing our products to new levels of innovation and business efficiencies.   Our Community is 34,000 + strong and growing by an average of 1,300 new members each month.  Not only is the Community growing in members but in time spent online.  Per month page views range between 200,000 and 300,000 and we see approximately 360 new ideas shared and over 2500 kudo clicks.   We’ve found that customers who engage in the Community have increased success and longevity with SuccessFactors. When customers find what they need, have their issues resolved, and get their questions answered, they are happy and eager to help others. It’s a win-win for everyone.     In addition to Lithium’s impact on our support and customer adoption marketing efforts it is also a valuable vehicle for education and brand awareness. Multiple marketing campaigns pump fresh content into our Community, which drives engagement and new membership. We’ve had remarkable success with our one and only “open” board that showcases our amazing thought leadership to the world. The “Did You Know” campaign has allowed end user customers to find the community destination doubling daily registration and adding valuable content with 100’s of posts with 1,000,000’s of page views. Did You Know? has a committed following of loyal influencers that use Lithium’s social share functionality to spread awareness and meaningful content to their communities.     Our team is also using Lithium to educate and influence our parent company’s on-premise HR customers to move to our cloud-based technology.  Moving to the Cloud from an on-premise solution can be an intimidating transition. There are many roads to success when taking on this endeavor.  Our “Welcome to the Cloud” marketing campaign invited our SAP HR family to join our Community and learn more about the advantages of cloud-based technology. Without In addition to valuable content, entry into our exclusive Community facilitates peer to peer conversation which expedites learning and reference inquiries. Our membership has increased by 8% since this campaign began in January, 2015 and we anticipate sales revenue to follow this uptake in interest from our on-premise customers.   Online engagement is a privilege of our time but our Community also supports in-person experiences for our customers.  Customer champions and super users are hosting “live” engagements that promote knowledge sharing across the SuccessFactors’ customer community. Each event focuses on effective talent management process design and deployment. VIP engagements are complimentary and exclusive to SuccessFactors customers as part of their current investment with our technology.  Thanks to Lithium’s interactivity customers learn about these events and participate in conversations before and after the “live” session to further enrich their experience.   Finally we want to bring attention to our customer excellence awards program. Our community hosts the SuccessConnect HR Excellence Awards annually. This program drives customers to tell their success story in their own voice and generates an exceptional amount of engagement through live voting. We use Lithium’s kudos click to cast votes. Thousands of votes were counted for our 2014 awards. The winners received a free pass to our SuccessConnect conference and an awards reception with leaders from our executive team. This is one of our favorite customer marketing opportunities because we get to uncover compelling customer stories and references and recognize and celebrate our customer’s accomplishments.  

Company: Canon  Entry submitted by: Patricia M. DiPasquale (pmdCanon) Sr. Manager, Digital Marketing Services Community: Canon Community (community.usa.canon.com/) LSW social channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram  Lithy category: Total Community All Star   Canon U.S.A., Inc., headquartered in Melville, New York, is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions to the United States and to Latin America and the Caribbean (excluding Mexico) markets.   With approximately $31 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents registered in 2014† and is one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies in 2015.   † Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.   Our road to Lithium   The Canon approach to taking on new social platforms is that each has to meet objectives not already covered by other platforms, as well as being able to serve different audiences. There is crossover, of course, but there are unique characteristics as well.   Knowing that the conversation would go on with or without us, we decided to bring that conversation closer to home where we could be a part of it. We set out armed with a list of business objectives, criteria for success, and must-have requirements. After extensive research and comparing the features of available forum platforms, choosing the Lithium-powered Community was a no-brainer.   Of the seven business objectives set for our social platforms, the two main objectives we sought to fulfill with a forum were: Support our customers and build brand loyalty Gain customer insights & feedback   We don’t want to say that either of these are a problem, but the Forum was most certainly the solution. The Canon Community grew quickly, averaging well over 1,000 new members and over 200,000 unique visitors every month. Many answers come from the Community, but our Customer Support Center is there to fill in the gaps.   As one could imagine, having to moderate the Forum, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Vimeo for the wide range of Canon products, takes a lot of eyeballs and a variety of skillsets. However, once Lithium Social Web announced the inclusion of images as part of the moderation platform, we knew it would be the closest thing to a magic bullet that we could get.   Benefits of a Total Community   As stated earlier, LSW has transformed how our Customer Support Center operates. Previously, the forum was moderated by manually refreshing the page to review the latest posts. And rather than having to figure out where the last moderator left off via sticky notes and email, the tool clearly indicates where the next moderator can start his or her shift.   In regards to digital strategy, LSW allows for a more controlled social environment, meaning that there isn’t as much of a fear factor as there once was when introducing additional social platforms. The ability to moderate the Forum, Facebook and Twitter from a single location, have an automated workflow, and metrics that would satisfy the most finicky of analysts, truly made a difference for our Customer Support Center.   Every post made on the Community, Twitter or Facebook comes into LSW so the team can moderate, escalate, and assist as needed, ensuring that no posts are missed, and that the team can quickly act on trends. The moderators are also able to provide feedback on product complaints and work with product managers at Canon headquarters to help resolve customer issues as soon as a post is made.    Total Community results   While we do not have specific numbers to share, implementing LSW has increased efficiency across the board. The only growth in Customer Support headcount has been when new social channels have been added to the mix. And not even in the quantity that was originally forecasted, which is a huge savings in what is possibly the most expensive cost factor: human resources.   The tool has also improved the moderation of specific hashtags and handles, making it easier to watch for tweets from specific individuals, as well as easily add new hashtags as we see something that needs to be monitored.   By using the filtering functionality, Customer Support is able to weed out tweets from spam-generating handles. This has ensured that the moderators are viewing relevant customer interactions rather than spending time closing out spam.   Lastly, the metrics coming out of LSW have allowed the Customer Support Center to get real insight into the productivity of moderators in a way that they haven't been able to before. This information has been useful for providing a good baseline to create future performance goals for the moderators as well as to schedule staff adequately in the present.   We have received positive feedback from our Customer Support Center, which gives us the affirmation that our solution is working, internally and externally. Here's an example of the feedback we recently received from our Customer Support Center:   We're really happy with LSW and the support team at Lithium.   I wish we had some way to compare pre-LSW to now.  Getting LSW is like going from filling out stacks of paper forms to getting a computer and doing everything electronically; it's such an improvement.  We previously had to record every fan interaction manually (name, date, comment, platform, etc.).  Now, everything is done in a few mouse clicks.  It's honestly made a huge difference in our productivity and has allowed us to concentrate on fan interaction instead of record keeping.        

Company: Cisco  Entry submitted by: Becky Scott (lolagoetz), Jason Hurst (jashurst), Joana Dehanov (jdurande), Social Knowledge Program Managers Community: Tech Zone (techzone.cisco.com), internal community Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Cisco is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected.   At Cisco customers come first and an integral part of our DNA is creating long-lasting customer partnerships and working with them to identify their needs and provide solutions that support their success.   Cisco's Support Community   The Services Business Capabilities team at Cisco has leveraged Lithium's capabilities to empower engineers in Cisco's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to easily capture knowledge created through collaboration, reuse it internally, and share it directly with Cisco customers. We implemented more than 80 custom components within the Lithium platform to deliver a solution called Tech Zone to the TAC organization that is optimized for their needs and integrated into their workflow. The TAC is staffed by over 3,000 engineers spanning 20 facilities worldwide, bringing support to Cisco customers in over 180 countries in 17 different languages. Tech Zone has become a preferred channel for TAC engineers to collaborate, and has transformed not only the way TAC manages their intellectual capital but how Cisco communicates, collaborates, and serves its partners and customers.   Our Innovations   Since its origins, Tech Zone has pushed the boundaries of what a Social Knowledge Management Environment is and what it can become. With the goal of empowering our support engineers to solve customer problems quickly and effectively, we have expanded the core capabilities of the Lithium platform by implementing many custom features to enhance the collaboration experience, streamline the support workflow, and provide additional channels for sharing content. Some examples are:   Raised Hand Subscription The "raise hand" feature allows users to draw attention to a discussion in progress in order to ask for additional help. Subject matter experts can subscribe to raised hand events as they do to other content, allowing them to be immediately notified when other engineers need assistance. Solution Buddy An internally developed tool we call Solution Buddy uses the Lithium APIs to integrate the platform with the salesforce.com instance TAC engineers use to manage support cases. It powers reuse of Tech Zone content by automatically surfacing relevant content within the salesforce.com interface, thereby enabling engineers to find answers to customer problems quickly without the need to search or leave their case management platform. It also lets them link relevant Tech Zone content to support cases, thus helping others solve similar problems in the future. Flag for Improvement With the proliferation of articles in Tech Zone, content was becoming outdated or sometimes contained errors. We addressed this by implementing a document maintenance process. Users can click a link to flag any article that needs improvement. Then they must choose an option that describes why they flagged it (critical information needed, inaccurate information, duplicate content, etc.) and provide comments explaining what needs updating. Flagged articles enter a Knowledge Base Article Dashboard re-purposed to manage the process of moving them through the improvement workflow, and an email notification is sent to the users responsible for the article. Those users then submit changes for review by the flagger or moderator. When the changes are accepted, the article is updated and exits the flagged state.   The screen shot below shows an article that has been flagged for improvement. The next available actions are shown in the Actions widget, which in different states could be: Flag for Improvement, Suggest Additional Improvements, Improvements Completed, and Review Improvements. Article Publication Workflow Leveraging Lithium REST APIs, we automated the process of publishing Tech Zone articles to our corporate website at Cisco.com and our mobile support app. Sharing the most valuable articles in Tech Zone multiplies their value by enabling customers to quickly find their own answers when and where they need them, thereby reducing the number of support cases they need to open. When an engineer reaches the rank of Associate Level 1 by participating in the community, they are given permission to "Nominate [Articles] for External Publication" from the Actions widget. Nominated articles are reviewed by technology specialists known as Technical Content Engineers, who then forward them to Technical Writers for further review and formatting before they are published to Cisco.com. The user interface includes links to move the article to the next step of the process and manage which users are collaborating to review the article. A Publishing Life Cycle widget lets users know the state of articles within the publishing pipeline.     Business Impact   Our innovations have increased productivity and reduced costs. The business impact driven by Tech Zone has grown significantly since the community was launched.   User activity in Tech Zone has increased steadily each year. We have driven user engagement through the unique use of leaderboards, and competitions such as Knowledge Champions League and TACode. As of the end of March 2015 there have been: 55,000+ Discussions Started 201,000+ Replies 32,000+ Articles Created 44,000+ Article Kudos 18,000+ Article Case Links 1,700+ Articles published to Cisco.com Our engagement initiatives and innovations both promote and facilitate user activity that leads to cost savings. Tech Zone articles shared with customers by publishing to Cisco.com and our mobile support app have saved Cisco over $24M so far this fiscal year (Aug 2014 through Mar 2015) by avoiding additional support cases, and are projected to save over $36M by the end of the year (July 2015). Last fiscal year the savings were over $17M, so the savings have nearly doubled year over year.    Cisco has embraced knowledge in an unprecedented way in order to transform our business and drive the success of our customers. The success of Tech Zone has proven that the Lithium platform is much more powerful than discussion boards. By pioneering new methodologies and human-centered behaviors that are not led only by tools, we have evolved to truly "social" knowledge management, which provides just-in-time, as well as institutional learning. Any organization can transition from email communications to a collaborative environment where knowledge valuable to the organization and its customers is naturally captured, enhanced, and reused by the community, and users that create and curate that content can be empowered and recognized. As word of our success spreads, our engagements have expanded to include onboarding Cisco Engineering, Professional Services, and Sales organizations, as well as expanding our technical support community to include Cisco Partners.

Company: Claro   Entry submitted by:  Iasmine Pereira (Iasmine) and Luciano Piva (Lpivap)   Community:  Comunidade Claro hdtv (http://comunidadeclarohdtv.claro.com.br/) Lithy category: Total Community All Star   Claro TV is a Brazilian satellite pay-TV operator, controlled by Mexican company America Movil, one of the largest groups of mobile telephony in the world that, from 2006, began to adopt Claro brand in 16 countries of America. With over 3 million subscribers, Claro TV is now the fourth largest pay-TV operator in Brazil.      We decided to implement the Community and LSW because we wanted a new user experience for our brand which would bring with it key business and marketing opportunities such as: Call deflection; Reduced customer attrition; ROI optimization; Become an innovative player in the Brazilian Market; Create a CRM channel with our members and customers; Reduced Support costs.     Benefits of a Total Community   Both LSW and Community have been decisive in helping us be more effective on social channels and establishing a closer brand relationship with our customers.   The Community is a source of valuable content both for customers looking for solutions to problems and to Claro TV fans searching for the latest Claro news. To help direct our customers to the community from our main domain and ensure they can quickly find the information they need, the Claro TV website was redeveloped to include several various touch points to the community and federated search, leading to a 45% increase in Community page views.   In addition to our own promotion efforts, the community has benefited from seeing its content shared on the social web by some of our fans, expanding the community’s reach and driving engagement.   The Community also increased registrations for Minha Claro, an exclusive online account management tool for Claro customers. This increase is very important because not only is Minha Claro useful for future CRM purposes, the tool offers a number of support features that generate further call deflection from Customer Support.   With LSW we are able to unify support across social channels, and the agents are able to answer more questions in less time.  This productivity increase meant we were able to reduce the team while maintaining our SLA’s and volume of response.  The integration of Community and LSW means that we are able to link to community topics in our social responses, potentially reducing agents’ time to response while providing an additional means of promoting the community.   Our results   In the first 8 months of the ClaroTV Community and Social support through LSW we have seen impressive results:   40% month on month growth of unique visitors 23% month on month growth of registrations 18% month on month growth of new topics 86% customer satisfaction score for social support through LSW 50% increase in agent responses per day compared to our previous tool   On top of that, solution views continue to grow 100% month on month, increasing the reach of peer-to-peer solved topics and potentially contributing to support deflection.      

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

Company: Vodafone Turkey Entry submitted by:  Fahrünnisa Bilgin (FahrunnisaB)  Online Product Specialist - CMS & Social Media     Community:  Vodafone Forum (forum.vodafone.com.tr) Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Vodafone revolutionized digital transformation in the Turkish telecommunication market. With a market share of %33,9 (Feb'15) Vodafone Turkey is in use of innovative online technologies and social media to service the special needs of Turkish mobile customers. Vodafone Forum launched in March 2012, as Turkey's first open discussion platform among competition is representing Vodafone Turkey with customer care on social media. Today Vodafone Forum is used as a marketing and support platform, increasing engagement of users through super user cultivation and brand advocacy.      Vodafone Forum is the “go-to” place for products and services, campaigns, apps, network coverage with peer-to-peer communication… providing a new channel for feedback and exchange between VF customers, customer operations, marketing and product teams. Our vision is to reach customers online and achieve first hand resolution. Vodafone Forum's business model contributes to reducing call centre costs by deflecting calls, decreasing response times and increasing user generated content.   With Vodafone Forum, we are reaching out to more than 600 K visitors, deflecting an average of 150 K calls monthly, making huge savings of more than 250 K USD annually.     We are saving response time with a moderation team of 12 dedicated people and 2 admins. We have got 12 super users, as customers with a certain knowledge; willing to help others, loving to spend time on Vodafone Forum. Most of them are helping users in  their leisure times. Our company is counting on them in cooperating with them for resolving customer needs.   Meet HamdullahH Hamdullah is Vodafone Forum's indispensable superuser, employed as store manager at the Vodafone Shop franchise in Bingöl. He's almost working as a full time moderator. He has got 5.251 kudos, 5.648 posts, 444 solutions. He says about himself:"When I'm driving the car I keep responding to posts during red light." HamdullahH is the happiest user about mobile forum.   Meet ZeynepK  ZeynepK was working at the Vodafone Shop franchise, she used to respond to posts in Vodafone Forum as daily routine. Vodafone Forum team was looking for a new team member, when ZeynepK was looking for an opportunity in social media, now she is employed in Vodafone Forum responding team.   Meet SeckinK SeckinK is a university student, his first Vodafone Forum post was a deep criticism about network performance. He later became a voluenteer of Forum when the social media team sent network people to his residence to solve the issue. Meanwhile SeckinK has gained expertise on devices, he's broadcasting videos on devices and Vodafone services. See SeckinK's latest video on Sony Xperia Z3.     Transferring support savings to e-commerce activities   The time and help amount realized by our superusers has an impact of 5 support agents which makes cost reduction up to 70 K USD annually. We had the choice to use these savings in marketing campaigns to boost e-commerce activities.    Our business results    Vodafone Forum has more than doubled its objectives in 3 years… - attracting 80 K + users (versus goal of 50 K) - 500 K + visitors per month (versus goal of 250 K) - we have achieved twice as much call deflection than our target estimations  - annually 250 K USD call deflection savings (versus goal of 150 K)   The results of the quality-based community growth strategy have made Vodafone Turkey the fastest-growing Forum in Vodafone Group’s 21 countries.        

Company: Vodafone Turkey Entry submitted by:  Fahrünnisa Bilgin (FahrunnisaB)  Online Product Specialist - CMS & Social Media     Community:  Vodafone Forum (forum.vodafone.com.tr) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone revolutionized digital transformation in the Turkish telecommunication market. With a market share of %33,9 (Feb'15) Vodafone Turkey is in use of innovative online technologies and social media to service the special needs of Turkish mobile customers. Vodafone Forum launched in March 2012, as Turkey's first open discussion platform among competition is representing Vodafone Turkey with customer care on social media. Today Vodafone Forum is used as a marketing and support platform, increasing engagement of users through super user cultivation and brand advocacy.      Vodafone's super users speak up to the customer   Vodafone Turkey's  marketing strategy in social media is to increase the engagement rate and use a humanized tone of voice in customer care. Lithium is playing a decisive role in adapting a super user program for brand advocacy. We have started super user cultivation in Vodafone Forum as of 2012 and gained our first super users through several strategies alligned with brand & marketing teams within the company. We have several super users creating thousands of comments and spending many days online. They provide valuable content and share their expertise on Vodafone products and high-tech devices. Most importantly they are representing Vodafone brand and answering questions of Vodafone customers and non-customers. Super users are referring Vodafone products to non-customers, convince people of Vodafone's innovative products and convert them to Vodafone customers.        Our marketing campaign   Super Users meet CEO   We have organized a program called “Kings of the Vodafone Forum” with our internal stakeholders brand advocates in Vodafone headquarters. All of the members joined have met with each other, presented their ideas and tested the brand new version of Vodafone Forum, as well as the initial launch of mobile Vodafone Forum. In the afternoon super users had a chance to meet and greet with our high level managers (Including CEO of Vodafone Turkey!). At the end of the day they enjoyed a dinner on the rooftop with a great view of Istanbul Bosporus.         Vodafone Forum Super User activation   As Vodafone Turkey we have divided our super user cultivation activities with segmented communication strategies. Last year we  measured active employees on Forum and checked the awareness of the community, it was only 6% of the company.   Firstly an internal e-mail bulletin has been designed for raising awareness, themed as "What's going on in Vodafone Forum". It is highlighting 2 major issues about customer experience and appreciating active employees of the week sent to C-level directors perıodically. The sense of being appreciated and of competition is quickly spread with WOM in the company and started to gain organic user growth. Another recruitment is held on company orientation program, one the greatest moments for fresh minds and open ideas. Almost all newcomers are becoming a member, they are very active about products and services.   In April 14' we have celebrated the 2 nd anniversary of Vodafone Forum with a promotion campaign. In order to take benefit of the promotion, you had to be a member of  Vodafone Forum  already or  quickly subscribed at the Forum desk using Vodafone branded tablets in our headquarter.   Campaign results   This campaign had very positive effects and we have gained more than 300 employees just in 2 days!      Heroes of Vodafone Forum   Following Super user activation in Vodafone Forum, the average time spent and number of comments posted by super users has doubled. With the employee activation program, Vodafone Turkey has gained more than 300 employees and 15 of them are candidated to become a hero member on Forum. Later on we have cultivated these users with e-mails and instructions, in order to keep them active and let them a Vodafone hero in the community.        

Company: Vodafone Turkey Entry submitted by:  Fahrünnisa Bilgin (FahrunnisaB)  Online Product Specialist - CMS & Social Media     Community:  Vodafone Forum (forum.vodafone.com.tr) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Vodafone revolutionized digital transformation in the Turkish telecommunication market. With a market share of %33,9 (Feb'15) Vodafone Turkey is in use of innovative online technologies and social media to service the special needs of Turkish mobile customers. Vodafone Forum launched in March 2012, as Turkey's first open discussion platform among competition is representing Vodafone Turkey with customer care on social media. Today Vodafone Forum is used as a marketing and support platform, increasing engagement of users through super user cultivation and brand advocacy.        Our 2014 customer satisfaction initiatives   At Vodafone Turkey, we take customer care to heart   Vodafone Turkey has a proactive approach in social media to collect customer insight. We have improved our success model, based on one-to-one customer care; where people receive answers from their personal moderators and super users. With these initiatives customers are getting a unique online experience since launch of Forum in 2012.      In 2014 we have listened to our super users and established new areas in Forum. We have created new discusission opportunities inside of boards for Vodafone Turkey's youth segment named "Vodafone Freezone" and "Vodafone Arena", which came through a partnership of Vodafone with the turkish soccer team Beşiktaş JK.   Our moderators are engaging users continuously, we have contests to drive user activities, where we awarded winners with high-tech devices such as tablets and 3g modems.   We have established a buddy programme in Vodafone Forum where we continue to guide people after problem resolution and provide feedback. In this way, Vodafone enables people to get in touch with each other and Vodafone Forum  has excellent reputation with 80 K + registered users, 500 K + unique visitors and 1.2 M + pageviews monthly.       The issue that we were looking to solve with Lithium   We respect our customers and listen to their wishes   It was the most interesting case when one of our Forum users contacted us about a tariff change, which could be done only in one of our Vodafone Shops. The problem was that the user was disabled, our moderators tried to help online, but we came to know that the user was not able to get out of his house. It was clear for us, that we needed take one step more for getting this issue resolved. That's why our community admin has got in contact with the members of our sales & support team and we managed a meeting with the user and took a trip to his flat in the asian side of Istanbul. The tariff change was recorded in our documents and the case was resolved onsite. It was an amazing success story, which has been celebrated by our customer operation manager. Social media team is still chatting with this user from time to time.     Our results   We believe that everybody has the right to use the latest technology   The VF Forum team has come up with a new concept: reserving a special device stock and sending the device and desired accesories to the Vodafone Shop for customer pick-up. This method of delivery has great appeal to customers in rural areas who typically are not able to choose from a wide variety of devices. With Lithium's community platform,we communicated the complete device delivery process. This contributed to an increase in Vodafone Forum's eNPS score in a year with 29 points from -6 to +22.    

Company: Webroot  Entry submitted by: Nicholas Tolstoshev (tolstoshev) Community Manager  Community: Webroot Community (https://community.webroot.com)  Lithy category: Most Creative Community Promotion or Launch   Webroot is the market leader in cloud-based, real-time internet threat detection for consumers, businesses and enterprises. We have revolutionized internet security to protect all the ways you connect online. Webroot delivers real-time advanced internet threat protection to customers through its BrightCloud® security intelligence platform, and its SecureAnywhere™ suite of security products for endpoints, mobile devices and corporate networks.   Webroot Brings the Online VIP Experience Offline!   This year, we’re proud to submit a Lithy nomination for “Most Creative Community Promotion or Launch” category based on an event we held for one of our super users. Here’s the story.   When the Webroot community was first started back in 2012, we set up a program to reward our power users and called it the Webroot VIP Program.  The community team built the program to recognize and reward the most active, influential members via a ranking system based on a combination of posts, kudos, accepted solutions, and other factors. The rewards were a mix of moderator abilities and gifts, and were based on members’ feedback so we were sure that they were the most valuable rewards we could offer.   One of the top rewards (at the Silver VIP level) was an all-expenses-paid trip to the nearest Webroot office, and in 2014 the first community member reached that level.  Known on the community as TripleHelix, Daniel Godin had been an active member of the community from the beginning.  He is a veteran of online communities and participates not only the Webroot community, but several other well-known communities.  His participation in various Microsoft communities earned him the coveted Microsoft MVP title several years running.   The Plan   When we initially determined the awards of each rank in the VIP program, we were unsure what the Silver VIP “visit the to the headquarters” would entail.  As Daniel approached this rank,  Anna Kim, Sr. Advocate Programs Manager, and I started to plan out what the visit would look like.  First we selected the date and length of the visit.  Daniel would fly in from Toronto and stay with us for two days.  Anna came up with an agenda of meetings with key teams that Daniel was excited to meet, and organized a welcome party for the first day.  I, as the person who interacted with Daniel the most, would pick him up from the airport and escort him around the office and go with him to meetings.  We set up meetings with folks form all different departments, from developers, to support, to marketing and the executive staff – even the CEO. We wanted to make sure his visit truly made him feel like a VIP.     The Visit – Day 1   When the day came, I drove to the airport to meet Daniel.  Things kicked off with him meeting the entire social media and community team, then jumped right into meetings with all the different Webroot staff.  He met with the senior product developers, a group meeting with the support, QA and threat research teams, and then followed up with a meeting with one of the top product managers.    Mid-day, we gathered the entire Colorado office together for a “VIP meet and greet” with a cake reception. Webroot employees were able to thank him in person and Daniel could take photos with them.     At the end of the first day we took Daniel into Boulder for dinner and some sightseeing.  After a bit of walking around, he was quite ready to call it an evening.  Between jetlag, travel, and a very full day, we’d worn him out, but he was very happy and excited.   The Visit – Day 2   The next morning Daniel had a breakfast meeting with our Executive VP of Products &  Strategy, Mike Malloy, after which Mike took him to a meeting of all of the executive staff and the CEO.  The CEO took him to the front of the room and introduced him and thanked him for all the help he had provided to Webroot through his participation in the community.  Then there was an opportunity for the executives to ask him questions about what he through of the product and any ideas for improvements he wanted to share. Daniel said that is really meant the world to him to be treated as he was by our executive staff – something that not many other companies would do.   He then hopped onto a Google hangout that Nic regularly leads for our VIPs. He mentioned that he had a surprise guest joining him and it was a fun delight for the rest of the VIPs to see Daniel standing with Nic (and a great way to encourage others to reach the Silver VIP level!)   His visit wrapped up with Daniel shadowing members of our community team and the best part – hitting the button to push our most recent product release live!   Positives outcomes from the visit Daniel’s first experience with Webroot was with a company called Prevx, that Webroot acquired and rebuilt their technology around.  The heart of Prevx was a whiz kid from the UK named Joe, who invented the new cloud-based technology.  Not only was he a programming whiz, but he also was a fan of online communities.  He participated in the Wilders Security Forum, which was a platform-agnostic place for security professionals and enthusiasts to discuss security and anti-virus.  Joe and Daniel connected there and became fast friends.  Joe instinctively grasped the importance of customer feedback through directly talking to customers, rather than getting that feedback through layers of employees.  He would give Daniel beta builds to test and ask him for his opinions on new features and design decisions.  Joe ended up leaving Webroot shortly before Daniel came to visit, to go work on another venture.  Daniel’s visit was well timed in that he got to make new connections with developers, product managers, and other folks here at Webroot, to replace the relationship he had with Joe.  As an outcome of this, we revamped our beta program and recruited more community members to work directly with PMs, devs, and QA in the private beta forum.  What started as an informal relationship grew to a formal beta program, thanks in part to Daniel’s visit.  We now have a Beta group with almost 200 members and thousands of posts discussing testing new features.  We got developers, QA folks and product managers posting in there and talking directly to customers, just the way Joe and Daniel used to. When Daniel visited Webroot, I had been with the company for less than a year.  I was still relatively new, and didn’t yet know as many people throughout the company as I needed to as a community manager.  Anna Kim is a 15 year veteran of Webroot, and the sister of the founder of the company.  She was able to use her knowledge and connections to select the right people to talk with.  Getting to escort Daniel to those meetings and helping facilitate them helped build connections for me as well as for him.  I got to know people at Webroot that I hadn’t met yet, and that helped propel the community to be more useful to employees at Webroot. We took many pictures from the visit and posted on the community to share Daniel’s visit with everyone, as you can see here: https://community.webroot.com/t5/Introduce-yourself-to-the/TripleHelix-visits-Webroot-HQ/m-p/126332 This allowed the rest of the community power users to share in the experience, and also be motivated towards the day when they would reach the VIP level and get their turn to visit.  That thread got over 1,000 pageviews, both for community members, users of the Webroot products, and Webroot employees. Meeting Daniel in person and getting to spend so much time with him cemented the relationship that we’d begun online.  That helped tide us over the ups and downs of any relationship (such as the time when I accidentally forgot to invite him to the new private Beta group and made him feel slighted).   Negative feedback from the visit: The one negative feedback that we heard from some Webroot employees was whether this visit was a suitable use of company resources.  Was it worth it to fly Daniel here, put him up in a hotel, and spend dozens of employee hours towards this project?  This showed us that the importance of customer feedback wasn’t completely well understood by everyone here at Webroot.  It made us realize that we still had work to do to evangelize the importance of community to the company at large.  That led us to kick off a project in 2015 to improve employee engagement in the community (which will hopefully be a story for a future Lithy award submission).   We asked Daniel to let us know what the experience was from his perspective, to make sure that the trip was valuable from his perspective.  And also to see if there was any feedback for improvements for next time.  Here’s what he had to say:   My visit to Webroot HQ was an awesome and once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. The first day Nic the Community Manager picked me up from the Denver airport and we drove up north to Broomfield where the Webroot Head Office is and we chatted all the way. Once we got there the Community & Social team had lunch ready for us and they all made me feel at home and very welcomed. Anna had an agenda made up for me for the afternoon and the next day, which allowed me to meet many groups of staff such as the Threat Research/Support teams and the Director of Threat Research let me push the button to release the latest Beta to Beta testers which was easy and fun. In the early afternoon they had a “Welcome to Webroot” cake and social hour with all the staff so I got to meet many people which I now call friends (and the Cake didn’t last too long!). Then I spent the rest of the afternoon with the Community & Social Teams to see what they do from their point of view and on the other side of the screen it’s a small world!   For the evening the Community & Social team took me out for dinner at a very nice place in Boulder, Colorado where Webroot had its beginning in 1997. Then we walked around Boulder for a couple of hours - what a nice city and the view of the mountains was so beautiful. The next morning I had breakfast with Mike Malloy, Executive VP of Products & Strategy and we had a very nice chat. Then he came and got me and had me come into an Executive Staff meeting and introduced me as an Ambassador of Webroot. Some of the senior staff had questions for me so I gave them my answers & advice, and in the end they all stood up and clapped to thank me and in turn I thanked them. As Mike was walking me out, the CEO Dick Williams shook my hand and said “thank you, and thank you for being an Ambassador of Webroot” - that really touched my heart, as they all were so nice. The rest of the day I spent my time with the Community/Social Groups and got to meet quite a few more Webroot staff such as the Development Group, and the Technical Product Manager. We had a nice chat and it was nice to meet them in person. The time went so fast, and then it was time for Nic to take me back to the airport to fly home. I really enjoyed myself with all the nice people I got to meet at Webroot HQ and I would like to thank all of them for making it a fantastic journey. Like I said, I will never forget it. Here are some very nice moments of my visit: https://community.webroot.com/t5/Introduce-yourself-to-the/TripleHelix-visits-Webroot-HQ/td-p/126332n   Thanks, Daniel A Godin     Goal of this promotion: Build a loyalty program to reward members of our community   Why it was unique: We invited one of our VIP members to come visit our office in an all-expenses paid visit.   Results of the promotion: Lots of good connections with our top VIP within the company as well as the opportunity to showcase the rewards that our VIPs receive for being advocates and participating in the community.   Our video:       

Company: Autodesk  Entry submitted by: Lois Townsend (loisT) Director, Social Media and Community Community: Autodesk Community (Forums.autodesk.com) Lithy category: Most Creative Community 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—including the last 19 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects—use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they're ever built or created. From blockbuster visual effects and buildings that create their own energy to electric cars and the batteries that power them, the work of our 3D software customers is everywhere you look.   Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art 3D software for global markets. Through our apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android, we're also making design technology accessible to professional designers as well as amateur designers, homeowners, students, and casual creators. Whether it's a kid looking to build a new contraption, a seasoned pro sketching out a great new idea, or someone who just wants to amp up their creative output, we're taking technology originally built for movie studios, automakers, and architectural firms, and making it available to anyone who wants to create and share their ideas with the world.   Autodesk Drives Customer Loyalty with Collaborative and Proactive Community   How does a B2B software company build customer loyalty and increase the value of each customer with an ever-changing social landscape? Autodesk, one of the world leaders in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, has found the answer – delivering on customers’ needs before they ask. The company drives customer loyalty and product affinity through a Total Community strategy. The strategy includes activations on Facebook, nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter, more than 40 million views on YouTube, and a branded community, running on the Lithium platform, that has seen its unique visitors grow by 34% in the last year.     One of the pillars of the Autodesk social strategy is its branded community which is the main hub for directly connecting with customers. Dating back to 1986, with Compuserve, Autodesk has leveraged community to foster peer-to-peer to support, drive greater brand affinity, and solidify relationships with its customers. It has evolved to focus on collaborating with and anticipating the needs of customers.   Now its eight communities in multiple languages, offer customers unique experiences by industry, region, and expertise level. The company shares product use information, solves potential product issues, and promotes best practices to proactively supply customers with the tools and information needed for a successful product experience.     The company’s collaborative and proactive approach is supported by several key programs, including Expert Elite and Autodesk Help Webinars. The tactics have delivered the following success metrics: Autodeskcommunities received over 27 million unique visits in the last 12 months. Annually, the community successfully serves answers to millions of customers, yielding a multimillion dollar value to Autodeskand its customers. Customer success is tracked and measured via surveys to ensure that the community is providing actual solutions, and at an increasing rate. The community has more than 2 million registered members that have shared more than 135,000 kudos and over 20,000 newly accepted solutions in the last year.   Expert Elite:   Autodesk’s Expert Elite are the Super Fans and lifeblood of the Autodesk Community. The Autodesk Expert Elite program was created to recognize customers around the world who have contributed a significant amount of time, knowledge, and assistance to fellow customers. These people have demonstrated a strong sense of leadership and use an engaging style of collaboration that contributes to a healthy and valuable customer community. The program now has over 200 members representing 23 different countries. They have delivered 7,000 accepted solutions, received 17,000 kudos and posted 60,000 replies.   The unique aspect about the Expert Elite program is that it doesn’t stop at community; it is the concept of Total Community. The program not only values a user’s contribution within the community, but outside of it as well. Autodesk looks at the contributions people are making on personal blogs and other social channels, as well as at offline events such as training seminars, to really see the conversations happen full circle.   One Expert Elite, Paul Munford is a great example of Total Community. He wanted to spread the word to let people know about the terrific support options available to Autodesk customers. He interviewed various Autodesk Help team members and then posted his story on his personal blog.  He then amplified it on his other social channels for maximum reach.  Not only did Paul feel passionate enough to write about the Autodesk Help team, but he has posted 943 times, received 198 Kudos and contributed 53 solutions in the community. This example shows the loyalty Autodesk has created with their trusted fans. It is not only about providing customers immediate answers for questions, but building relationships with them and bringing them into the Autodesk family.   Autodesk further drives loyalty among the Expert Elites by offering monthly webinars to share company and product news, providing free software, and hosting an annual Summit where the Expert Elites and Autodesk representatives can meet in person.  At the last Summit held in December 2014, the EE’s had a chance to meet informally over a lunch with CEO Carl Bass, and also had informal presentations and Q&A sessions with the CTO and VP of Cloud.  All of the EE’s are under NDA and therefore Autodesk can share news and information normally restricted for employees only, allowing for early input and feedback from this elite group of customers that is incorporated into products and services.   Autodesk Help Webinars:   Autodesk recognized the importance of video content on the community, and last year piloted and launched a webinar program to proactively offer customers another way to learn about and experience Autodesk products. For instance, the Installation and Licensing Community hosted “Troubleshooting Desktop Subscription Licensing issues” webinar to give users the information they need to get the “software up and ready.”  The Autodesk Help webinar series is a virtual studio house, with regular, and in some cases weekly offerings.  Webinar attendance can be as high as 200 live attendees and videos posted online can reach over 5,000 views.   The webinars proactively target popular topic areas to address questions or in response to customer conversations surfaced elsewhere on the community. The webinars are purely for support and learning, providing customers with information that allows them to get products up and running quickly and provide a deep knowledge about functionality, with the ultimate goal of helping customers to optimize productivity and utility of their Autodesk software.  Over 50% of webinar attendees are repeat participants because they derive continued value from the webinar content.  Put into customer words, “The session was great, and I plan to attend as many as I can.  Although I am relatively proficient there is always something I can learn.”   Innovating with success measurement - The Gratitude Index:   Autodesk knew that having a better understanding of their customer sentiment, relative to competitors and known market leaders, was critical to a successful long-term social strategy. To achieve that goal, the company‘s global social media support team created the Gratitude Index, which is an algorithm based on keywords and the number of social mentions that contained specific words associated with gratitude, thanks, and appreciation. In other words, it was an actual measurement of customers expressing their gratitude for the support they received from the Autodesk Help team. The Gratitude Index is used to measure customer satisfaction and efficiency; a qualitative social ROI. The index has become a key metric for the team and is shared up to the highest leadership levels at Autodesk.  Currently, and consistently, Autodesk leads among other software companies and ranks among top brands from other industries.   Autodesk also uses key words to track customers that have expressed frustration and a negative sentiment. The @AutodeskHelp team works with these customers to solve issues and turn negative situations around, when possible, moving a frustrated customer to a delighted one. The challenging feedback is also used to inform how the team and Autodesk can better serve customers and surface potential problems on the horizon.   In fact, the negative feedback is embraced almost more tightly because there is rich insight that can be gleaned about how to improve the customer experience, from product purchase to usage, to renewal and repurchase.   It's Working:   Autodesk’s Total Community strategy is working, with a Klout Score of 85, they are in the top percentile of social influencers.  And, when customer detractors are engaged, Autodesk’s Help team converts at least twice as many as those who remain upset.   The strategy is embraced from the top down, as evidenced by a recent blog post by CEO Carl Bass who frequently participates in the Fusion 360 community as it is one of Autodesk’s strategic products.   Check out the Fusion 360 community and in particular, this recent blog from Carl that talks about building the product “hand-in-hand with the Fusion community,” along with a blog comment from one of the Expert Elites that states “I’ve seen so many examples where suggestions were heard, understood, refined, and implemented in an amazingly short time frame.”  This is exactly what Autodesk wants to achieve, to drive even greater levels of customer loyalty.     To celebrate these important milestones of Autodesk's Total Community success through our Expert Elite program and Help Webinars, we recently were nominated for a Forrester Groundswell award-- and we won!   Here's the video that accompanied this prestigious win:    

Company: MEO (Portugal Telecom)  Entry submitted by: Hugo Rebelo, Self Care Manager and Vanessa Simão (Vanessa_Simao)  Community: MEO FÓRUM (https://forum.meo.pt/)  Lithy category: Social ROI Titan   MEO is a fully owned subsidiary of PT Portugal, a leading telecommunications and multimedia operator based in Portugal. The company’s activities extend across all telecommunications segments: fixed line, mobile, multimedia, data and business solutions. In the Portuguese market, PT is the leader in all segments it operates, with over 6 million mobile subscribers, 2.5 million wireline voice customers, 1.4 million pay-tv customers and 1.4 million broadband customers. PT is the pioneer and the market leader of convergent services, with a comprehensive offer of 3Play and 4Play bundles. In 2014 domestic business revenues amounted to Eur 2,455 million.    In April 2014 we launched the online community forum.meo.pt (MEO Forum), a user generated knowledge platform aimed at providing first aid care to customers, despite the service, brand or equipment they have, and at the same time promoting brand advocacy.   Integrated in a new digital strategy, where all digital customer touch-points are managed to ensure consistent brand experience and seamless customer journeys, the MEO Forum was launched as a crucial layer of our e-care channels framework.   Since day one we developed the MEO Forum to be fully aligned with the other MEO digital platforms and sites, ensuring the desired consistency and synergies: Common digital brand guidelines Fully integrated within meo.pt site, as the other main digital platforms such as the customer selfcare site, the help and support contents, or the online store Leverage on the single sign on (Login) used by all the MEO sites ecosystem Contribute to traffic and lead generation through strong SEO performance Social media integration with facebook Mobile first strategy to drive user experience and address increasing usage of smartphones   Being such a young community, our main objective was to increase MEO brand credibility and to become our customer’s first choice when searching for online support. We established 3 main goals for the project:   Member acquisition and usage growth During the first 9 monthsof existence, MEO Forum outperformed our estimates across all the relevant metrics: 7.105 members were acquired, generating 20.444 new posts in a total of 662.352 visits Each new topic resulted in 5 new response posts with 12% of them receiving Kudos MEO Forum reached market leadership, overtaking the main competitor’s long established online community, with more than four years of activity (source: webspectator) A comprehensive marketing campaign was implemented to support the project launch. Several communication techniques were used to promote the forum, such as email marketing, banners in our web sites, social media campaigns, as well as a few non digital communication channels.   Additionally, we leveraged on the existing MEO single sign on (a proprietary sign on service with over 2.5 million users) to simplify registration and removing an important barrier to customer adoption and participation.   2. Resolution rate and call deflection   The main purpose of having an online community was to provide good and credible first aid care to customers, in order to improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer care costs with traditional channels.   Since we launched the forum, we are recording a decrease in the percentage of customers who need to use another customer care channel after visiting the forum, either for posting or just browsing for a solution. We call this “Leakage” – in 2014 less than 5% of the MEO Forum visitors had to contact a traditional customer care channel within the following 7 days.   To ensure that the appropriate content is provided to the community to minimize leakage, we have dedicated staff members and moderators with complementary roles. Staff members are there to help customers with personal queries and are the official voice of MEO. Moderators help to moderate the community, controlling members’ behavior, providing support in most of the community questions, and also generating new content.   Technical tutorials created by our moderators and other loyal and more active members, are appreciated by the community and contribute greatly to this decrease. They have high page views numbers and are also used by our technical staff.   3. Customer journeys optimisation and customer listening   As customer journeys are becoming increasingly digital, the number of customers that are firstly searching for help in the internet is growing consistently.   With the launch of MEO Forum, we intended to bridge the gap in our digital presence, providing our customers with a branded and credible online community where they can interact with other members to solve their service queries.   As more and more of these customer journeys begin with a Google search, SEO becomes top priority when it comes to implement good customer experiences. The quality of the content created by the online community and the increasing number of visits is generating more SEO traffic to our MEO website, fueling lead generation and engagement with the brand. As of December 2014, 9% of the meo.pt website SEO traffic was generated by MEO Forum. MEO Forum strategy has been focusing on community listening to better understand our customer needs and provide valuable and timely information to the organization.   Today our help and support team and customer care teams are regularly updating their contents and processes based on insights from the community, which demonstrates how the MEO Forum helping to transform the way we serve our customers, beyond the digital frontier.   ROI   Despite the early stage of development, MEO Forum recorded fast growing adoption and usage metrics. In the last 12 months we had over 900 thousand visitors, which is close to 20% of the Portuguese population with internet access.   Based on the results achieved by the MEO Forum, and considering the outcomes of an online survey we conducted on the community website, we built a ROI model where we estimate savings in customer contact deflection of approximately € 560.000 during these first 12 months of activity.  

Company: Leroy Merlin Espana  Entry submitted by: Francisco Campos Dominguez (PacoCampos) Social Media Manager Community: Comunidad Leroy Merlin  (https://comunidad.leroymerlin.es/)  LSW social channels:  https://es-la.facebook.com/leroymerlines https://twitter.com/leroymerlin_es https://www.youtube.com/user/leroymerlines https://instagram.com/leroymerlines/ https://es.pinterest.com/leroymerlines/ Lithy category: Most Creative Community Promotion or Launch   Leroy Merlin Background   Leroy Merlin is the home improvement leader with 58 stores and has been in Spain for the last 25 years. Part of the ADEO Group, Leroy Merlin is the European home improvement retail leader. Leroy Merlin is an innovative company in which the term "employee" is not used, because 94% of the 8,000 people who work there are shareholders, and for that reason they are called "collaborators.”   The company’s values are: Share the will Share the knowledge Share the power Share the ownership   The company culture of sharing, co-constructing and co-directing, is in the DNA of each "collaborator" and therefore Leroy Merlin Spain is a “community” in itself.   The Community: The heart of social evolution   The company’s culture of "sharing" among consumers is growing every year. The new consumer wants to know the experiences of other customers before they buy. Leroy Merlin understands that  willingness to "share" is important, but not as important as the brands that are willing to listen and act accordingly.    There are many threats and opportunities that this new culture generates, but there are many strategies to overcome them. Leroy Merlin is aware that the "culture of sharing" is part of the company DNA so it decided that social evolution must be a priority.    The goal was to increase the productivity of each "collaborator" of each department, including: central purchasing, human resources, brick and mortar store teams, etc... In short, the entire company adapted the mission and started executing the new rules for the “new consumer.”    The strategy was to "truly be social and not just seem social.” This means that each "partner" should know the opportunities and concerns that the new environment poses in the company’s "mission" and every individual in the company is responsible to seize it. The option of trying to “seem social” in all the social activity in the marketing department was discarded.   The tactics focused on creating three major points between customers, employees and partners in order to be successful. The three points of contact are: 1.    Official social media channels in the most important and relevant social networks: a.    It is the meeting point between acquaintances and friends 2.    Physical stores (58 stores throughout Spain): a.    Physical meeting points between customers and employees 3.    Web + Sites related: a.    A digital meeting point between people who are passionate about home improvement in Spain was the heart of the social strategy   The operation kicked off in in 2012 with the launch and continued development of Leroy Merlin’s social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest with three objectives: 1.    Investigate and test: there were several thousands of activation strategies and touch-points with customers and collaborators that Leroy Merlin considered an "internal and external social laboratory" of the future community 2.    Recruiting: engaging users with social content to facilitate the subsequent launch of the Leroy Merlin community 3.    Define and optimize processes: internally listen to feedback to ensure the company is prepared to enable customers to propose improvements in the community.   After nearly two years of actively listening, the Leroy Merlin community launched in December 2014. It became the heart of Leroy Merlin and the online destination for professional opinion leaders, "home improvement" customers, DIY lovers, partners, collaborators, installers, etc. It became the place where people can learn and share their concerns, experiences and projects to do more and improve their home.   Social networks are formed by groups of friends who may or may not have common interests, and Communities are for groups of people unknown to each other but who share interests. The objective between 2011-2014 was to achieve a high volume of relationships with groups of friends in social networks (500,000+ followers and 26,000,000+ video views) and the end of 2015 was to use these relationships to enhance the discussions generated in the new Community. Four months later, the traffic from social networking accounts was 46.25 % of the total traffic to the Community. Leroy Merlin has a "Total Community."   Why participate in the Leroy Merlin Community and not another? This was the point from which Leroy Merlin started defining the Community, and the three reasons they determined were: 1.    Not only to assist other users, but the Community has hundreds of experts who can help solve consumer’s doubts 2.    Not only can consumers interact and learn in the online space, but physically too by attending weekly in-person events organized in Leroy Merlin stores 3.    Not only can consumers read recommendations of other consumers’ solutions, but they can also buy products needed to improve their homes.   In order to realize these objectives, in 2014 Leroy Merlin selected and trained over 80 store volunteers – called animators  - who carried out the company’s mission in each of the 58 stores. The goal for 2015 is to bring 200 new animators to ensure internal and external buzz, and to continue listening and learning from customers.   To measure the success of the Community, Leroy Merlin focused on four main KPIs:  1.    Number of visits: Whenever a client resolves a question by visiting the Community, the company saves hours of customer service in stores, improves brand image and increases commercial potential 2.    Number of content generated: Whenever members of the Community generate content for free, the company saves the cost of producing marketing/corporate materials 3.    Number of visits to the store: Every time the Community drives a customer to visit the online store a sales opportunity is generated 4.    Number of business opportunities enabled: Each time the stores detected an opportunity to improve service to customers and activate the company in the community that improves its profitability and brand image   The best promotion is to use it   The company is committed to "truly being social, and not just seeming social”. The launch of the Community made it very clear that participating and sharing in the Community and other social networks is part of the larger goal of having each client and collaborator meet their individual goals with social. The Community does that by providing peer-support, product reviews, questions answered by experts, etc. to help enrich their shopping experience.     The communication strategy of the Community launch went through the organic integration of it as a new feature that facilitates and improves all points of contact between the brand and its customers; all while fostering a new dimension of engagement.    Every collaborator, every store and every department of the company is responsible for using this new tool – the Community - and the ease of use to customers allows the company to create a much more continuous and close relationship with customers.    Leroy Merlin took an omni-channel, organic approach that improved over-time and which integrated into the daily lives of customers, employees and partners. By using the Community, all they key stakeholders were able to achieve their goals.     The model has involved a more gradual release, but identified by four major phases:   Focus on the integration of employees.  Milestone: Achieving critical mass of content and animators. Leroy Merlin focused on the 8,000 company employees understanding and living the evolution of this mission. They created monthly streaming, physical training as well as distributed 26 mobile terminals to “Super-animators,” meaning they created private groups in the Community to address their doubts and questions.  The next steps are the selection, training and integration of 150 new animators from all departments to ensure the best customer experience and better guidance to 8,000 employees.   How: https://youtu.be/VysNZtAysMQ Results (first three months): +85 Animators (employees in the stores) active in the community. +4,300 pieces of content 2. Focus on the integration of customers.     Milestone: Achieving critical mass of customers    Leroy Merlin focused on publicizing the Community to all customers in a personalized way with different points of contact with the brand, on and offline.Communication and promotional messages of the Community were led by customers.   How to: Posters in shops formed by the actual client projects, event flyers in checkout lines, workshops and demos in stores to help customers improve their homes, web banners, presence guides brochures, related magazines, websites to sharpen the content strategy.    In order to emphasize collaboration with TV, Bricomanía which airs weekly on Antena 3, has incorporated a 2-minute video in which one of the Leroy Merlin community members has a project and is interviewed in the program and commissioned to introduce the Community to the rest of lovers in the world of DIY, decoration, garden, etc.   Results (first three months): + 2,000 registrations completed + 15,000 members + 363.737 minutes online (24.2 minutes per member) + 50 community members have been contacted to meet them and become ambassadors and leaders of our communication campaign.   3. Focus on the integration of partners.   Milestone: Achieve critical mass of partners    Leroy Merlin focused on B2B, to publicize and integrate strategic partners such as the group of bloggers, installers and architects, to launch a personalized relationship model for each group.    How:    First steps:  Leroy Merlin has an internal platform with over 50 bloggers with whom they have begun to work together to co-create. They also have a group of 10 installers who are working together on integration.   4. Focus on the integration of suppliers.   Milestone: Activation of Social Commerce    Leroy Merlin focused on linking the Community with the range of products, launching the ability for users to test and evaluate products.    How: First steps: In a phase called a "Club of Testers," was accessed by the "Super-users" of the Community once they reached that level.  It allowed them to test products and helped define and co-create social commerce with the client.   Our video    

Company: Ooredoo Qatar  Entry submitted by: Muna Barakat (monabarakat) Community Manager Community: Ooredoo Community (http://community.ooredoo.qa/)  Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction    Ooredoo Qatar is a telecomm company based in Qatar. It is the first telecom company in the country. Ooredoo is a provider of mobile services, wireless and wire-line services, entertainment services, and content services, with varying market share in the domestic and international telecom markets and in the business (corporations and individuals) and residential markets.   Ooredoo went international few years back to include eight other telecom companies in countries such as, Kuwait, Oman, Maldives, Myanmar, Tunisia, and Algeria. Today, Ooredoo serve more than 90 million people internationally.   However, our Ooredoo Community is cozy when it comes to size. We focus on Qatar’s market that has around 2 million people. We launched Community on May 2014, so we are barely one year old.   Our 2014 customer satisfaction intiatives   Every person in Qatar has at least one device or service from Ooredoo. Due to our verity of services, we have high pressure on our customer service. Although we support our customers on many online and offline channels such as our website, Facebook, twitter, snapechat, instagram, call center, and shops, but we wanted to do the extra mile and offer our customers a unique experience where they can get help from their peers. This is where Lithium role comes!   We launched our forum around a year ago, but we are already seeing it grow nicely with members, quality content, and getting picked up by Google Although we haven’t done aggressive paid campaign, so this growth is mostly organic.   Ooredoo’s initiative to always offer what is new and different is what attracts customers to it. Peer to peer, social support forum, such as the solution that Lithium offers isn’t a common trend in Qatar or even the region. Being the first of its kind has pros and cons because it is harder to educate the public about these forums. The choice of having a young female community manager is also an indication of unorthodox practice, because Ooredoo is all about the end result and not following what is common or average.   Being keen on customer satisfaction, we wanted to hit three main areas: Humanize our brand Weather you are an Ooredoo staff or regular customer on Community, we encourage the user to show his character. Our style of writing is more casual. The result? Customers started to change the image of a faceless corporate, and having names associated with Ooredoo such as the team working on Community like me, and other Ooredoo staff members. Own our content You saw a solution of how to restart your Wi-Fi device of Facebook five months ago. Today, your Wi-Fi started to act up and you need this valuable post, could you find it? With many social media channels like Facebook, twitter, and instagram, it is very tiring and sometimes impossible to find old content. Owing our content meant hassle free to our customers. And it was a win/win solution for our product team that could monitor feedback and gain market research info in a way, AND our customers who don’t have to wait on the phone for many cases. A hub for customers to share, chill, and be heard Increasing enthusiasm level toward our brand get personal with our customers, know who they are, what changes they need, and what they like to watch as a movie so we can include it on our Mozaic service, and many other scenarios.   Our results   There is a causality effect between Community and decrease in customer complaints, but we don’t think it is a direct causality.   However, we have many posts from our super-users, and active users who expressed their satisfaction, or promoted our Ooredoo services on Community countless times, such as this topic that gave a review to our most common services:     This is an example of a user (who’s not a super user) who gave review on Mozaic service. In return, one of our senior experts on Mozaic replied to every points the user gave, provided future plans, and offered beta trail chances for the user to test. Here are some of the reactions: