Company: Vipnet  Entry submitted by: Hrvoje Puljko (puljac) Community (Forum) expert Community: VIP forum (http://forum.vip.hr) Lithy category: Best Community Design   Vipnet is the first private mobile network operator in Croatia, a part of the Telekom Austria Group. By entering the Croatian telecommunications market in 1998, Vipnet introduced competition into mobile telephony. Over the last 15 years Vipnet acquired the status of the most renowned innovation leader on the telecommunications market in Croatia.   Vipnet was the first in Europe to demonstrate the HSPA network, thus offering mobile Internet access that is faster than ADSL. Furthermore, Vipnet was among the first in the world to successfully test HSPA+ technology for mobile broadband.   In June 2013 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb Vipnet set a new world record for the fixed segment with speeds of 5 Gbit/s using the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network, and in the mobile segment presented speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s based on 4.5G – LTE Advanced technology. In September 2012 and again this year Vipnet was proclaimed winner in the Best value for money for business in the Business Best Buy Award. Vipnet currently has more than 2 million customers.   Vip forum as a goal has multiscreen customer experience, to increase street credibility, and to be customers' first choice when searching for support information’s.     Vip forum also has a purpose to increase brand awareness and to be the place for engaging existing and future Vip customers.     THE STRUCTURE In August 2013 we launched the first telco brand community in Croatia.   It is a small step in the world but big in Croatia where customers  don’t forgive unfriendly functionalities & illogical designs, because community is here for the users, not for designers or employees!   Well established names from online community and IT/telco journalists were involved in Vip forum trial and helped to design final version of community platform.   During the 2 week trial, beta testers spent more than 200 hours online and generated more than 50 different ideas and improvements which were implemented in final Vip forum version.   We made it clear in structure, transparent at the glance, light to use and spend time, easy to find answers & support.   We are the first telco community which is open to non-Vip & Vip customers with the intention to get customers help themselves.   COVER PAGE CALL FOR ACTION   FRONT PAGE BIG VISUAL BUTTONS – we are offering a way for a customer to Registrate / Login in to our community with these BIG buttons, familiar colors and sentences that are describing the action.     After customer login, he can now use his visual designed User Panel:   On the right side MENU of the cover we have visual help icons (links) to support customer  if this is his first time on Forum:   After customer login, he can now use his personalized custom component which depends on his rank and role: Personalized links Greeting and user avatar Last user posts   MENU CUSTOM COMPONENT TAB beneath main category icons allows customers to have an overview of what's new in a few seconds!     And depending on if user is logged in or not, he can see the personalized posts he didn’t read from the last visit to the community:     CSS CUSTOMIZATION   We made lot of CSS customization in our community but the latest demands from our community members were this three for better functionality and visualization:   Provided better “SOLUTION PROVIDED” visualization:   Provided better “QUOTE” custom visibility and automatically @mention the user we quote:   MOBILE VERSION   Cover page easy to use! Very similar to desktop version which is also available for mobiles. Same icons, structure & features are now available to customers!                

Company: Vipnet  Entry submitted by: Hrvoje Puljko (puljac) Community (Forum) expert Community: Vip forum (http://forum.vip.hr) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Vipnet is the first private mobile network operator in Croatia, a part of the Telekom Austria Group. By entering the Croatian telecommunications market in 1998, Vipnet introduced competition into mobile telephony. Over the last 15 years Vipnet acquired the status of the most renowned innovation leader on the telecommunications market in Croatia.   Vipnet was the first in Europe to demonstrate the HSPA network, thus offering mobile Internet access that is faster than ADSL. Furthermore, Vipnet was among the first in the world to successfully test HSPA+ technology for mobile broadband. In June 2013 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb Vipnet set a new world record for the fixed segment with speeds of 5 Gbit/s using the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network, and in the mobile segment presented speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s based on 4.5G – LTE Advanced technology. In September 2012 and again this year Vipnet was proclaimed winner in the Best value for money for business in the Business Best Buy Award. Vipnet currently has more than 2 million customers. Vip forum as a goal has multiscreen customer experience, to increase street credibility, and to be customers' first choice when searching for support information.     Vip forum also has a purpose to increase brand awareness and to be the place for engaging existing and future Vip customers.   Vip forum represents a new crowdsourcing platform intended for gadget and online discussion enthusiasts seeking fast, simple, precise and competent answers to all their questions concerning telecommunication technologies, products and services.   Vip forum was launched at the end of August 2013 as Vipnet’s first crowdsourcing platform. In just six months, Vip forum has become a unique place for online discussions about telecom technology, products and services in Croatia.   In its first 6 months of existence, Vip forum has generated 600,000 visits and a pool of 1600 registered users, which have proven to be very active with more than 12,000 posts.    Out of 1600 registered users, approximately 10% are active* continuously on a monthly basis. (*active members are those which have one or more posts per month – counted as one; not included are members who only login and read)     The idea to have an engaged community that is self-sustained has been achieved, since crowd ratio is constantly above 90% (ratio of user posts over moderator posts).   High scores of satisfaction were given by forum users in recent surveys conducted: 96% found or got an answer for their question 90% do not have a need for any other contact towards Vipnet (through customer services or shops) Vip forum NPS is 51%    BUILDING USER ENGAGEMENT   Vipnet’s vision from the very beginning was to create a place where everyone is welcome, not just Vipnet customers, and to create a non-censored playground where users can show their personal knowledge and expertise by providing valuable content.   To embrace this crowdsourcing concept and to start building user engagement, well established names from online community and IT/telco journalists were involved in Vip forum trial and helped to design final version of community platform.      During the 2 week trial, beta testers spent more than 200 hours online and generated more than 50 different ideas and improvements which were implemented in final Vip forum version.   Whole usability testing was done directly on the forum, enabling participants to be recognized as co-creators of new community.   During this trial, the forum received an excellent SUS* score from users which participated in SUS survey questionnaires => 87,5   (SUS* - the System Usability Scale ISO standard ISO 9241 Part 11, Measures Usability &  Learnability)   Beta testing purpose, besides functionality test, was also to gather pre-SuperUsers which will actively participate in forum after the public launch.   The purpose is fully accomplished, all beta testers are still active on Vip forum, and they alone provide a high percentage of answers to community questions.   Also, they are now a pool of usability testers for other Vipnet products and services, as independent and respected telco enthusiasts.    

Company: Vipnet  Entry submitted by: Hrvoje Puljko (puljac)Community (Forum) expert Community: Vip forum (http://forum.vip.hr) Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer   Vipnet is the first private mobile network operator in Croatia, a part of the Telekom Austria Group. By entering the Croatian telecommunications market in 1998, Vipnet introduced competition into mobile telephony. Over the last 15 years Vipnet acquired the status of the most renowned innovation leader on the telecommunications market in Croatia.   Vipnet was the first in Europe to demonstrate the HSPA network, thus offering mobile Internet access that is faster than ADSL. Furthermore, Vipnet was among the first in the world to successfully test HSPA+ technology for mobile broadband. In June 2013 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb Vipnet set a new world record for the fixed segment with speeds of 5 Gbit/s using the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network, and in the mobile segment presented speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s based on 4.5G – LTE Advanced technology. In September 2012 and again this year Vipnet was proclaimed winner in the Best value for money for business in the Business Best Buy Award. Vipnet currently has more than 2 million customers.    Vip forum as a goal has multiscreen customer experience, to increase street credibility, and to be customers' first choice when searching for support information.     Vip forum also has a purpose to increase brand awareness and to be the place for engaging existing and future Vip customers.   REORGANIZATION AND PROJECT KICK-OFF   In just 4 months by reallocating right resources on Vip Forum project, together with support of Lithium partner, Vipnet managed to successfully launch the unique place (Vip forum) for online discussions about telecom technology, products and services in Croatia.   Reorganization was done by shifting a true gamer in the heart, from direct customer care phone/email support into responsibility of developing what was proved to become a self-maintaining and self-developing crowd source care center.   This was highly appreciated by forum members, because, one of their kind is managing the forum.   THE LAUNCH  (Video streaming conference)   In order to present Vip forum to a targeted audience, the launch of Vip forum was done via online press conference streamed directly on the Vip forum where journalists, as well as all new community members had a chance to ask questions (to our company MCO and Community Expert) directly on the forum and received answers in real-time.   With this innovative approach to launch presentation, Vipnet opened a new path for presenting all other new projects and products.   And of course, internally Vip Forum is supported by new line processes in company. We are especially proud of our process which is proving maturity of our organization and also is supported by our MCO – customers should test devices & services!   INVOLVING OFFICIAL MOBILE PHONE REPRESENTATIVES   Aside from customers, the significance and importance of Vip forum has also been recognized by several major players in telco manufacturing industry, such as HTC and Nokia, who have chosen to be present as active users on the forum, providing direct support to its customers.   With this move our customers gain additional benefit, not only from Vip as a telecom company, but also from official mobile phone representatives which they use:                                

Company: SFR   Entry submitted by: Laurence Barlet (LaurenceBarlet) Digital Product Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (http://forum.sfr.fr/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   With a market share of 21% for internet service and 25% for mobile (based on end of 2014 stats), SFR is one of the largest and most important telecommunications provider in France.   SFR was recently acquired by Numericable, the leading fiber optic provider in France. As such SFR-Numericable is today looking to lead the market in products, services and high-speed internet services connecting customers across France. It has 23 million customers, and provides 8,2 million households with high-speed internet access.   As a key differentiator SFR-Numericable is looking to firmly position itself as a leader in digital business and has been looking to Community with its Influencers and Super fans to achieve this.   This initiative described herein is but one of many ways SFR is doing this today.   The Forum SFR is a 2 years old support community counting more than 600,000 members and over 50 Super users. This community started as a cost saving initiative project to reap call deflection for Customer Care each month. The number of phone calls avoided rose by nearly 50% since 2012.   Our community development strategy is based on Superusers. Their contribution represent a quarter of close to 20,000 posts a month. Therefore, we are very focused on the Superusers commitment and do our best to engage them on and off the community: we often organize videoconferences with guests such as relevant SFR team members for product launches or market event, we consult them on the platform evolution to get their feedbacks, …We also invite them twice a year for a real-life event, to our Campus in Paris. Those attentions have built a very strong and special relationship between us and our Superusers !   Also, with a strong belief that this community must be part of the whole customer experience with SFR, we’ve recently focused on recruiting new members that We now need to re-activate.   Our marketing campaign   On January 16 th , the Forum SFR celebrated its second anniversary. This was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate not just the community but also those that make it all possible: the Superusers and their outstanding commitment. With that in mind, a big event was planned during the month of the anniversary for an initiative we branded: Saying Thank You Counts!     On Stage One of this initiative, we invited 3 of the leading Superusers to our office in Paris, under cover of an interview to surprise them. The purpose for this first step was to showcase our Superusers and, most importantly, show them our gratitude for the countless number of hours they invest with the community and highlight their commitment to others.   The community managers thus welcomed : “Kendokanne” who counts 24,000 posts, 3,000 approved answers and 10,000 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/172) “Alain911” with 5,800 posts, 486 approved answers and 2,400 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/182) “Zardrilokis” with 2,300 posts, 217 approved answers and 1,000 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/456) During the interview, special SFR representatives from different departments were waiting for the right moment to show up and entered into the interview room with a very special and unique birthday gift: a live “Merci!” (community kudos) counter!   This ended up being a very emotional moment with most users close to tears as they embraced the SFR representatives and received the “Merci!” Counter. This device captures each individual Superusers full kudos count on the community and updates live which brings to life not only their value but also their commitment to the wider community. One of them sent us a short film to say thank you.    For the really first time an object was connected to a Lithium platform. This technical performance was possible thanks to our creative digital agency The Social Client. The developers team worked hard to make it possible, and finally found a way to connect personalized endpoints from the Forum and a hidden page in the object interface.   We shared the videos of this special moment for all to see on the community landing page, highlighting each individual Super User individually.   Here are videos showing the interviews with 3 Super users and SFR team members and the gift handover:           While we didn’t film  all the giveaways, we made sure that every Superuser received a birthday gift: 7 other super-users received the live counter at home and the others got a personalized thank you cushion.     A short version of the film was posted on our social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter) and the film spotlights also served as a spring board to the second part of the campaign: the birthday competition.   In this contest, players needed to match customer questions with the right solution (chosen among three). The goal was to show inactive members how the Community can be useful, and the many reasons to say thank you.    The winner of this competition was very happy, as showcased in the post below: The global event was promoted by two mailing campaign, two Facebook posts and 3 Tweets, targeting all community members.   Campaign results   The anniversary events were a roaring success as we saw traffic increase by 9% and registrations increase by 33%. Most importantly however, the increased satisfaction of the Superusers and the reactivation of dormant members who had lapsed in participation. In addition to the above we saw a clear reactivation of our inactive member base with + 340% of  visits for this population !   The last result but not the least, the “uncountable” emotional and grateful reactions from our amazing super users !          

Company: Rogers (Fido)  Entry submitted by: Strickland Hines of Rogers and Caroline Lalonde of Fido (clalonde), Community and Social Media Support Manager Community: Rogers Community Forum and Fido Community LSW social channels:  Rogers: Facebook, Twitterand second Twitter Fido: Facebook, Twitter,  second Twitter  Lithy category: Total Community All Star   Rogers Communications Inc. is a diversified Canadian telecommunications and media company. We are Canada's largest wireless voice, data and cable services provider and are well known for our product innovations as well as for being first to market. The Fido brand is part of the Rogers family.   Rogers and Fido have outlined several areas of focus for 2015; improving the overall customer experience being at the forefront. Our customers are very important to us and putting them first is imperative to our success. The social media team at Rogers and Fido play an integral role in doing so. Both Rogers and Fido have their own unique Community/Social Support teams.   In 2010, we chose Lithium as our platform provider and launched the Rogers and Fido communities. We wanted a best in class platform and a means for customers to self-serve, thereby deflecting calls from our contact centres. The support provided at that time was predominantly peer to peer technical support.   With the successful launch of the Rogers and Fido Communities, we sought new opportunities to engage with our customers; Twitter and Facebook provided ideal social platforms and opportunities we were searching for.   In 2011, we launched our Social Care teams, offering our customers a new and convenient support option. As such, we began to support and engage with our customers on twitter and Facebook. As we earned their trust through the provision of reliable support and information, customers began to adopt this new means of social support and the number of followers grew.   In 2013, in order to increase engagement on our social platforms, the scope of support provided in the Forums was expanded to include discussions on all consumer products and services. We also launched Rogers Idea Box, giving customers a voice to help direct change. Idea Box also served as an additional data collection point for customer insights.   Recognizing the need for better reporting capabilities for our social support, we began searching for a social tool that would enable better customer engagement and provide valuable insights through data collection and reporting. After researching a number of social engagement tools, we settled on Lithium Social Web (LSW) and in 2014, the Social Care team was transitioned to the LSW platform. The transition proved valuable; giving us access to more insightful reporting and new capabilities.   Benefits of a Total Community   A Lithium community and LSW are important to our social strategy of providing customers with convenience through self-serve. LSW enables seamless engagement with our customers, allowing us to respond to their support requests on Facebook/twitter via PM/DM or in public, while the community serves as a lasting source of relevant and helpful content.   In 2015, we began to optimize the Rogers and Fido Communities by leveraging insights from Lithium Social Intelligence (LSI). Our focus was set on content optimization, customer support and redesigning the Communities. We hired a team of temporary employees to review all posts to ensure accuracy and relevance of information, accepted or provided solutions and then created new content via posts, videos and blogs which aligned to contact centre top call driver results. We also hired additional permanent staff to provide direct on channel support to customers in the forums when our Super Users didn’t have the tools to assist.   An important next step in our Social strategy is the integration of our digital properties with the Social platforms we use to support customers. With the capability of the Lithium platform to integrate with our websites, we’ll be able to create seamless buy flows from community to website and helpful peer reviews from the communities on products housed on our website. We began the integration effort with a redesign of both communities to better align each community with its respective website and brand strategy. With Lithium’s support, we were able to successfully launch the redesigned Rogers Community Forums on March 31 and the redesigned Fido Community Forums on April 7.   The redesign and optimization aim at achieving the following:      Deflect calls from our contact centers by increasing our resolution rate to best in class results of 40% Leap frog the competition, increase and maintain our CHI score to best in class results of 750 Improve responsiveness to 3 hours   Our Total Community results   Today, both the Rogers and Fido Communities are staffed to support customers, and content is created daily, with blogs, posts, videos and live Rogers Ask an Expert events. We have communicated the change within the organization and externally to our customers, leveraging customer facing material like bill messages as well as IVR messaging and transactional email notifications. At this point, if your forum peers cannot assist, there is a Rogers or Fido moderator waiting to help. Today, with post launch resolution rates results at 40%, we can proudly say that the Rogers and Fido Communities are reliable sources of customer information and support.   As we continue with our approach and roadmap into Q2 of 2015, we are well on our way to building a better customer experience.   Rogers Performance Results:     Fido Performance Results:  

Company: AT&T  Entry submitted by: Bridgette Butler (Lingoes) Sr. Community Manager Community: AT&T Community Forums (http://forums.att.com)  Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   AT&T is bringing it all together - helping people mobilize their worlds - with advanced mobile services, next-generation TV and high-speed Internet services, and smart solutions for businesses. For more than a century, we have consistently provided innovative, reliable, high-quality products and services. Our mission is to connect people with their world, everywhere they live and work, and do it better than anyone else. We're creating new solutions for consumers and businesses to help them mobilize their communications and entertainment.   How our Community meets our customer care business goals   AT&T Community Forums provide 24 x 7 peer-to-peer assistance as well as AT&T direct support during normal business hours to tens of thousands of users daily, supporting customers across AT&T’s diverse spectrum of products and services.  Recognizing areas underserved by more traditional support, in 2014 we launched a Third-Party Devices board and a Wearables board, together averaging approximately 75k page views by 45k unique visitors monthly. Additionally, we launched a public-facing board for Samsung representatives to interact publicly with our general community, and a Samsung  Ambassadors board for those skilled professionals to interact privately with our 34 recipients of the Award for Community Excellence (ACE) .  This innovation directly connected Samsung experts with AT&T experts, resulting in a superior customer experience that contributed to the rise in Customer Satisfaction we saw in 2014.  We’ve begun tweeting out our most valuable Accepted Solutions, and linking to them   from Facebook.   Example of AT&T Community Forums content in the Social Support Center of AT&T Facebook To better assist the wider base of customers searching for help on att.com, we increased the number of Accepted Solutions appearing with knowledge base articles by 40%.   Example of “Help from Community Discussions” modal on an att.com knowledge base article Additionally, the AT&T Community Forums redesign, launched during July 2014, provides in-context features, game mechanics and an unprecedented level of personalization that enables users to tailor their forums experience in new ways. Archiving activities prior to redesign also improved the relevancy of internal and external search results, fostering repeat traffic and increased viewership.   July, 2014 – from “Yawnnnnn”     …..to “Yowzers!”   How Community has changed our customer care organization   Sparked by the community’s success in producing call deflection, AT&T recently launched a team of crack Wireless specialists to assist customers with account and technical issues on the forums, much like the U-verse experts on-boarded in 2013.  In addition, AT&T Community Forums was added to the att.com “Contact Us” flow.  U-verse customer care agents now routinely refer customers to our Third-Party Devices board for support outside their traditional scope.  AT&T’s 200k+ employees – including care agents – learned about the value of our community and especially its star ACEs via recognition in the AT&T Employee Insider newsletter and the AT&T Consumer Blog.   Our customer care business results   Call Shed In 2014, AT&T Community Forums worked to implement a standardized call shed model through the extraction of Community key performance indicators and pairing visitor calling rates with quantitative sentiment survey data. This model enables us to identify opportunities within each LOB to serve up content that addresses top call drivers, effectively shifting contact volume from our Call Centers to the Community Forums while also growing online adoption. During 2014, AT&T Community Forums shed over 4 Million calls.   Cost Avoidance Cost avoidance in the AT&T Community Forums determines digital ROI and frequently spurs Officer-level conversation around Community impact to the overall business. During 2014, the AT&T Community Forums generated over $30 Million in savings for the Organization, driving further ideation for additional points of invocation and awareness-building campaigns.   New Threads - Accepted Solutions On a larger scale, our groundbreaking Community redesign with a faster, simplified user experience launched in July, 2014, yielded a 19% increase in call shed. Key drivers impacting Call Shed include a 54% lift in new thread creation and a 63% improvement in accepted solution development.  

Company: Zuora Contact: Lana Lee  (Support Community Manager) Community: Zuora Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Zuora’s Relationship Business Management (RBM) solution helps businesses launch or shift products to subscription, implement pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain insights into subscriber behavior, open revenue streams, and disrupt market segments to gain competitive advantage. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, London, Paris, Munich, Beijing, Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Clients come from a wide range of industries: media, travel services, consumer packaged goods, cloud services, and telecommunications. Clients include Financial Times, Schneider Electric, Box, Honeywell, NCR, RTL, lynda.com, The Guardian, YP.com, BlueJeans, Shutterfly, TripAdvisor, Vivint and Trulia.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   Customer Satisfaction Initiatives in 2015 was to establish more visibility on use cases, implementation and enhancement requests. Seeing how our customers, partners and internal Zuora staff interacts, opens a new world for us to give us better positioning on how to help our customers with a different level of approach (Voice of Customer, Customer Advocacy Program, etc.)   Focusing on customer support excellence Nothing stands in the way of excellence for Zuora’s multi-Stevie® Award winning Global Support Team. Our support team spans the world, giving our customers just-in-time solutions to help power their subscription business and grow in their Zuora expertise. With over 30 global support agents, Zuora support provides quick response, resolution times and received an average customer service rating of 95% for the entire team. By implementing Lithium for our Zuora Community, we’re continuing to focus on delivering the best customer service possible to aggregate content by bringing togther sources of knowledge and information, deflect support tickets to save costs and give customers an integrated visual experience with corporate branding. We believe that we’ve solved these customer issues and more with our cutting-edge Zuora Community that moves Zuora Support to a higher level with its innovative platform that enables peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and gives customers a voice in shaping Zuora’s product roadmap. Our Community User Groups give customers and partners a space where they can network, provide feedback and receive updates on the latest Zuora releases and features.   Our results   30% of our Community’s traffic is in our Ideas forum, which proves to be a popular Community destination since our product managers frequently interact with customers who give suggestions on improving Zuora. Time spent in the community is approximately 9 minutes per member and we see an average of 20k page views per month which shows us that our users are browsing ideas and forums for solutions. Using our Zendesk integration with our Community, any customer post that has no intial response within 48 hours will automatically create a Zendesk ticket. Once a Support agent answers the Zendesk ticket, the answer goes back to the Community as a response and is auto-selected as an accepted answer.  With over 30 support agents in our global Customer Support Services and Community team, we ensure that no issue is left unattended.    

Company: Domo Contact: Dani Weinstein (Senior Community Manager) Community:   Dojo Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction    As the world’s first Business Cloud, Domo brings together all the data, all the people and all the insights business users need to run their entire business to make faster, better-informed decisions to improve performance.   Dojo Community   Domo’s online customer community, the Dojo, includes more than 1500 members and serves as a platform for customers to collaborate with fellow customers, post and receive answers from Dojo experts, connect with peers, share best practices, offer ideas to improve the Domo product, participate in contests, events, rewards programs and much more.   Recently passing its one-year anniversary, the Dojo realized exceptional growth and customer adoption, increasing the number of community posts by over 200% by the 4 th quarter of its first year. With consistent growth, Dojo is cultivating a community of Domo super fans.   Dojo and Lithium Integration   Utilizing the Lithium platform, the Dojo community set out to increase customer participation and engagement including the creation of the Dojo Ideas Exchange.   The Ideas Exchange was created as a place for members to contribute thoughts and ideas surrounding the Domo products and services. Members can submit ideas or suggestions, facilitating conversations and allowing their voices to be heard with the goal of improving Domo’s products and services.   To date, the Ideas Exchange has generated nearly 500 customer ideas with almost 1 out of 7 ideas being approved and or implemented to date in product. By integrating the Lithium platform, the Dojo was able to develop a robust process using Domo software to pull in the data from the Ideas Exchange and providing a consumable and easy-to-view dashboard for our product management team that includes:   Real-time status updates for all ideas on the Ideas Exchange What product manager owns the specific idea, pending review and approval Hyperlinks to the Ideas Exchange allowing for updates and comments on specific data   Product managers can view ideas by status in a real-time pie chart     The moment a new idea has been posted and received at least one vote, Domo’s product management team receives an alert to assign that idea to a product manager for review. The goal is to ensure each idea that receives at least one vote, be assigned for review from a product manager. It’s easy for our product managers to see and track all of the ideas they have been assigned.     From there, product managers can drill down to see the detailed view with hyperlinks to the exchange where they can manage and update ideas status real time.     Nearly 14 percent of ideas submitted have been approved and executed in the Domo product thus far and a number of other ideas are pending serious consideration. Customers love this exchange because they have a voice in influencing the Domo product road map. Ideas are crowd-sourced and voted on by fellow members.   One of our Dojo members submitted an idea for a new card that would track how many Domo licenses they had used up and how many licenses were left open. We were able to create this Participant License Gauge to better track our customers license usage.     At our annual user conference that we held in March 2016, we honored one of two Ideation Champions (who delivered more than 70 combined ideas) during our Dojo VIP awards lunch.   The winner, Robyn Linden stated, “The Dojo has been an amazing resource for me. I know when I submit a question or idea, my voice is heard by Domo staff members. It’s great to know that my ideas are being reviewed and discussed to have a greater impact on the overall product.”   Linden posted a tweet following her win as Ideation Champion.     In the Dojo’s first year as a community, we achieved a 185% percent increase in the combined number of posts made and ideas submitted in comparison with the first quarter that the Dojo went live.     Finally, we have seen almost a 600% increase in idea votes received in Q1 2016, compared with Q2 2015, while we witnessed more than a 250% increase in likes received in Dojo during the same time frame. Customers love the Ideas Exchange which has driven community engagement and customer satisfaction!    

Company:  Critical Mass/Gyro/HP Entry submitted by: Dominic Ladden-Powell (Platform Director) Community: HP BusinessNow Lithy category: Community Design of the Year   HP Inc. is one of the world’s leading technology companies. Their mission is to create technology that helps businesses reinvent their competitive edge.   BusinessNow  is a content marketing programme that delivers useful, relevant news and advice to small and medium business decision makers establishing HP as a trusted advisor across 5 markets: UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.   Beginning life as ‘BusinessReady’ in a minor subcategory in another HP Lithium Community in early-2014, we moved BusinessNow into its own Lithium Community in February 2015 and obtained almost 3 million visits in the first year.   We launched the third iteration in February 2016.   Our community goals   BusinessNow aims to provide small to medium business owners and IT decision makers with insight and advice on issues that are important to them and can help them do their jobs better.   HP has a long-standing reputation within the technology industry for its products and services. BusinessNow is helping to position HP as a thought leader by offering insight and conversation around the prevailing themes and issues.   Search and social analytics inform the content to ensure it addresses what is important to the audience. This drives a regular programme of ‘always on’ content planned to support the overall market activity and providing a connected story that encourages the community to return for ongoing and regular advice.   Key to the strategy is elevating HP’s position as not only being a technology vendor who develops quality products but an organization that understands business. Content is amplified through social channels to drive traffic to the BusinessNow community and encourage interaction and debate building a brand experience that engages the audience.   Why our community is unique   We utilize Lithium’s blogging functionality as the sole use for our community and as such have found a great new use for the platform.   An in-depth user experience study was completed to drive the development of the design. A series of designs were then created and tested to ensure the audience’s needs and behaviours online were reflected.   The design represents the best of the best from publisher sites. This was a deliberate move to avoid the site becoming like every other IT content hub and compete against the best sources of digital and business insight like Mashable.   The clean fresh design is easy to navigate and digest and competes against some of the best publisher sites. Clever features such as the time it takes to read or view each piece helps the reader and parallax scrolling has been used to keep the sharing buttons always present and encourage the community to share.   Focusing purely on the blogging functionality provides a unique experience when compared to other Lithium communities as well as a unique content hub when compared to other IT vendor sites.   How we executed our community design   After working directly with Lithium’s engineers to create our first customized instance, we employed both front and back end developers to work within the Studio.   This, combined with the experience of community management we had accumulated within our previous communities, enabled us to augment existing components and functionality as well as create new page templates and components.   We use the API extensively to create dynamic pages based on custom filters and different language versions within single templates. Relying on existing functionality allowed us to ensure our community is as lightweight, dynamic and reliable as possible.   Metrics   We have only recently relaunched our new design but have already received encouraging metrics in the early weeks of operation including the following:     In addition to the above metrics, we have received funding from new HP corporate departments to produce custom content for their own individual campaigns as well as several inquiries about producing individual categories and communities for entirely separate departments within HP.   We took inspiration from popular online publications to create a, user-centered design, which tested extremely positively with audiences. The simple and clean design allows the content to shine on both desktop and mobile:     Within articles, the design remains clean and easy on the eye:  

Company: FOX SPORTS Australia Contact: Shae Marlow (Manager, Customer Experience & Community) Community:  The Crowd Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   FOX SPORTS is Australia’s leading producer of sports television coverage and is home to Australia's favourite subscription television sports channels as well as Australia's number one general sports website. FOX SPORTS operates the website www.foxsports.com.au which contains a wide range of video content and articles, including a citizen journalism community called, The Crowd. FOX SPORTS broadcasts over 10,000 hours of LIVE sports programming per year into 2.5 million homes around Australia.     Our unique promotion and the goal   In 2014, FOX SPORTS Australia launched The Crowd – a community forum created to be the home of sports conversations. Two years in, The Crowd has provided us with a strong foundation to expand our Community Strategy and launch a unique marketing content strategy, Citizen Journalism. In short, Citizen Journalism is the ultimate community engagement opportunity whereby community members submit articles to FOX SPORTS to be published on The Crowd. It has been marketed as ‘the training ground for aspiring journalists’. The initiative has allowed us to grow our community and promote our members, particularly superusers.   The goal has been to innovate the current marketing strategy for the community whilst supporting FOX SPORTS digital strategy, including: to increase digital viewership and audience lift the emotional connection to fans reach more Australians and a younger audience     Our strategy and tactics for  community   We identified the lack of opportunities for aspiring sports journalists and so developed our Citizen Journalism initiative, a place for journalists to sharpen their skills while gaining real life experience.   We introduced an integrated content marketing approach in three key phases.   PHASE ONE: TEST   The first phase was to test the initiative in a controlled environment, engaging just two universities and inviting their journalism students to participate as ‘Crowd Correspondents’.   Students utilised The Crowd forum, where articles were submitted for approval and moderation then published to a public board. The FOX SPORTS Editorial team would then review each article and select the best for publication on foxsports.com.au. Published Crowd Correspondent articles featured all the hallmarks of a professional journalist’s piece – including their very own byline plus a link back to their Crowd profile. Lastly, two of the contributing students were selected and offered a two week paid internship with the FOX SPORTS editorial team.     PHASE TWO: LEVERAGE & INTEGRATE   Our second phase involved formalising a program that built the credentials and profiles of our Crowd Correspondents. We updated their Profile Pages, creating a portfolio of each student’s contributions to FOX SPORTS. We then discovered they were adding their Crowd profile credentials to their LinkedIn pages and CVs. This established their profiles as writers within the community and also established their Crowd experience as a worthy qualification externally.     PHASE THREE: SCALE   The final stage was to scale and extend the program to 20+ universities across Australia. In order to market to these students, we interviewed our original Crowd Correspondent intern and created a promotional video, where we highlighted the benefits to other aspiring journalism students in becoming Crowd Correspondents themselves.   As the program matured, we ramped up promotion by integrating Crowd Correspondent articles into the FOX Sports App and established The Crowd’s Twitter account.   Our results   Within four months, phase one of The Crowd Correspondent marketing initiative nearly tripled its trial KPIs, with 14 Crowd Correspondents signing up (KPI was 5).   Now, in just over 7 months, the initiative has continued to exceed expectations, both from a business and community point of view, including: 14 active universities More than 80 Crowd Correspondents Articles/Content submitted to the community has doubled, with a total of 300 articles submitted to the community and 200 published onto foxsports.com.au Two internships successfully placed, with both interns now officially working for FOX SPORTS Australia Dramatic increase from 2.3 page views per unique visitor to 4.6 page views New community registrations have more than doubled from 120 to 300 per month In our most recent promotional phase, we’ve had the highest page views since launching in 2014.   The Crowd began as a small idea with big aspirations and it has since grown into a viable content engine. It’s surpassed all KPIs set yet most importantly, it has given university students a chance to experience the thrill of sports journalism and in doing so, give fans a unique perspective of sport through the lens of a younger pundit.        

Company: Zuora Contact: Lana Lee  (Support Community Manager) Community: Zuora Community Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Zuora’s Relationship Business Management (RBM) solution helps businesses launch or shift products to subscription, implement pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain insights into subscriber behavior, open revenue streams, and disrupt market segments to gain competitive advantage. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, London, Paris, Munich, Beijing, Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Clients come from a wide range of industries: media, travel services, consumer packaged goods, cloud services, and telecommunications. Clients include Financial Times, Schneider Electric, Box, Honeywell, NCR, RTL, lynda.com, The Guardian, YP.com, BlueJeans, Shutterfly, TripAdvisor, Vivint and Trulia.   How our community meets our customer care business goals   The Zuora Community is a one-stop destination for our customer and partners to discover “just-in-time” solutions through peer-to-peer collaboration and easy access to knowledge documentation, contribute and vote on product ideas, learn about new product releases and grow in their Zuora expertise. Using our Zendesk integration with our Community, any non-Zuora community post that has no intial response within 48 hours will automatically create a Zendesk ticket. Once a Support agent answers the Zendesk ticket, the answer goes back to the Community as a response and is auto-selected as an accepted answer.  With over 30 support agents in our global Customer Support Services and Community team, we ensure that no issue is left unattended. Our Community uses Lithium’s topic discussion boards, blog, ideas, forums and user group features to engage with our customers: Our Topic Discussion Boards provide a collaborative space for customers to ask questions from Zuora staff and other users, gain credibility via kudos and accepted answers and share best practices. Our Announcements area informs customers about release notifications and product updates and allows Zuora to interact with our customers when they have questions. The Ideas forum is our most popular area because it allows our customers to interact with our Product Managers to potentially impact our product roadmap. We use User Groups to help connect users before events, network with each other locally and grant access to limited availability programs where customers can provide feedback to product managers on our latest releases and new features.   In only 3 months, at at an average of 20k page views per month, we trust that the Zuora Community is a “home run”  for our company and we look forward to its bright future. Since our Community launched, the reduction of support tickets was seen immediately which gives us time to become more focused on strategic initiatives such as customer advocacy, SME training, and increasing product adoption through self-service.   Our results Within a week of our community’s launch, the Support Team saw a 9% reduction of support tickets.  Now, in our third month post-launch, we have reduced support tickets by 11% - proving that the Zuora Community is rich with content that helps our customers easily find the information they need to power their subscription business.  

Company: Google Glass  Entry submitted by: Sarah Price (sarahprice) Social Media & Community Lead, Teresa Zazenski (tzazenski) Community Manager, and Becca Samson (bsamson) Community Manager Community: Glass Explorers Program (http://glass-community.com) Lithy category: Digital Strategy Leader   The Glass Explorers Program started in April 2013. We made Glass available to bold, creative individuals from different walks of life to help shape the future of Glass. People don’t just buy Glass, they become a “Glass Explorer.” Through the Explorers Program, we seek to empower our customer community to introduce the world to Glass and share their feedback to make Glass better.   On April 10, 2014, we announced that we would be expanding the Explorer Program. For one day on April 15, any adult living in the US would be able to buy Glass and become an Explorer.   There are countless public fan communities for Glass, but our official community is hosted by Lithium, with private discussion areas restricted to Glass Explorers. This enables customers to have open and honest conversations about Glass and the Explorer Program. Our team uses our Lithium community to get direct feedback and input from our Explorers in many ways, including through a “Glass Wishlist” ideation board. We also use Lithium Social Web to monitor and engage with feedback and Explorer-created content across the web.   For our latest and largest Explorer Program expansion (April 15, 2014), we implemented a robust community and social media strategy to support the expansion launch, detailed in the below section.   Our community and social media strategy for the April 15 Explorer Program expansion involved the following goals:   1) Leverage community and social media to provide scalable support to prospective Explorers. We anticipated that we would receive a high volume of inquiries once the expansion became known, and we expected delays on our phone lines and in our email queues. We set up a number of scalable options to support the expansion: Launched a public board and linked it from the sales site. Prior to the expansion, all content in our community was private to Explorers. We launched a new board called “Getting Ready for Glass” for “Explorers who haven’t met their Glass yet,” where potential Explorers can ask questions that our veterans could answer. We prominently featured the new board as a support option on the sales site.   Made our community blog public. Our private community blog, the “Glass Journal,” is full of helpful content by our team and our Explorers. When we launched the public board, we got permission from all contributors to make our blog public, so potential customers could read up on Glass. In the future, we expect both our blog and our new board to drive organic search traffic. Provide scalable, high-touch support via social media and community. We allocated additional Glass Guides (CSRs) to help out in the new public forum and ensure that questions were answered effectively. In the meantime, our social media Glass Guides used Lithium Social Web to keep a close eye on inquiries from social media. Social agents can handle more cases per hour than phone or email agents, although the questions tend to be less complex. Community provides a self-service support option as visitors view previously answered questions. Coordinate on customer-created support options for prospective Explorers. Our long-term strategy involves building deep relationships with key customer influencers who set the tone for the community (see below). Due to this strong relationship, these “Community Leaders” launched two support options of their own initiative. They created the #askanexplorer hashtag and invited potential Explorers to post questions about the program, which they in turn answered. They also led two Hangouts On Air (streaming video calls) for potential customers to join and ask questions of a panel of current Explorers. We shared these initiatives via Google Glass on Google+ and Twitter.     2) Maintain the goodwill of our veteran Explorers. Change can be scary in any community, and the “veterans” can become nostalgic for “the way things used to be,” leading them to resist newcomers. We wanted to ensure that our veteran Explorers would welcome our new Explorers with open arms. To achieve this goal we implemented several tactics: Feature our veteran Explorers in our launch video for the expansion, showing our appreciation of them and helping them to feel like rockstars. We asked for video submissions and built an amazing video that made our veterans happy, and introduced potential Explorers to the spirit of the Explorer Program. Please see our entry for Most Creative Promotion or Launch for more info on the I Am an Explorer video.     Work together with our customer influencers (superusers) to ensure their understanding and support, as they set the tone for the community. We invited our “Community Leaders” to the Googleplex for a summit a few weeks before the expansion to get their feedback on Glass and talk about the future of the Explorer Program, allowing us to learn about and start to address painpoints prior to the announcement. Turn our veterans into mentors. We described our new public board as “a place for Explorers who haven’t met their Glass yet” and encouraged our Community Leaders and community-at-large to contribute to the board, because they are the true experts in what it means to be an Explorer. By emphasizing their expert knowledge and helpful human nature, we made it easier for our veterans to approach our newbies with enthusiasm rather than resistance.         Kept most of our community private to customers. We wanted to ensure that our veterans and newbies both feel part of the community and have a private place to connect with each other and share feedback. Although we made two sections of our community public, we kept the majority of our community private.   Our business results   Community-driven launch video:       108k+ views in less than two weeks       Well-received by veteran Explorers, who were excited to be featured in the video   Public community user education board/blog:       860% increase in unique visitors to the community on April 15 vs. one week prior       New “Getting Ready for Glass” board drove 27% of all community traffic and 35% of unique visitors       63% of all community visitors viewed the newly-public community blog       New board received hundreds of posts from prospective customers. Veteran Explorers were deeply engaged with an average of 5.5 replies per topic and 5.4 views per visitor in this board alone.       90% of topics received a reply, with an average time-to-reply of 42 minutes.       Community promo was positioned with intention to defer 1:1 support needs; number of visitors to the community was greater than the number of individuals who contacted traditional support (email)       Well-received by veteran Explorers, who continue to be excited to offer support and advice to prospective Explorers   Social media care:       Small social media team fielded several thousand inquiries in the week around the announcement and expansion from April 10th to April 16th       Touched more than 70% of algorithmically-detected inquiries despite the incredible volume of “buzz” around the expansion       Maintained our usual social media care for current customers.   #askanexplorer:       At least 100 social media conversations were tagged #askanexplorer       Two Hangouts On Air Q&A sessions       Both initiatives entirely driven and supported by the community, with zero cost to our team   Explorer Program expansion:       The Explorer Program expansion was very successful       Sold out one of the colors of Glass midway through the day       Closed the expansion when our supplies ran low sooner than expected    

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: PayPal Entry submitted by: Carolynn Bae  (Head of APAC Customer Early Life) Community: PayPal Headstart Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   PayPal is a leading technology platform company that enables digital and mobile payments on behalf of consumers and merchants worldwide. We put our customers at the center of everything we do. We strive to increase our relevance for consumers, merchants, friends and family to access and move their money anywhere in the world, anytime, on any platform and through any device.   We provide safer and simpler ways for businesses of all sizes to accept payments from merchant websites, mobile devices and applications, and at offline retail locations through a wide range of payment solutions.   Our unique promotion   We launched the PayPal Headstart Community to increase engagement with small business owners in 6 countries to help them through to their first transaction after signing up for PayPal and for existing businesses to increase our share of checkout through PayPal. Rather than launch the new community in the usual way we gave business owners the opportunity to connect with experts through the community and ask a question that really mattered to them and their business simultaneously helping the community gain traction and also help the business owners. We called the campaign Ask an Expert and had 3x ecommerce experts and a $100 Google AdWords incentive to kickstart the conversation.     Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   We provided a small incentive to encourage businesses to open the invitation and to submit high quality questions. We leveraged the experts bio’s as an email and social media campaign utilizing Facebook custom audiences to capture the attention of our existing business and funnel them to the community. Our hypothesis was that business owners who are more engaged with us as they set up their business are more likely to successfully integrate PayPal into their businesses and receive their first transaction.     Our results   Within 3 months we had a 2.5% lift in number of businesses making their first successful PayPal transaction across all 6 markets. And unexpectedly we also had a significant 1.84x increase in number of transactions for business segment that had activated PayPal in the last 3 months. During the 2 week campaign period we had over 500 new posts and 100k views.   Value Analytics YTD Results as of 3/31/16: n = 266 75% of respondents indicated they were able to find the information they were looking for. 66% of those respondents indicated they would have phoned or emailed had they not found their answer.

Company: Google Glass  Entry submitted by: Sarah Price (sarahprice) Social Media & Community Lead and Teresa Zazenski (tzazenski) Community Manager Community: Glass Explorers Program (http://glass-community.com) Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch    Entry for I Am an Explorer video:     The Glass Explorers Program started in April 2013. We made Glass available to bold, creative individuals from different walks of life to help shape the future of Glass. People don’t just buy Glass, they become a “Glass Explorer.” Through the Explorers Program, we seek to empower our customer community to introduce the world to Glass and share their feedback to make Glass better.   On April 10, 2014, we announced that we would be expanding the Explorer Program. For one day on April 15, any adult living in the US would be able to buy Glass and become an Explorer.   There are countless public fan communities for Glass, but our official community is hosted by Lithium, with private discussion areas restricted to Glass Explorers. This enables customers to have open and honest conversations about Glass and the Explorer Program. Our team uses our Lithium community to get direct feedback and input from our Explorers in many ways, including through a “Glass Wishlist” ideation board. We also use Lithium Social Web to monitor and engage with feedback and Explorer-created content across the web.   Our community of Explorers is the heart of our program, so for certain key Explorer Program milestones, we have invited our Explorers to share content with us that we used to create a community-driven launch video for our marketing efforts. These videos focus on the Explorers and show the world who makes up our community. They also show our Explorers how important they are to our team and to the program, especially in times of change: both milestones involved expansion of the Explorer Program. This makes the change a bit less scary and helps our veteran customers to welcome our new customers. We directly asked for new submissions in our community, and also used Lithium Social Web to identify additional Explorer content that fits into our theme.     I Am an Explorer [Through Google Glass] announced a new expansion of the Explorer Program where any adult in the US could become an Explorer for a limited time. This video showcases the diversity of our Explorers and shows some of the things that real Explorers do.   We were very pleased with the engagement that resulted from the campaign, and the finished product reflected our values and the heart of the Explorer Program.   Please see our entry for Digital Strategy Leader for more on the Explorer Program.   Business results       Video was released on April 10, 2014 and has 108k views as of April 24, 2014 (live for 2 weeks).       While submissions were open, the campaign was the 2nd most viewed and replied discussion in the community and received the most kudos by a margin of 61%.       We additionally received qualitative positive feedback from our Explorers about the campaigns        

Company: Aruba Networks  Entry submitted by: Sean A Rynearson (srynearson) Chief Airhead Community: Airheads Community (http://community.arubanetworks.com) Lithy category: Lithium Platform Innovator   We believe that buying a product is just the first step. A User needs support after the buy. Community is a more efficient way of supporting end customers.   Lithium helps us reach our customer and answer their questions in a cost effective manner.      Hi, I am Sean Rynearson, Chief Airheads for Aruba Networks. That is just a fancy way of saying I am the community manager. This is our submission to the Lithium Platform Innovator Lithy.   We believe that buying a product is just the first step. A User needs support after the purchase. An online community is a more efficient way of supporting end customers. Lithium helps us reach our customers and answer their questions in a cost effective manner.    Our online community is very important to us. It is a place for Aruba customers, partners, and employees to connect and discuss Wireless and networking technology.   I started off my career as a contracting engineer working on Aruba gear. Many times I have depended on the Airheads Community to help me solve technical problems.     We currently have over 4000 unique logins this year, 450 unique participants every month with over 300 thousand active views a month. Our community is growing fast.   Our web-based community is amazing, but the times have changed. Or Users are not always in the office or on their laptop. We call this new concept #GenMobile .   Users need the same functionality on the go as they do on their laptop. Mobile browser interface is ok but we needed something with more usability. Something that is more intimate with the user.    Introducing the New Airheads Mobile App.      Using Lithiums REST API and the user/message calls we were able to build a mobile experience that gave users competing functionality over the Web based Interface.   We implemented some key Community function: Single Sign-on Support Full menu support Multiple discussion board functionality Knowledge base access Blogs Events Incredible search   Community Functionality is great but we also threw in some amazing user functionality: User Posts and comment  Kudos Share on social media Friends Private messages User Profiles   Is our Community now #Genmobile Ready? Mobile Community Functionality-- Check Mobile User Functionality-- Check Amazing online members-- Check We are good to go.   With the combination of community and user functionality along with the great minds of our online members, we have a solid community no matter if you are on the go or in the office.   Feel free to try out our new Airheads Mobile APP.  And send us feedback. Thank you.   Our business results 1300 unique app logins within the first month 2000 downloads   Watch our video here: 

Company: Navis Entry submitted by: Jennifer Grinold (jgrinold) Marketing & Communications Manager Community: Navis Online Community (community.navis.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Navis, the global technology software standard for managing the movement of cargo through terminals, has been on the forefront of tech innovation in the marine shipping industry. Their use of the Lithium platform has helped to bring social media to an industry that otherwise would have not adopted it. The Navis Online Community, better known by its users as “The NOC,” is leading the way by providing a platform for information sharing and collaboration, uncovering key knowledge from container terminal operations experts and driving innovation in the industry overall.   For Navis, a significant amount of knowledge-share takes place at Navis World, Navis’ bi-annual user conference. Navis felt that it was time to move industry networking opportunities online, truly making Navis World a 24/7/365 experience. In short, Navis wanted to effectively reach employees, customers, and major shipping community members in one place, which is how the NOC came to be. Navis knew that the NOC needed to be more than just a marketing channel in order to be successful. Instead of using the Lithium community as a platform to publish Navis products and company news, the NOC passes the microphone to professionals in the marine shipping industry – opportunities to share perspectives, start discussions, ask questions, get product information, get advice from Navis and broader industry experts and shape future product roadmaps. The NOC also features the Salesforce connector for full social support integration. Cases can be submitted from the NOC, and there is a single search for Salesforce and community content. The NOC has also become an invaluable medium to highlight Navis’ loyal customers and promote personal successes for the very people that use its technology on a daily basis. Every month, Navis highlights a customer site and the people running it as part of its ongoing Terminal Spotlight Series. While early Terminals Spotlight Series posts honor customers who have faced, and thrived, during industry challenges (such as Port Newark Container Terminal and the impact of Hurricane Sandy), future posts will cover all notable stories impacting Navis customers.   The biggest and most successful promotion for the NOC took place at Navis World in October of 2012. During the conference, Navis selected and appointed special NOC ambassadors to educate and excite attendees about joining the community. NOC ambassadors, as well as Navis’ PR agency, Affect, also posted a steady stream of Navis World content to the NOC—session recaps, best practices, interviews with attendees, videos, presentations and more—enabling those who couldn’t attend to follow along from afar and for those that did, to keep industry discussions going long after the conference was over.     “One of the advantages of buying from Navis is that you join the largest community of TOS users on the planet,” says Brian Hibbert, General Manager of APM Terminals. “It is this collective brain trust that makes Navis and its customers stronger together.”     “We have come a long way in getting Navis to host an online community that includes all levels of their employees as well as the customers,” says James Burgess, Technical Project Engineer at APM Terminals. “I have used the NOC as a resource to solve issues and answer questions before opening a Salesforce case. By going to the NOC first, I have received answers within minutes and hours instead of days.” As a result of promotional efforts to date, 60% of Navis’ customer base today is registered on the NOC, and that number continues to grow each week. Additionally, over 75% of Navis employees are signed up for the site, making the NOC truly one of the only places where industry professionals can share what they know, get the feedback they need and gather information do the best job possible for their terminals located all over the world. In the future, Navis intends that the online community will be the medium that will help the industry innovate, share best practices and collaborate on a global level, making it the go-to resource for the marine shipping industry.

Company: Hilton Worldwide Contact: Lee Diaz (Social Media Product Manager) Community: Hilton Suggests Twitter  Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Hilton Worldwide is one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, with mre than 4,600 hotels, resorts and properties in 100 countries and territories, and we’re growing faster than ever. Our 96-year history as pioneers in the industry makes us the preferred venue for travelers, developers, partners, and team members alike.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives of 2015   Hospitality and customer satisfaction should be extended to all travelers, even before they are your customers. With this focus, in 2015 we continued the expansion of the Hilton Suggests program to be an even broader global community of Hilton Worldwide team members, at all positions, that serve as a proactive resource for travelers visiting around 100 global markets. Hilton Suggests members give their time to listen for travelers’ questions, point unfamiliar travelers in the right direction, and even assist fellow locals seeking the next hidden gem for their bucket list. Through this, we deliver tweet tailored reccommendations for where to eat, what to see and what to do in our cities, to any traveler that needs a little direction.   A 2014 Study by Google on the Traveler’s Road to Decision showed that 83% of users that go online to find travel inspiration use social networking, video or photo sites. The @HiltonSuggests team helps develop some of that inspiration and alleviates some local research by surprising and delighting Twitter users seeking out travel advice with unique, local recommendations. By reaching travelers where they are, and when they are asking questions, we were able to share over 30,400 responses in 2015.     The most important customer issue we  were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation?    Travelers, as resourceful as they are, often need direction as they get ready to explore. Our focus is to help answer travelers’ questions of where to go, what to see, and where to eat that we all have as travelers to a new city. Even when they are not looking to Hilton Worldwide to answer their questions, we want to surprise and delight them with our focus actively listening, taking the time to respond, and delivering a quality piece of information from a local perspective.   Each suggestion is an authentic, first-hand recommendation based on the experiences of one of our local team members. And while we are happy to help travelers find a hotel - our primary focus is always to enhance the overall travel experience during a new-nomad’s visit.   We understand that it’s easier to appreciate the quirks and cultural nuances, too, when you’ve had a chance to experience the culture at its originator. We live and breathe the vision that our founder, Conrad Hilton, understood to be so important:   It’s our mission to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality - one tweet at a time.   Our metrics     Given our focus, to reach any traveler seeking local recommendations, our core satisfaction metric is based on our ability to connect to travelers: Response. In 2015, we had just over 90 Team Members Tweet over 30,400 responses to travelers’ questions.   We leverage Lithium’s Social Web to ensure that each Team Member is receiving traveler questions from their local city / region / market, and can quickly identify which questions they can answer based on their experiences in the city they live and work in.