ContributionsMost RecentMost LikesSolutions2021 Customer Awards: Cisco Systems, Inc. - Best-in-Class: Community Company: Cisco Systems, Inc. Company background: Cisco proves that amazing things can happen when you connect the unconnected. By creating long-lasting customer partnerships, Cisco works to provide solutions that fuel their success. In 1984, Len Bosack and wife Sandy Lerner, wanted to email each other from their offices at Stanford University, but the technology didn’t exist. This is how the multiprotocol router was born. Since then Cisco has shaped the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors and ecosystem partners and has become the worldwide leader in networking - transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Contact: Monica Lluis Title: Global Community Manager Lead Related URLs: https://community.cisco.com Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Community 1. Describe your community(s) and how you decided to start a community or grow/change it in the last year? (user request, Khoros suggestion, internal idea, etc.) What is the purpose of your community? Cisco Community isrenownedforcrowdsourcingdeep technical knowledge, product capability guidance and troubleshootingadvice. As a resultof becoming anessential, go-toresource forusers, the community is the second-most visitedCiscodigital property. The emergence of COVID-19dramatically changed people’s way of life.They switchedfrom working and connecting with one another in-person toan entirelyvirtualexperience.In response,Cisco Community launchedacustomer-facingWebexCommunity to helpsupportthisadaptationto a digital world.TheWebexCommunityprovided information and supporttogovernment leaders, businesses,andprofessionals, which allowed themtocontinueworking,andteachers and studentstocontinuelearningremotely.Most importantly,Cisco Communityallowedpeopletoremain connected in a periodfilled with uncertainty. Since its launch, we’ve continued tobuildonthe vitality oftheWebexCommunity. WebexCommunity EcosystemExpansion-As COVID-19 shifted the way we work, the need for virtual collaboration grew,and thenumberofmeetingsonWebexsawanincrease of 230% all in a short span of a few weeks.Launched in the middle of a pandemic, theWebexportion of the community was a resource that people didn’t just want, it was one thatadministrators, adoption champions, and end users needed in a time of uncertainty.Webexbuilt a home that has now grown tomore than100,000 unique visitors engaging every month. The massive growth of the user base is attributed to the growing proactive content beingaddedeachmonth, such asthe “Walkthrough Wednesday”event series that walksadministratorsthrough new features,andthe “Adoption Spotlights”events that hosts influential customers sharing how theyuseWebexin their organizations. Driven bythe rapid growth of theWebexCommunity, we developed a largercommunityecosystem that containstheWebexBeta Program,WebexAmbassadors, andWebexExperts. TheWebexBeta program offers early field trials. TheWebexAmbassadors offers opportunities to get prestigious Ciscoverified learning certificates for free.WebexExperts offers opportunitiesto meet with the larger BU andtoco-create live events. The slogan for theWebexCommunity Ecosystem,“Level up your knowledge. Your network. Your voice.”, exemplifies our vision and commitment to ourWebexcustomers. WebexEmployee’s Favorite Feature of the Month -TheWebexCommunityempowerscustomers and partners alike bysupportingsuccessful product adoption.To accomplish this,Webexusescontests and giveawaysto promote engagementin the community,while still supportingitslarger business goals. In a new campaign called“WebexEmployee’s Feature of the Month,”we createdanew postto highlight a game-changing feature for those working from home– theBackground Noise Removal. The post contained information on howthis featureworks, how to use it, andweinvited community members to share how the feature is helping them stay focused at work. Each response to the post was entered into a giveaway for a free Cisco 730 headset. Inthreeweeks, the postreceived63,000 viewsand536 responses.During that time, adoption of thefeature increased from 1.75millionmeetingsto 4millionmeetings. ThePower ofRecognition -Thecommunityteamis always looking for new ways to innovate. One thing we value is learning how our work isimprovingthehealthof the community.The long-standing “Community Spotlight Awards”programhighlights community members’ outstanding content and engagement. On a monthly basis, award winners receivecommunity-wide recognition viaa prestigious badge that displays on their profile. Analyzing the award winners’ contributions three months prior and three months after they are recognized revealed thattheircommunity contributions (postsandreplies)increasedby nearly 22%. When we addedWebexspecificSpotlightAwards,theircontributions increasedby 145%.Twoof theWebexSpotlight awardees have beennamedCisco Designated VIPs(our“TopContributors”program) in 2021. In May 2021, theWebexteamreflected on its first year of operation andhostedtheWebexCommunity Birthdayaward show thathighlighted the contributions of the Top 25WebexCommunity users. Allattendees receiveda box ofthe latestWebexswag. Aha! Portal -The riseincustomer adoption and usage ofWebex,necessitatedthe need for a central product idea repository that has visibilitytoour product team.The launch of theWebexCommunity was the perfect time toprovide a formalized wayto capture the authentic voice and needs of our customerand funnel themstraight to our product team. Ciscouses theAha! Portal as a tool for ideasfrom employees and partners. The flexibility of theKhorosplatform made it possible toembeda public Aha! Portaldirectlyinto theWebexcommunity. Thiscreated astreamlinedexperience for customers andintakeprocessfortheproduct team, resulting in animproved the feedback loopforcustomers. We named it the“User Community Feedback Portal”.Memberuse of theportalcaught theWebexworld by storm. Today, the User Community Feedback Portal hasreceivednearly 3,000postedideas,andmore than300 of them have come to fruition. One ideathatwasparticularlymonumentalwas theLinux Support forWebex. This product ideawasdiscussedinternallyin February of2020 and was determined not a priorityitembythe product team.Thatverysame idea was posted in the User Community Feedback Portalonthe second day the portalwasactive. TheWebexcommunity rallied behind it, and the idea grew tomore than1,700 votes with 700 different companies supportingitas well as 200 partners.Upon seeing this interest and demand, the product teamsawthere was a true need. The community directly brought an idea that would shape the future of collaboration. Thisis onlyone idea outof 300 in the first yearthat has now manifested into reality. Webex’suse of Aha!provedsosuccessful, adoption was expanded tothe Customer Connectionprogram, which houses the Cisco Community’s most loyal users. Leveling up theWebexCommunity’s usageandthe inclusion within Customer Connectionadded extra weight to each vote,supportingthe voice amplificationmission of theCustomer Connectionprogram. 2. Tell us about how you made it happen? Did you stage it first? Who got an early look? How did you drive adoption? Did you get executive buy-in? Did you have any key iterations? WebexCommunity Ecosystem expansion -TheWebexBeta,WebexAmbassador, andWebexExpert programs were separateandgoing through a restructure in the later part of 2020. It was a perfect time to give each program a new, refreshed look, feel, and meaning. Our team created theWebexCommunity ecosystem, where the community engagement acts as the foundation, with growing opportunities tolevel up your knowledge, your network, and your voice.Additionally, as members grow their engagement within the programs,they arerequired to give back to the community.Asmemberslevel up in the programs,theyare given extra community access andprivileges. TheWebexBetaprogram needed a new home that centered around engagementandexclusivity,thusweexpandeda private areainthecommunity-basedCustomer Connectionprogramwherethe product teamcould host theirbetasand have real-time conversationand feedback with participants.Thesuccess of theWebexCommunityconvincedleadershipthatthebeta programcouldthrive inthis environment.Thebeta program continues to evolve in structure, gatherdirect feedback andshapethe future of collaboration. TheWebexAmbassador andExpert programsincludeddevelopingcertification badges, amemberdirectory, and integrations to pull those certifications to the community platform.In the coming months, theprogram is set to launch a new learning management system, providing more certifications forFREE. TheAmbassadorandExpertprogramsfallunder the sameleadershipastheBetaprogramand theWebexCommunity. Thus,as theWebexCommunitygrew and developeda reputation, it made sense to make the other disparate programs an opportunity for members to level up.Ciscoleadership supported us and encouraged us to build acommonculturewithin the community ecosystem. Wecontinueto build a cohesiveexperience andseamlesspresence with the support of our leadership. WebexEmployee’s Favorite Feature of theMonth–The“WebexEmployee’s Favorite Feature of the Month”campaign wascreated inMarchof2021. Under the leadershipoftheWebexAdoption director, a new initiative was created called Feature of the Month. When we heard of this, we wanted the authentic voice of the customer to be the centerpiece of the campaign. We want to hear HOW people are using the feature,and HOW it could be better. Weworked with our product seeding departmenttosecure12 Cisco 730headsets asa giveaway product for 1 randomrespondeeof the dedicated FOTM post. Given the Adoption team wasn’t totally familiar with the benefits of the community, we had to walk them throughwhat could beand pitched a bigger project that included an outreach email,how-to GIFs, and the community post. The adoption team created the emails and GIFS,and wecreatedthe postincommunity. We also worked with our social team to promote the“Feature of theMonth”post and contest. Power of Recognition -The community has been hosting the“Community Spotlight Awards”for many years, and we know that our community members can feel the love.However, we never learned how this recognition affected engagement in the community. With new drilled-down data from theWebexCommunity, we were able to pull all the data from the firstsixmonths of award winnersand recognize members based on their actions of posting and replying. Aha!Portal –The success of the“User Community Feedback”portal wouldn’t have been possible withoutleadership supportand existing product adoption from our product team.We trieda few different iterations of connecting the portal to the communitysuch asa link in a drop-down menu, but soon developed an embedded interface directly in the community. 3. What were the results? Tell us how it impacted your customer experience or the outcomes you seek as a business. Please include metrics if possible. WebexCommunity Ecosystem Expansion –TheWebexCommunity ecosystem isalive and active, providing extended opportunities to earn FREE certifications, test features before they go live, and connect directly to theWebexproduct team. Thus,aknowledge sharingnetwork was created,continues to growand continues to influence product direction. WebexEmployee’s Favorite Feature of the Month-We worked with the product team beforelaunching the promotionto understand the best way to trackthe feature adoption.We later found thatthe number ofmeetings usingthe featuregrewfromapproximately1.75milliontoapproximately4millionin the span of threeweeks. Aha!Portal- Launching and managing the idea portal within our community has increased positive rhetoric from community members,who feellike their voices truly matter. Onecommunity memberwho initiallycritical of Cisco, has nowtransformedhis opinionthroughout the year. He posted“The community does a very good job in compensating/closing that gap…since I can confirm that Cisco is listening to customer feedback, please allow me to remind you to share your ideas and suggestions on how to further improveWebexhere.”It’s amazing to seehow,with the implementation with of the portal, one of our biggest critics has turned into one of our biggest fans-and is consistently promoting the use of the idea portalwith others. 2020 Customer Awards: Cisco Systems, Inc. - Keep Calm and Carry On Company: Cisco Systems, Inc. Company background: Cisco proves that amazing things can happen when you connect the unconnected. By creating long-lasting customer partnerships, Cisco works to provide solutions that fuel their success. In 1984, Len Bosack and wife Sandy Lerner, wanted to email each other from their offices at Stanford University, but the technology didn’t exist. This is how the multiprotocol router was born. Since then Cisco has shaped the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors and ecosystem partners and has become the worldwide leader in networking - transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Contact: Monica Lluis Title: Global Community Manager Lead Related URLs: Cisco Community (external):https://community.cisco.comand Cisco TechZone (internal community): https://techzone.cisco.com Kudos Category: Keep Calm and Carry On 1. How did your team shift your existing strategy to better engage customers during a crisis? The COVID-19 crisis forced a major change in the way people and businesses work and stay connected. The reach of Cisco communities on the Khoros platform combined with Cisco’s decision to provide free Webex licenses and security products provided a truly powerful set of tools that allowed government leaders, business, and professionals to work remotely and teachers and students to learn virtually. A multi-pronged COVID-19 business continuity strategy was developed that included: A new Webex Community for end users in Cisco Community A new Cisco-internal “Webex Warriors” community. Given the unprecedented increase in case volume in the technical support organization, a new space in our Cisco internal TechZone Community was created to give our volunteer army of 1,425 support engineers a place to work together in support our customers. 16 “Community Live” Webinars and 52 “Ask Me Anything” events in seven languages were held to provide specific information based on the questions addressed to technical support and the community. A blog in the community that received almost 50K views and 70 Kudos. The blog contained helpful information about the assets available to users. Promoting the Cisco Community on our Cisco.com pages. Webex Community– Launched May 4th. Comments from the Webex Community users: TechZone Webex Warriors – Employee Community Comments: Events to support our users during COVID-19 Comments from Community Live Webinars and Ask me Anything Events Participants: Business Continuity Blog: 2. What operational processes did you create or change to respond in a time of crisis? Webex Community: A new Community Manager was hired specifically for the new end-user support community, focusing on launching the community and building awareness. Prior to COVID-19, Cisco Community forums focused on Webex topics such as adoption and administration. We followed our standard onboarding process to bring the new community manager up to speed and to accelerate the process for launching the Community. TechZone Warriors: The call went out for volunteers to help with the massive influx of Webex cases. A volunteer sign-up page went up and documents and FAQs on how to participate were created New instructions for volunteers were defined showing how to grab cases from the backlog and how to reference the community discussions on the cases in the database. The result? Our 1,425 volunteers handled more than 24.9K cases – greatly reducing the strain on our Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support resources and efficiently providing our customers the world class support to which they have become accustomed. 3. What success metrics did you use to determine if your shifts in strategy and process had the desired outcomes? What were those quantifiable outcomes? Webex Community: We accelerated the launch of the end-user community to support our customers in this pandemic. TechZone Webex Warriors: More than1.4Kvolunteers signed up to help reduce the amount of cases They took25Kcases and resolved more than18K. Volunteers helped with more than30% of all casesthat arrived into TAC in May. Webex Warrior Community Metrics: Events to support our users during COVID-19: 2020 Customer Awards: Cisco Systems, Inc. - Best-in-Class: Community Company: Cisco Systems, Inc. Company background: Cisco proves that amazing things can happen when you connect the unconnected. By creating long-lasting customer partnerships, Cisco works to provide solutions that fuel their success. In 1984, Len Bosack and wife Sandy Lerner, wanted to email each other from their offices at Stanford University, but the technology didn’t exist. This is how the multiprotocol router was born. Since then Cisco has shaped the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors and ecosystem partners and has become the worldwide leader in networking - transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Contact: Monica Lluis Title: Global Community Manager Lead Related URLs: https://community.cisco.com Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Community 1. Describe your community(s) and how you decided to start a community or grow/change it? (user request, Khoros suggestion, internal idea, etc.). Cisco Community is a combination of two external communities – the Cisco Support Community and Cisco Communities - that were merged in July 2018 for the purpose of providing a single site for customers and partners to interact, share information about Cisco Products, technologies and solutions, as well as learn about the latest and greatest in new products. Community members can also participate in Cisco-hosted events and host events to share their knowledge, expertise and experience with others. Cisco Community, where96% of the answers provided are from external contributors, continues to steadily grow in membership and engagement as we strive to provide the best experience for our users. The enhancements below have been instrumental in improving ourEasy of Use metric from 8.02 in fiscal year 2019 to 8.11 to fiscal year 2020. These are some of the key enhancements since July 2018: Security Category Restructure:During the merger of the two communities, we chose to retain the names of discussion boards in the Security category to prevent further disruption for our users. Over time, it became clear that we needed to restructure the security category to provide a more seamless and cohesive experience for our users and to more closely align with Cisco.com security product pages. We also heard from our top contributors who requested we streamline the discussion boards and labels to enable users to ask and answer questions more efficiently. As a result of the restructure, not only thevisits increased 16%, and the number ofquestions posted grew 9%, but more importantly, thereplies went up 22% and 29% more helpful votes were given. This is because it is easier now for users to engage and find the information they need. Jive External Communities:In November 2019 we migrated the remaining Cisco external private communities hosted on the Jive Cloud platform. We leveraged theGroup Hub functionalityand integrated380 groups into Cisco Community. Webex Community:Cisco offered free access to its collaboration Webex products to help address the increased demand for remote workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, our technical assistance centers experienced an astronomical increase in requests for support. In order to help millions of users (teachers, remote workers and health care providers), we created a new Webex Community. Events to support our users during COVID-19:To support our new users who had taken advantage of our free trials of Webex and Security products, we hosted a series of Community Live Webinars and Community Ask me Anything events from March through June 2020, in multiple languages. 2. Tell us about how you made it happen? Did you stage it first? Who got an early look? How did you drive adoption? Did you get executive buy-in? Did you have any key iterations? Security Restructure: Our approach to this project was to listen to feedback from our community members, specifically the top contributors, and to input from the different business units at Cisco. We worked cross-functionally to achieve these results and performed a mini-migration of content from the existing discussion boards to the new streamlined structure. Not only did we move content from one board to another, but we also removed any existing labels and applied new appropriate ones. We finalized the new structure on February 22, 2020. Jive external Communities: Our approach to this project was not simply to migrate all the forums and content from Jive to Khoros, but to streamline the entire experience for our users and provide a consolidated community structure. We wanted to create a user interface design that aligned with Cisco’s new digital personality with convenient usability and personalization improvements. We started by doing an in-depth cleanup of private groups, users, and content and planned to migrate what was relevant.We migrated 380 private communities (out of 482), and 13.3K users (out of 30K). This project was the final piece in our consolidated community plan, but couldn’t be executed until the Group Hubs capability was available in Khoros. We were one of the first customers to adopt this feature for our users. Webex Community for end users: With COVID-19 pandemic, Cisco has helped the world by providing free licenses to Webex and security products to allow people to work remotely and teachers and students to learn virtually. Webex is one of the few Cisco products that is available directly to customers via the web or mobile apps, but it did not have a singular community for users to engage with each other and experts. We fast tracked the launch of the Webex Community and featured it in a prominent place within Cisco Community so users can find the help they need when they need it. Prior to starting this, Cisco Community forums focused on Webex topics such as adoption and administration. The Webex Community visits havegrown by 372% since launching in May.Contributionshave gone from 17 before launch to 1,068 after launch (representing6182% growth). Events to support our users during COVID-19: During this unprecedented time, we quickly organized ourselves to support the world with tools that allow people to connect with others remotely and securely. Government leaders, teachers, and remote workers in all industries need to work from home. To help new users, who may not be technically savvy, participate in Webex meetings, connect to their companies’ intranets, etc., we provided a series of how-to webinars and moderated discussions. The events helped address specific questions in the community and reduce the number of cases being opened with Cisco’s technical assistance center. The moderated discussions, called Ask Me Anything, are one of our most popular events in Community. Here is how they work: We open a topic-based discussion thread for two weeks and assigned experts promptly answer questions during this timeframe.We hosted each Ask Me Anything event in seven languages simultaneously!Our local language moderators helped with the translations of the questions and answers. This is the first time we have hosted these “Ask me Anything” discussions across our local language communities simultaneously, and our users were very engaged and found these events quite useful. In total we had51 Ask me Anything eventsthat generated more than 62K views and 880 kudos.We also hosted 16 Community Live Webinars with over 4.5K registrations and 2.4K attendees.During the live webinar there were over 321 questions answered live, and the overall ratings were 4.61 (out of 5). 3. What were the results? Tell us how it impacted your customer experience or the outcomes you seek as a business. Please include metrics if possible. Overall Cisco Community CSAT (Easy of Use) Monthly average:It increased from 8.02 in fiscal year 2019 to 8.11 this fiscal year. This increase is significant! Security Restructure: Jive external Communities: Traffic grew 35% from the four months prior to the migration to the last four mounts (from 7.5K views to 11.5K views) Webex Community for End users: Events to support our users during COVID-19: