Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: Navis Entry submitted by: Jennifer Grinold (jgrinold) Marketing & Communications Manager Community: Navis Online Community (community.navis.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ________________________________________________... See more...
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: BRP Inc. Entry submitted by: Peggy Carrier (Peggy) After Sales Service & Community Manager Community: BRP Community (www.brp.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   ... See more...
Company: BRP Inc. Entry submitted by: Peggy Carrier (Peggy) After Sales Service & Community Manager Community: BRP Community (www.brp.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   BRP is the world leader in the design, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of motorized recreational vehicles and power sports engines. BRP products are distributed in over 100 countries by more than 3,500 dealers and distributors.   Our Community is a private community which has been active since February 2012. We are still relatively young and learning a lot on dealing with our Community, but how can we not be? For years we have supported our Dealer Network by picking up the phone and answering questions. Although 1:1 support continues to have its benefits, we realized over the years that the overall technical complexity of our products meant that Dealers needed to call us more often and therefore experience longer wait times on the phone. Our customer service support began to suffer. We needed a better way to support and communicate with our Dealers.     For us the Community meant a huge channel shift on how we support our Dealers, and we began to see benefits right from the start: Dealers answering Dealers, members answering or asking questions on evenings and weekends, videos and diagrams being shared on the community 24/7 and all of this across the globe in different languages. The fact that a post and subsequent solution can be read by our entire global Dealer and Distributor network has saved us many, many 1:1 encounters.   Our support process on the Community is structured as follows: Our Product Specialists are assigned to keep our Dealer Network informed with the latest technical information. They are also there to share best practices, tips and tricks as well as engage in any discussions they deem fit. They are the deepest technical resource for Dealer Technicians. Our Parts Specialist is there to ensure that information on estimated time of delivery, any transport issues or general parts questions are addressed. When we see a call driver, we immediately post the latest information on the community. We also have moderators, across the globe that monitor the site to ensure that guidelines are being followed. They escalate cases in times of need. We use the automated escalation email capability for posts that have not received replies after 24 to 48 hours depending on the product and season. These e-mails are sent to our Product Specialists who respond to the posts. We include community support (case escalation) in our daily roundtable meetings. Our community is a success today because everyone supports one another and both Dealers and BRP staff provide diverse solutions and fast resolutions to problems. The community has helped to increase communication within our company and with our global Dealer Network. We are able to share information globally so much faster than before. We do not go one day without speaking about our community here at our call center. We have never been more certain that supporting our Dealers through our online community is the way of the future. 1:1 support for complex situations will always be a part of our business strategy , but supporting hundreds and thousands of Dealers at one time through our online community definitely elevates the customer experience. Our young community is quickly maturing and we are excited for what the future holds!    
Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Christelle Dorat (Cexplor) Community Manager Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ___________________________________________________________________... See more...
Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Christelle Dorat (Cexplor) Community Manager Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ___________________________________________________________________   In February 2012, Groupe Casino launched Cvous.com, the 1 st community in France allowing customers from our 3 retail chains Casino, Franprix and Leader Price to co-create products and services for our stores.     C'VosIdées is where community members can propose, from scratch, ideas of products and services for the stores. The community votes for their favorite ideas and Groupe Casino reviews the top ideas and implements them when possible. For example, the concept of Idea N°1, a vegetarian corner gathering several vegetarian products in the same area of the stores, is currently undergoing testing.     C'VosProduits allows Casino, Franprix or Leader Price customers to vote for their favorite products and recommend them to others. It also helps our marketing teams collect customer insights on products sold in stores.     C'EntreVous is a forum where members can ask questions or give advice about retail shopping or everyday products. They are also able to post recipes and add the ingredients they need directly to their online shopping cart. This really simplifies and shortens shopping time for our customers!     Last but not least, cvous.com regularly proposes to its members to co-create products. There are two types of product co-creation. The first one consists of asking members to choose between different extensions of a product.     The second way is a deeper engagement with our members. One example we are very proud of is the Apérichefs story. This started with a casting. To participate, members submitted recipes or ideas of snack food products. Out of the candidates, nine Apérichefs were selected and invited to GroupeCasino's office in Paris to brainstorm and taste snack food products using their recipes or ideas. Currently on cvous.com, community members can vote amongst 6 delicious propositions of snack food products (madeleines) recommended by the 9 Apérichefs.     The C'Vous community is completely integrated into Groupe Casino's overall marketing strategy to support its goal to build proximity with customers and consumers in general.  Thanks to the community, we can listen to our customers and improve their shopping experience by implementing their product and services ideas that impacts our sales positively increases customer loyalty to our stores.   C’Vous also received professional recognition. We were awarded two TopCom Awards in 2012 and two E-Marketing awards in 2013 (Grand Prix and Award of the Best Community Strategy).   The C'Vous Team
Company: Cisco Entry submitted by: Juana Dehanov (jdurande) Community Strategist Community: Cisco Tech Zone Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Tech Zone is Cisco’s in... See more...
Company: Cisco Entry submitted by: Juana Dehanov (jdurande) Community Strategist Community: Cisco Tech Zone Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Tech Zone is Cisco’s internal engineer community that was built by engineers for engineers. Our users are extremely engaged in driving Tech Zone’s collaboration and content creation to the next level.   With this in mind, Tech Zone launched the “Best Greasemonkey Widget Contest” in which we asked all our engineers to create a widget that would enhance the Tech Zone user experience.   (Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that allows users to customize the behavior and display of a webpage using Javascript).     The idea behind this contest was to give engineers an opportunity to innovate within Tech Zone. In addition to the prizes the winners had their scripts natively integrated in to Tech Zone.  One big advantage of the Lithium platform is that taking these scripts and integrating them as native features is a relatively simple process.   This initiative triggered the engineers to experiment and enhance a platform to make it more their own. They developed some incredible new features such as:   A Table of Contents option on the rich text editor                         A Tech Zone Navigator that will show in all the pages                             A "Kudo Givers" widget to allow users to view the list of kudo givers for a thread or TKB article               Over 300 engineers submitted, commented and voted on the contest entries. After much deliberation, the Tech Zone community selected the winners.   “You know, what people like today is to have very powerful tools that are very easy to use. If the tools are amazingly powerful (as Tech Zone is), but not easy to use, then people might not use it which is really sad. Also, it will make Tech Zone a bit faster, as users can jump directly to the category they need, without the need of an additional jump to the homepage. I know that it is only a matter of a few seconds, but the difference between Usain Bolt and an average person on a 100 meter run is also a matter of a couple of seconds :-)” - GreaseMonkey Winner Tristan Van Egroo.  
Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Henrik Perrochon (Henrik) C'Vous Co-founder Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation __________________________________________________________... See more...
Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Henrik Perrochon (Henrik) C'Vous Co-founder Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation ___________________________________________________________________   In February 2012, we launched Cvous.com, the 1st community in France where customers can interact to create products and services for our stores. We had already thought about the design of our community and its user interface when we started working with Lithium. We wanted every C’Vous member to be able to contribute easily from the member’s page and from the website home page.     To reach these goals, we’ve created many different custom components. Within the first year, the community grew significantly and with the number of posts increasing it began to be difficult for the members to follow comments and reply to their ideas or forum messages. To improve our members’ experience, we decided to implement a system of notifications. Every time they have a new rank or when other members give kudos or comment an idea or a forum board they have initiated, they get alerts in their notification system.          We recently launched C’Vos recettes where members can post recipes and add the ingredients they need directly to their online shopping cart. To enable them to add recipes, we created a specific idea post page in which the community member can enter a title, ingredients and instructions. This page was technically mandatory to enable the external widget to transform any member’s recipe into a list of ingredients to order. It configures the post to look like a recipe to help the user writing its recipe.     On the C’Vos recettes’ post page, ingredients (“40g of dark chocolate”) are turned into generic ingredients (“chocolate”) which are automatically identified as labels and tags. This makes it possible to filter all recipes by ingredient. In the future, we will launch a mobile application that will allow our customers to scan a product in stores and display all related recipes available on C’Vous.    
Company: Spotify Entry submitted by: Rocio Guerrero (rociogc86) Community Manager Community: Spotify (community.spotify.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _______________________________________________________________... See more...
Company: Spotify Entry submitted by: Rocio Guerrero (rociogc86) Community Manager Community: Spotify (community.spotify.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ___________________________________________________________________   In just one year the Spotify Community has accumulated 15-20 super users, and all of them super cool and amazing folks. However just 6 months ago..a 20 year old boy from England started shining like a star in our Spotify Community! We are all amazed by his work, passion, enthusiasm, talent, kindness...he just has it all! We are very happy to introduce you to "Hammeh"....if you want to know more about this little fella and his more than 6,000 posts in 6 months!!! We've dedicated this song to Hammeh. Take a listen!   View the infographic here: Best Fan Story Ever!    
Company: SFR Entry submitted by: Sandie Hodiesne (SH) Social Media Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (forum.sfr.fr) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   SFR Forum, an online ... See more...
Company: SFR Entry submitted by: Sandie Hodiesne (SH) Social Media Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (forum.sfr.fr) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________   SFR Forum, an online Adventure, a great Human Adventure!   SFR Forum exists since 2008. It’s a place where web advisors used to respond automatically to customer requests either in a public or private mode.   During spring 2012, we faced a big challenge: Moving from an online customer services model to a 100% peer-to-peer Support Community model. A new way of thinking and managing information - a complete break and a real step forward into the world of online peer-to-peer Communities.   We decided to give to our future community as much space and autonomy as we could provide them with. We decided to take drastic decision. We kept the name but started from a white sheet without capitalizing on the old threads and existing content which could remind us of our previous operating processes.   We identified about thirty Super-users on our various social media properties (“Atelier SFR”, old “SFR Forum”, “HUB”). With the active help of our community managers, we gathered contact details for all of the super-users. A first contact was made through email. Afterward we contacted them all by phone and explained them this huge new project. Out of the 30 contacts, 29 were very enthusiastic and immediately ready to engage in this Adventure. Sandie (SFR’s Social Media Manager) set up 2 video conference meetings to discuss with the super-users in order to decrease the growing fear regarding the new community, to answer to remarks such as “it was better before with the old forum”, and to create the first relationships between participants. Fabien and Manuella, two community managers from the beginning, were collaborating with Sandie during these meetings and suggested a Beta test phase of one month. We explained to our super-users what would be their role and why it would be beneficial for them to be part of the New Forum beta phase. During this month, they would be able contribute to the community editorial content, create their own content, find new ways to communicate with the community management team in a public mode and embrace a heads-on the philosophy of the new Forum.   The day before the D-Day, the enthusiasm and the engagement of our “Founders” was very big. Dartagnan, Michel2, DocMac, RafCorDel, Rebel, Kendokanne and all the others were very excited to be launched in the open and exposed to a new audience and a new community.   January 15 th at 5pm, great emotion and vibes: first discussions, first ranks reached, first Private Message conversations… The SFR peer-to-peer Community where users could share their customer experiences and help each other was born!   Our “Founders” were recognizable with their specific “Founders” badges created for them and quickly took care of the new users. The SFR community is their community and they are deciding everything about the choice of discussion to highlight, what to post on the blog or the Wikisphere … These super fans defend strongly this new philosophy. We could witness comments like « But where are the SFR advisors?” or “Here, there is only us, the community, satisfied customers happy to help and support others. If you need to access your confidential customer data, the community won’t be able to answer.” When the community is unable to answer you, we guide you to the right contact points after the diagnostic is made. In this community, we always try to find a solution!   Our super-users have a dedicated space, a “private room”, invisible from the other members. Through this private room, we inform them about cases that members face regularly and the answers we have and that they can be spread out across the community. They can also give us their feedback on what is working or not with the platform and further needed developments… It’s also in this private room that we discuss about our next video conference, meetings, special events such as call for topics for the blog.                                                                                                   To transmit these values across the community, members must have taken the ownership of this online space. For this magic to operate, the online community needs to resonate with the members. Each members needs to feel comfortable navigating this online community. The customer experience must be positive.   The video launch takes the advantage of this simplicity: the ability to create something great together.   The ranking starts in a reference universe known from all but gradually draws references from the gaming world, while relying on the values of the Forum:                 - The “Builders” who by their contributions and exchanges secure and solidify the base of collective knowledge:                 - The “Enchanters” are recognized both for the quality of information they provide and the benevolence that radiates around them:                 After only 1 month and a half, our community has now 40 super-users with a high level of posts - Vindedious (1600), Kendokanne (1700), Boriswap (1300), Dartagnan (1400)…  They are some of our heroes you can visit in the “Forum SFR” community.   Discussions between all the community members and the super-users give us the opportunity to detect very quickly any malfunction and to inform the community when a problem is solved. For example, Kendonkanne initiative helped to qualify a problem with sms billing, to solve it very quickly and to relay the information in a public mode. This enabled to reassure our customers that have send us a lot of sweet words.                             40 Super-users provide 50% of the Community content   In addition of this efficiency, pleasure of sharing and conviviality moved in : Almost 2,100 posts shared within our Community on the “Discussion du Comptoir” pages. In a month and half, discussions are as well about music and cinema as Art in general.   The strength brought by our Community Management team are: Sincerity and authenticity, the wish to humanize the online relationships, the genuine desire to develop and reward anonymous expert by making them shine under the limelight. We will meet for real and for the first time our super-users on March 22 nd . It’s our way to celebrate Spring!   Goal : The official launch of our super-users program and share its content – Virtual Workshop and meeting with SFR experts, SFR site visits, game to participate to events such as new mobile launch, celebration and more.   Their first mission, find a name to the program. And to close the day, a great surprise is waiting for them. One of the founders of the Manau Group will be there to explain the story of “La tribu de Dana”, a very well known song in the 90’s, before we capture a great picture of all our superusers with our Polaroid.   The relationship between and with our super-users is essential and strong. The idea for this year is to offer them a customized T-Shirt with their username, a way for us to build a story together… See you soon with more input about this great Adventure.   Sandie & the community management team : Cindy, Manuela, Fabien, Fanja & Emmanuelle   http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/Les-news/Qui-est-la-Social-Media-Manager/ba-p/18598 http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/Les-news/Qui-sont-vos-Community-Managers/ba-p/9936  
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Company: BSkyB Entry submitted by: Jenny Stewart (JST03) Community Content Manager Community: Sky Help Forum (helpforum.sky.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________    ... See more...
Company: BSkyB Entry submitted by: Jenny Stewart (JST03) Community Content Manager Community: Sky Help Forum (helpforum.sky.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ________________________________________________     Best Superfan Story/Insight BSkyB 2013   In July 2012 we introduced our innovative Super User Program on the Sky Help Forum Community, recognising the super contributions from some of our forum members. Our Sky Help Community Super Users are individuals from within our Community who are the ultimate Sky boffins. Their technical prowess, detailed knowledge and broad range of expertise mean that they are the most valuable commodity in sourcing answers to our Customers questions. Whether they are technical aficionados looking to get the optimum performance of advanced applications or a technophile looking to simply decipher the jargon our Super Users can offer insight and support across our Customer base. All of our Super Users are independent of Sky and offer a true Customer insight in how to get the best from our products and services.   We wanted to implement a Super User program which truly recognised those active members within our Community who were advocates of sharing knowledge and best practice and wholeheartedly encompassed our methodology of peer to peer support and inclusion.   In being an advocate of our Customers and understanding their viewpoint our Super Users can offer a definitive insight into the sentiment of our audience and work with us to envisage a cohesive community built upon our core values. Our current base of 12 Super Users, have been recognised not only by Sky but by their peers as frequent, knowledgeable contributors with the Kudos and Accepted solutions to prove they are ‘worthy’ 🙂   To recognise the contribution of our band of expert Superfans we provide them with enhanced access to encapsulate them as part of the Sky team. “The Boardroom” our Private Community boiler room allows us to engage with our Super Users at a unique level understanding their views, ideas and feedback on new product trials, services and general discussions about almost everything. Not only that, but their contributions to our dedicated Knowledge Base and Monthly Blog articles truly gives a unique view of what it means to be a Super User and a true Sky Superfan.   One of our original community members on the Sky Help Forum was Annie+UK who registered on 27th October 2010 and has become a mainstay Sky boffin across our Help Forum offering insightful help and support to our Customers.     As a respected senior member within our community Annie+UK is our ultimate Superfan and was a first choice to join our Super User Program when launched.   However, it wasn’t always that way. During the early days, Annie+UK felt frustrations with regard to issues she was having related to her service provision and how this was handled from a customer support point of view, all of her frustrations were evident in her posts. A lot of this had to do with transparency, product development and honest communication. In case managing the issues experienced by Annie+UK we began to develop a foundation of open communication and feedback which offered us key insights into the sentiment of our wider community. Her insight was invaluable as a true testament of the value of our Customer’s knowledge and experience. Cultivating a strong relationship based on a mutual support and shared knowledge has integrated Annie+UK and our wider Super Users into the Sky team.   Being part of the Super User program and having the opportunity to build relationships with the Sky team allowed us to be more open and honest and along with having the opportunity to be involved in beta trials has helped change Annie+Uk’s opinion and rather than leaving the community she has become an advocate, this is evident in her having read 90%of all posts across our Community Forum and in supporting her peer customer group has responded to in excess of 2,750 Customer queries.                                             Her continued support of our Community members in sharing her knowledge and advice has assured her respected status as one of our key Super Users. She is not afraid to ask difficult questions and pose feedback directly to us based on Customer experiences which, assures that we can continually improve our service for our Customers. Her inspirational and engaging manner has assured she is an advocate of both our Customers and Sky which, has been key in the continued development of our Community and indeed our service provision.     In essence, Annie+UK has spent over 1 ½ years logged into the community, for a community that is less than 3 years old…making Annie+UK our ultimate Super Fan.      
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation ___________________________... See more...
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring’s innovative online community is a seamless customer experience that integrates five distinct entities (Lithium, Barclaycard, Epsilon, Curata and Survey Gizmo) using service calls, APIs, SSO integration, daily batch files and other methods. For the first time in the financial services industry, a customer can service their account and seamlessly engage in community activities ranging from reading blogs or 3 rd party articles, commenting on discussion threads, earning badges, donating to charity, voting on product features and looking at the bank’s financial stats. A complex set of technical interactions were developed with the vision of a seamless and rich customer experience and Barclaycard Ring fully delivers on that promise.   Seamless Customer Experience Lithium community is seamlessly integrated with Barclaycard servicing site so customers can service their accounts and interact with the community.   Your performance “ring” is built using a custom javascript library that selects from a finite set of images based on a customer’s progress.   Community Financials Financial metrics are systematically sent from Barclaycard data warehouse to Lithium.  The site uses the values to product the graphical displays.   3 rd party content is displayed using the Curata API to retrieve the title, content and URL of “tagged” articles.  Moderation tools developed for Lithium backend are used to support the display of articles.                                                 Gamification The ultimate in credit card gamification: Servicing & Community metrics are evaluated in near real-time to build the 4 color sections of the ring.  A combination of community activity, SSO attributes and daily batch file data are utilized to build the ring.   Product Behavior Badges - A daily batch file from Barclaycard is provided to Lithium to activate or deactivate certain badges.     Refer a Friend Refer a Friend is a module that is presented through the site to encourage customers to share Barclaycard Ring with their friends.  A unique refID is created for track referral applications along with driving the recruiter and campaign manager badges. Barclaycard servicing site is called for the referral ID. If an email is entered then a 3rd party vendor Epsilon deploys the invite.   Polling Community members VOTE on product features. Polls integrate with Survey Gizmo so that each individual’s vote is tracked and survey results are captured using Survey Gizmo API.     Integration with Card Servicing On the card’s servicing page, there is a seamless integration to the community and the main features of the community, including Blog, Financial Stats, Discussions, Refer A Friend and Profile links are presented on this page using the Lithium API.   Profit Sharing Barclaycard Ring shares its profits with members.  Customers see the amount of profit share they’ve received on their personal page. A Barclaycard service is calledto present the exact financial amount.  Customers use the sliding scale to donate their profit share portion to a charity they have selected and the same service is calledto capture the customer’s donation.                                                   Promotional Site BarclaycardRing.com is a public facing site that is part of the same community instanceas the private community, allowing customers to see the benefits of the Barclaycard Ring community as they consider applying for the card.  
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design _____________________________________________... See more...
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Community Design ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring’s community design is aesthetically beautiful and additionally there are 3 important elements that differentiate the site from other communities.   “Barclaycard Ring” is not only the name of the product but a Ring graphic also visually plays into individual member identity while symbolizing that the member is part of a community. We’ve designed the Ring to be a functional object that not only denotes individual accomplishment but encapsulates the community experience created in the site itself. Ring is a site within a site and the design represents a visual integration of a community inside a credit card servicing site. The visual elements of the two sites are perfectly blended and the resulting single site has its own identity, navigation and rules. The design is simple and elegant and requires almost no learning curve for the user. Even though the site concept is completely new and innovative members know exactly how to navigate between the various features on the site. Between the beautiful elegance of the design and the 3 differentiating elements above, we believe Barclaycard Ring’s community provides a step-change vision for the way digital communities will be designed in the future.   Beautiful “Pinterest-like” timeline gives members a snapshot of Barclaycard Ring’s ongoing story.     Card members can see their private information and then click over to participate in the community. As members navigate from servicing to community they move from a blue to orange background.                                       We show our members the financials for the product in an elegant and simple way.  Even more financial details are revealed to the curious community member.                                       Members can easily elect to donate all or a portion of their Giveback™ to charity by using the slide rule function.                                               Members vote on product features and evolve the core product.                                                     Member achievements are displayed in their “ring” and are illustrated by a wide assortment of colors that represent potential activities to improve the community.  
Company: Rogers Entry submitted by: Gina Mulic (ginamulic) Manager, Social Media Support Community: Rogers Community Forums (communityforums.rogers.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ______________________________________... See more...
Company: Rogers Entry submitted by: Gina Mulic (ginamulic) Manager, Social Media Support Community: Rogers Community Forums (communityforums.rogers.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ________________________________________________   Tech Essentials: Ask an Expert - connecting Rogers product teams with customers in an open conversation about their most challenging technology questions. Our new consumer website, Tech Essentials, was designed to provide Canadians with a deeper understanding of how today’s technology works.   To increase awareness for the site, corporate communications looked to the Rogers Community Forums for support. Over the last year the forums have become a platform for our product teams to engage directly with customers. In 2012, we covered mobile payment security and new product launches by hosting expert events.   Why use the Rogers Community Forums as a platform? We know that over 90% of registered users are Rogers customers based on SSO ID sign-in Events such as this give us a chance to present our point of view in an open and transparent way The event creates link love for programs like Tech Essentials and promotes SEO. The “Tech Essentials: Ask an Expert” forum series will run throughout 2013, providing our forum users with insider access to our product teams. Our first event covered roaming, a topic that can generate confusion and frustration for customers. We held an open Q&A over a two-hour period and generated a dozen questions and three Accepted Solutions. We received great feedback from customers as we clarified some misconceptions they had.   Marketing integration – the event was promoted through these owned channels: On our corporate blog Redboard On our online consumer magazine Connected Rogers Using direct channels, we invited 90,000 customers via email to the event Via Twitter - @RogersHelps, @RogersBuzz and using the #techessentials hashtag We also asked employees to invite family, friends and customers with an intranet story How does an event like this improve the customer experience? Product owners get to hear directly from customers. It generates immediate feedback that can be used to improve product offers.   How does an event like this drive revenue? The event was hosted just a few days before March Break, one of the most popular travel times for Canadians. By targeting customers we believe likely to roam, and providing instructions for roaming without worry, we expect more customers will purchase travel packs.   How does an event like this build advocacy? The Rogers Community Forums are peer-to-peer. By posting validated answers, we’re empowering members of the community to answer future questions. We’re looking forward to hosting future events, coordinating with the Tech Essentials Monthly Spotlight, some possible topics include data usage and how parents can keep their kids safe online.
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation _____________________________________... See more...
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, we really wanted a strong customer experience.  And given our many types of customers, customization was definitely necessary.  We customized the community in three unique ways:   1) Our Contact Us form.  We have multiple ways the customer can contact us (email, live chat, call, search knowledge base, open discussion thread).  This is all based on permissions (free, paid, enterprise).  It was important to serve up the right options based on the type of customer asking for support.  We needed to make the page smart to manage these permissions - which required customization.                              Customized contact us forms based on customer type   2)  Integrated search and chat integration.  We believe we’ve provided a revolutionary and elegant support contact form.  When a user clicks contact support they are presented with a page tailored for them depending upon what kind of customer they are (consumer, enterprise, other), and as they type into the subject line we instantly serve up answers based on articles in our knowledgebase and community.   We recently switched to Zendesk as our ticketing system and rolled out chat-based support. As part of the rollout - we incorporated chat features directly into the contact form.  The integration built by cloudsquads seamlessly transfers the user name and email Id along with the post content and creates a chat session.  From the customers’ perspective, once they’ve completed the form, they can opt to email or live chat without reentering information.  From our agents’ perspective, they’re able to get the customer information along with the context of the issue right from the Lithium form, and directly into our backend chat tool.                                           3) Site Status Page. Our customers rely on us to share large amounts of information quickly, securely, and reliably, thus service availability is critical to their business.  We tied our service availability status indicator to the community experience - thus enabling real-time status push to our millions of subscribers.    Our Site Status Page is housed on Lithium as a custom blog.  There are several key features that CloudSquads customized to make this very unique.  The main page shows the most current “blog entry” which is our latest status, and a user can look at the history of blog posts to see our site status history.  Additionally, we’ve provided a subscription widget so that users can subscribe and be notified whenever new site information is posted.  Finally, we then have multiple other locations in our community, such as the “quick help” section on the main support page, that check the most current blog post and dynamically display the appropriate site status depending on a tag.  These features allow us to very quickly update multiple locations on our site during maintenance or an event, and simultaneously notify our customers which helps us proactively avoid deluge of support queries.                                    
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________ ... See more...
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, we’re very focused on finding the best and most cost effective way to manage all of our customers through social.  We have over 40 million customers, many of whom are free users, so we’re unable to provide the same services for them as we do our paid customers. Our support program uses social media to stay connected, but not incur high support costs.  We worked with Lithium partner, Cloudsquads to have a more integrated unified approach to engaging with customers.  Below are two examples of that integrated approach.    With our Lithium community we were able to put our blog and forum in one place.  Because of this, we get more visitors/readers to the blog. We leverage our knowledge base more and directly link the support questions coming through our community to the right answers and information.                                               Also, we offer multiple ways in which our customers can contact us (email, live chat, call, search knowledge base, open discussion thread).  This is all based on permissions (free, paid, enterprise).  It was important to serve up the right options based on the type of customer asking for support, so we needed to make the form smart - which required customization.  We now take the subject line as the user types up their support request and instantly serve up the right answers based on articles in our knowledgebase.                                     Customized contact us forms based on customer type                                             Dynamic search
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI _________________________________________________... See more...
Company: Barclaycard US Entry submitted by: Jared Young (jaredyoung) Sr. Director, Consumer Markets Community: Barclaycard Ring (www.barclaycardring.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ___________________________________________________________________   Barclaycard Ring MasterCard © is a very simple credit card product with a low interest rate, simple terms and no annual or balance transfer fees. But what sets Barclaycard Ring apart is its use of online communities in an innovative way to talk with card members about the product and how it should evolve. The Barclaycard Ring team also developed the industry’s first profit sharing program with card members, called Giveback™. This aligns the interests of both bank and card member like never before and opens the door for both to advance the cause of charities. And to help crystalize the trust, the team posts the financial statistics for the program on the website and discuss the results each month.                                                           While less than 10 months old, Barclaycard Ring’s innovative credit card community is already showing signs of revolutionary success:   Gross Income has increased for Barclaycard by > $500K since the launch of the program.   The business ROI of Barclaycard Ring has benefited others as well. The Ronald McDonald House received $10,000 donated by the community through our Giveback program.                                     The future for profitability looks even brighter as community engagement level is driving significantly different card behaviors.  Superusers and engaged community members give Barclaycard more of their business, are less likely to close their account and are significantly more likely to pay their bill on time.  The results are staggering:                                                                                                               There is no better evidence perhaps than continued investment in branded community – based on the success of Barclaycard Ring, Barclaycard is launching a new travel community focused on servicing the specific needs of its traveling customer base.  
Company: Future Shop Entry submitted by: Laura Buchanan (LauraB) Social Community Manager Community: Future Shop Tech Yeah Steelbook Community (community.futureshop.ca/) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ____________________... See more...
Company: Future Shop Entry submitted by: Laura Buchanan (LauraB) Social Community Manager Community: Future Shop Tech Yeah Steelbook Community (community.futureshop.ca/) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ___________________________________________________________________   This is the story of a group of superusers who came sort of out of nowhere to become influential in not only the community, but in the Future Shop movie business.     When we launched the Future Shop Community almost 6 years ago, it was always with the vision that it would be a place where our customers, employees and vendor partners would connect and engage directly. What’s happened in our Movies & TV Show forum over the past year has been a beautiful example of a niche group of passionate customers, an engaged merchant team & vendor partners who recognized the opportunity that this group of people represented.   Steelbooks are a special release of movies (new and old) that come in a metal packaging with different artwork than the regular DVD or Blu-ray releases. They are highly coveted among the collector community and Future Shop is in the unique position of being the sole distributor in Canada. Steelbooks are so sought after and produced in such limited quantities that you can find them re-selling for over $100!   The buyer team here at head office decided to start “leaking” Steelbook artwork and release information in the forum because it was easy to access and they could turn the “leaks” around quickly. When TheJord asked “What 2012 releases you would like to see in a steelbook?”, he got 24 replies and over 50,000 views on that single thread. Because of the engagement of all of the buyers & superfans, the Movies & TV Show board saw a 56% growth in board posts, a 59% growth in board views & a 75% growth in post views (YoY).                                               As the group of superusers continued to grow, so did their roles in the community – several rose quickly in the ranks and joined larger superuser programs in place for the entire community, our invite-only Community Ambassador program. They started posting Steelbook links for everyone to go place their pre-orders as soon as they were online.   Our vendor partners saw the passion that this group had for steelbooks and decided to tap into this by conducting polls in the forum to help them decide on what titles they would produce steelbooks for next. Future Shop produced approximately 80,000 steelbook last year and saw 60% comp growth online for last year – large in part due to the popularity of our Steelbook program.                                             The Steelbook superfans have also helped Future Shop to perfect the art of shipping Steelbooks without overpackaging them. Future Shop received lots of feedback on how to better package and ship Steelbooks so that they didn’t get dented or scratched, which was surfaced up to the teams who could directly impact this.   Shout-out to all of our Steelbook superfans! Atomic, kaw, Drum18, jceperley, debaser17, TheJord, ZeroX39, pioupiou, saybinator & many more.      
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ________________________________________________   At Y... See more...
Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Business ROI ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, our #1 goal as an organization is customer satisfaction.  Prior to deploying Lithium, we did not offer any support to our free users.  With Lithium, we now have various ways to provide support to free users.  This results in customer retention and increased brand equity because their positive experience propels them to recommend us to other users or pitch us in enterprise conversations.                                         The rate of support calls that come to our team should be lower than the rate of our company’s growth - basically call deflection is very important.  In 2011, case volume growth was 4% per month.  Lithium was implemented by Lithium partner, Cloudsquads, in December 2011, and in 2012, the case growth rate was decreased to 2.5% a month.  Customers want to get their answer quickly and efficiently.  Call deflection is good for the customer too as it gets them the answer they want quickly and the way they want it. When we rolled out, we saw a immediate 20% drop in call volume simply due to the much improved self-help options.  Phone calls are the most expensive support ticket to take, and we were able to take what could have been a 20% cost savings and reinvest into delivering an even better support experience, which translates to more product virality and higher lifetime value of our customers.   Since our deployment of Lithium and some of the customizations that CloudSquads has made, we’ve been able to significantly slow the incoming rate of new cases, and in turn manage the many costs associated with scaling our call center, while at the same time meeting our #1 objective of delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Company: A1 Telekom Austria AG Entry submitted by: Claudia Religa (viktoria) Community Manager Community: A1 Support Community (a1.community.net) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________... See more...
Company: A1 Telekom Austria AG Entry submitted by: Claudia Religa (viktoria) Community Manager Community: A1 Support Community (a1.community.net) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________   In a rather small country like Austria with a population of 8.4 million people, A1 is the unique leading telecommunication provider with 5.2 million mobile and 2.3 million fixed subscribers.   Since launch in November 2011, our A1 Support Community grew significantly: our real substitution ranks around 25 percent (= percentage of users which perceive the A1 Support Community as primary service channel) and the crowd ratio is located around 80 percent. When looking at the charts, we managed to create a vitally and steady growing Community – but what are the qualitative actions we set to engage with our users and to motivate them to participate in the way they do?   On the one hand, it is all about motivation factors, gaming mechanics and gratification approaches: Transferring online into offline events: within 2012 we started the initiative “Community events”. We organized a guided tour at the A1 Technical Department. The Super Users were accompanied by A1 Device managers and the A1 Social Media management team for a meet & greets and to gain exclusive background-infos. “Community photo tour” – we exclusively invited users to a phototour to the Viennese zoo and equipped them with Hero-device smartphones to review the quality of the photo-cameras.   Hero of the month Award: Super Users – the most active users in our Community – are rewarded monthly for their outstanding contributions within the Community. Super Users as moderators: to show the most active Super Users our respect and trust, we gave them moderator roles within the Community. Now they are able to contribute even more to the content and quality of the A1 Support Community.                                               Exclusive boards, badges, ratings and rankings for Super Users are a matter of course as they were part of the concept when creating our new Community. On the other hand, we deeply link our A1 Social Media channels and provide target-group oriented content:   It all started by integrating the A1 Support Community in our Facebook fanpage. By doing so, we opened the Community to our established fan base on Facebook.   When comparing to our competitors in the Austrian telecommunications market , we keep a facebook fan-share of 59% and are therefore at the pole position with around 238,000 Facebook fans. On Facebook, three A1 Social Support agents provide fast and exclusive support. Additionally, we spread offers, lotteries and product information for our Facebook target group. Twitter is our channel for distributing company news as well as servicing support requests.   The A1 Blog provides product information, device and App reviews, etc. and is deeply linked with the A1 Support Community. The A1 Community actively creates content for our A1 Blog, eg. device reviews from users. The recruiting of our authors takes place via A1 Support Community and Facebook.   We take Customer experience one step further:   Initiatives like the Ideas concept take the customer experience to another level, where users can participate in the development and beta testing of products and solutions.   For that reason, we integrated our A1 Community in the development of the new “My A1” customer self-service area. Firstly, we asked them for ideas which functions they would like to see in the new Customer Self-Service area. After reviewing them, we gave them feedback concerning their ideas and invited them to join a workshop with the “My A1”-project managers. In one last step, the A1 Community had the chance to evaluate the scribbles made for “My A1” and give their feedback to be incorporated into the self-service area.                                         Not only the facts and figures proof that we are one the right path – in 2012, our A1 Support Community and Social Media commitment stood out at national and international Social Media and Community Awards.   In Hamburg, Germany, we were rewarded for the “Best Social Media Strategy” in the DACH region at the Social Media Economy Days 2012. At the Digital Communication Award 2012 the A1 Support Community was honored as the Best Online Community within the European online PR and communications branch as well as with the German Award for Online Communications 2012 in Berlin, Germany. In Austria, one of our integrated Social Media campaigns was rewarded with the Award for the Best Online- and Social Media communication granted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth.  
Company: Time Warner Cable Entry submitted by: Phil Blum (TWC-PhilB) Social Media Customer Care Manager https://twitter.com/TWCableHelp Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   Tim... See more...
Company: Time Warner Cable Entry submitted by: Phil Blum (TWC-PhilB) Social Media Customer Care Manager https://twitter.com/TWCableHelp Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   Time Warner Cable is one of the largest providers of video, high-speed data and phone, supporting over 15 million customers in the United States.  In 2010, I was selected to lead the social media arm of TWC’s customer care operations.  Our mission was to provide high-quality service experience to customers on any channel for which they prefer to interact and we needed a solid social engagement and response platform that can help us manage the flow of service-related conversations and ensure that my team of social agents are able to address each and every customer need.   We launched Lithium Social Web in April 2012 to my team of 10 social customer care agents and we now have a streamlined platform to identify messages from Twitter and Facebook that need a response and provide timely resolutions.  Within 6 months, we have improved our social response rate by 30% and increased agent productivity by 57%.  This is driven by the integrated nature of the platform that allows my team to tackle cases more quickly and ability to respond without switching back and forth between different social tools. We were also very honored to be placed on the "Top 10 Socially Devoted Brand" list by AdWeek.   Our social support program proved critical in sustaining customer relationships during one of the worst storms in recent history.  As Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the East Coast in the fall of 2012, our customers were anxious to learn when their services would return.  Many of them turned to their only remaining avenue of contact: accessing Facebook and Twitter via their smartphones.  With the overwhelming increase in volume, my team was able to step up to the plate and even received kudos from grateful customers for their timely response.     Our social support strategy extends beyond this customer care team.  We will be launching a community soon because this is a critical way for us to provide support in a scalable way.  We also want to bring the conversations that are happening about us onto our own domain so we can engender goodwill, provide more transparency to our customers, and weigh in on those conversations where appropriate.  We’re excited to embark onto the next phase of our social support strategy!
Company: Telefónica Digital Entry submitted by: Aurelien Poma (Elixor) Head of Community Community: TU Me Community (support.tumeap.com) Lithy category: Best New Community _________________________________________________________________... See more...
Company: Telefónica Digital Entry submitted by: Aurelien Poma (Elixor) Head of Community Community: TU Me Community (support.tumeap.com) Lithy category: Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   Hello everyone, I would like to nominate the TU Me community for the Best New Community Lithys. TU Me is a free app, all-in-one global communicator for iOS and Android.   I’ll try to keep this short.   The aim of our newly opened community is customer support using the model giffgaff has brilliantly put in place: we empower community members and reward them for their help and contributions.   On top of providing amazing customer support the TU Me community has become a massive group of friends from all over the world.     To give you an idea, the map below is a snapshot of where users are registering from on the TU Me community.     In addition to the friendly, multicultural and multilingual atmosphere of the community, our members have suggested amazing features and improvements for the app.   Seven of their ideas have been developed and implemented in the app.   And another seven ideas have been accepted and will make it into the app. Having community members directly impact the development roadmap and influence the priorities for improvements made our work challenging and even more exciting.   We also received impressive new design suggestions for the app, new avatars for the Lithium forum and banners for our Facebook fan page.   Finally I thought I would share a nice story that happened a few weeks ago. To thank one of our community members from Bolivia for his positive contributions we decided to send him a goody bag as a present. This is what we got as a reply when we asked for his postal address:   I've just seen your message about the present, like I said I live in Bolivia, and over here we don't have a mailbox, the apartment where I live in doesn't have a mailbox, I think that the only place that has one is Cochabamba. To be honest, just being part of this community is super cool, and a very good present is to have had the pleasure of meeting you all.   Thank you for reading this nomination, I’ll just finish with one image which is our TU Me user of the week wall, so everyone in the office knows how great our community members are. (I wish we had a bigger wall though :D)    
Company: Autodesk, Inc. Entry submitted by: Katinka Sante, Strategic Social Programs Manager Community: Autodesk Expert Elite Lithy category: Best Social Support Program, Best Superfan Story or Insight, Best New Community _______________... See more...
Company: Autodesk, Inc. Entry submitted by: Katinka Sante, Strategic Social Programs Manager Community: Autodesk Expert Elite Lithy category: Best Social Support Program, Best Superfan Story or Insight, Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   On November 28, 2012 at Autodesk University, Autodesk’s annual user conference, we announced our formal customer advocacy program: Autodesk Expert Elite. This program is designed to recognize community members who make extraordinary contributions to the company's online community. The program builds on, and is an evolution of the Autodesk Community rank and reputation model.   Members of the Expert Elite group are characterized by their regular and responsive participation in Autodesk's discussion forums, advanced knowledge of the company and its products, and leadership in the user community.   Individuals are selected after a detailed review of their Autodesk Community contributions, which include assisting other customers by sharing product knowledge and displaying engaging and positive styles of communication and collaboration. The goal of the Autodesk Expert Elite program is to deeply engage this important group of individuals and empower them to better assist their peers and support the Autodesk community. The program has a one year term and members are reviewed bi-annually.    As part of the Autodesk Expert Elite program, members receive a number of benefits including access Autodesk’s portfolio of design products, access to a private forum known as the Expert Elite Lounge. This Lounge is only available to our Autodesk Expert Elite members and is geared toward opening the lines of communication between Autodesk and its most valuable customers.   Expert Elites are also given additional administrative permissions within Lithium to help curate and highlight valuable forum content. For example, our Expert Elite members can accept solutions for their posts as well as posts authored by other customers. Additionally, Expert Elites have the ability to escalate their own posts into our CRM system for support assistance. We’ve also created an Expert Elite community badge for members to include in their forum profiles, which they are very proud of.   Today, Autodesk has 64 Expert Elite members from 11 different countries.  These 64 members represent 28% of all posts, 30% of all accepted solutions and 27% of our community kudos. Here are just a few of our Expert Elite members: - Adrianna Schneider - R.K. McSwain   Our Expert Elite members are a key group of stakeholders helping us shape our community programs, strategy and policy.   Watch this video to hear from some of our Expert Elite members as they talk about the importance of supporting our community http://youtu.be/xNsDzbZc58I