Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the mo... See more...
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the most prominent telecom companies in the world, with more than 263 million clients during 2015.   Through different brands – Orange itself, newly acquired Jazztel, amena and Simyo, we have the trust of more than 19 million clients in Spain making daily use of our fixed and mobile services as well as TV.   Our unique promotion and goal    Organization of the offline “Event for superusers”, a meeting in the Orange Spain offices. The goals were:   Personally meet the most active users of the Orange Community. Show them the way we work daily on the Community. Get feedback and ideas to improve.   The event, that lasted a whole day, included talks of agents and community managers of the Orange Community, talks of directors of different areas of the company, an award ceremony for superusers and a focus group session to gather feedback for improvement.   The event also included an informal lunch in a restaurant in Madrid, as a way of bonding with the users, where everyone expressed their love for the event and encouraged us to repeat it on a frequent basis.   Our strategy and tactics for our community    The marketing campaign began with a gamification strategy to encourage participation of the Community users. We also encouraged them to register and participate in the Community through the different social media profiles of Orange. The gamification program was based on the challenge to obtain different medals for those with active participation. Four types of superusers were established: Solucionadores (or Solvers): They resolve doubts and problems of the community users. Friendly: Constant participation, always positive, in the different categories of the community. Master Tekkies: Expert users in different áreas (smartphone tricks, gadget and mobile reviews, etc.). Shopping Assistant: They recommend the most adequate tariff, Smartphone or offer to those clients in need of a certain product.     Users under these roles were recognized with customized medals that appeared in their profiles. Also, their participation was shown publicly in the community rankings.     Once they were identified, we created a private fórum only for superusers, where they receive the latest news about the Company and we offer them to be beta testers of some of our products.     After several months of constant activity in the private fórum, the superusers were contacted individually to invite them to the “Orange Superusers” event in Madrid. During the event, they received an award for their hard work on the community, a pack containing different Orange products, including a Smartphone.   They also had the opportunity to give a little thank you speech where everybody attended: superusers, directors of the company and the team in charge of the communities.     After the event, both External and Internal Communications created press notes and other communication published in several media and social networks.       Since then, the activity of the superusers increased, and it is actually themselves who promote other users to be a future superuser of the community. They have asked us to repeat the event in the near future.   Our results   The event was a total success, almost all of the superusers came to Madrid from different cities in Spain, some from as far as the isle of Ibiza. Engagement has improved (posts, problem solving, kudos…) and some of the ideas and suggestions from the event are now in practice.   Everyone that attended (superusers and company employees) published afterwards positive messages in their Twitter and Facebook profiles. And Orange sent an internal note to all employees detailing the marketing action that took place.    
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switz... See more...
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switzerland. Almost 1.4 million customers place their trust in the company’s various products for television, Internet, telephony and mobile.   The regional organisation for Austria/Switzerland generated revenue of CHF 1.7 billion in 2015 with more than 2,500 employees. upc cablecom has a strong parent company behind it in Liberty Global, which is headquartered in the UK.   Our unique promotion   upc cablecom had been running a community on an outdated platform for about 4 years. This platform was extremely limited in terms of moderation capabilities, gamification and features. Community moderators were faced with highly negative sentiment which could not be dealt with properly.   Lithium community was launched in June 2015 for upc. Target was to provide a scalable technology layer which could be used to further develop social activities. Expected benefit for the business was to provide an integrated state-of-the-art social and community technology for ease of use and effectiveness.   Specific goals we wanted to achieve (business case):   Quantitative: Increase NPS Decrease support cost   Qualitative: Improve sentiment drastically Go personal, human connection, adapt tonality, show the faces behind the company. Solidify the connections with our customers Increase internal awareness for social / community   Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   Based on our overall social strategy we defined tactics to gain the objectives listed above.   Tactics: Go personal and become truly social Surprise your customer – build human connections for the brand. Show presence onsite and offsite Try as much as you can, take up what works, abandon what does not work!   Since launch in June 2015 we worked on the following areas: Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Super Hero Programme Newsletters, personal letters   1) SWEEPSTAKES:    Push registration sweepstake   Target: Push registrations   Newsletter campaign for our customers in order to increase registration rate of the support community. Customer activity: Register and tell us why you deserve the new iphone 6s. Prize: iphone 6s     Halloween sweepstake   Target: Increase awareness and usage, create fun-factors   For Halloween we organized a sweepstake on tickets for the most exclusive Halloween party in Switzerland.   Customer activity: Tell us what your favorite horror movie is….   Sweepstake article in the blog       We produced a self-ironic YouTube Video (see chapter “Videos”) where we created a context between Halloween and a buggy product feature.   New avatars created for Halloween Especially for the occasion of Halloween we extended the avatar offering with a range of “spooky avatars”.     2) VIDEOS   We produced a number of homemade low-budget videos on different topics.   Examples:   Community promotional video Promoting the community. Video was used as TrueView campaign during 3 weeks and was published on YouTube. Main actor of the video clip is a community moderator. One of our community super users acted within this clip as well.     The „making-of” this video was published in one of our blog articles.   Halloween Video Self-ironic spooky Halloween video with reference to a buggy feature of one of our products.    Connect Box unboxing Video Production of an unboxing video for a newly launched modem. The product manager presented the new product. Users could ask questions online.     3) BLOG   Target: Content Marketing; drive traffic! We kicked off a blog in parallel with the community launch. Blog articles are produced on a regular basis and drive traffic to the community and to our website.     4) LIVE TALKS   Target: Increase engagement, drive traffic   To become even more personal we introduced a Community Live Talk on a bi-monthly basis. We are discussing specific topics with internal or external experts live. We got engaged on senior management level and brought senior management into our live talks. Users can ask questions upfront or during the live-session.   WLAN Live Talk       5) LIVE EVENTS   Target: Increase engagement For this year’s big company event we raffled tickets within the community. This generated a lot of interest and we had many community members on-site during the event. They got special treatment before, during and after the event and were really enthusiastic about it.   Live Ticker In parallel, community guys organized a live ticker during the event which was broadcasted via our community blog.     6) SUPERUSER PROGRAMME   Target: Strengthen peer-to-peer support We launched a new superuser programme this spring. Superusers are the fuel of our community and we rely highly on them in terms of peer to peer support. The relationship has been intensified over the past months. Our superusers love the programme and the appreciation which comes with it.     7) NEWSLETTERS/ PERSONAL LETTERS   Newsletters Target: Drive engagement A community newsletter is being sent out on a monthly basis to all registered users. We promote relevant topics and make sure that customers perceive us as number 1 source for relevant support information.     Personal letters Towards the end of the year we sent personal letters to the most active users of the community and said „Thank you“ for their engagement and their contributions..   Moreover, we produced a small video explaining with what we had been busy with during 2015.       Our results   Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Superuser Programme Newsletters, personal letters     1. Sweepstakes Push registration sweepstake 290 new registrations over 350 participants   Halloween avatars & sweepstake More than 100 users changed their avatar to one out of the Halloween range. Very positive feedback on the self-ironic video    2. Videos Community Promoclip Over 36’000 views on YouTube. Very positive feedback on YouTube & within the Community The YouTube Trueview-campaign performed clearly over the Google Benchmarks.     Connect Box unboxing: Top position in the (Google) SERPs for the product name 70 comments/questions on the new modem within the blog 8000 views on YouTube (without further promotion) 230 participants in the competition Very positive feedback on the personal style of the announcement     3. Blog 130 articles, 760 comments, 80’000 page views, 430 kudos since launch   4. Community Live Talks Over 40 questions raised by Community members upfront and during the talk High senior management attention Based on the results of our community live talks senior management decided to use the live talk format for internal communications as well.   5. Live Event & Liveticker High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the event Very positive feedback (external & internal) High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the Event Very positive feedback (external & internal) 6. Superuser programme - Programme was kicked off with 4 superheroes - Continuous exchange via Superhero board and Skype - Personal meetings on a regular basis   7.Newsletters and personal letters   Newsletters Open Rate ca. 35%, Click Rate ca. 20%, Resulting in a regular increase of contributions (Boards & Blogs)    Personal letters Intensified relationship with the top users
Company: Avon Entry submitted by: Rene Calvey (eCommerce Community Lead ) Community: Avon Beauty Connects Lithy category: Social ROI Titan   About Avon Products, Inc.   Avon is the Company that for 130 years has proudly stood for... See more...
Company: Avon Entry submitted by: Rene Calvey (eCommerce Community Lead ) Community: Avon Beauty Connects Lithy category: Social ROI Titan   About Avon Products, Inc.   Avon is the Company that for 130 years has proudly stood for beauty, innovation, optimism and, above all, women. Avon products include well-recognized and beloved brands such as ANEW, Avon Colour, Avon Care, Skin-So-Soft, and Advance Techniques. Sold through nearly 6 million active independent Avon Sales Representatives, Avon products delight consumers in approximately 70 countries worldwide. Learn more about  Avon and its products at www.avoncompany.com.   Avon now reaches one in three women in the UK, with six million women seeing an Avon brochure every three weeks.   In 2015, 22,000 shoppers voted Avon as the UK’s Best Health and Beauty Retailer 2015 in Verdict’s Customer Satisfaction Awards.   As the company for women, Avon is committed to supporting the causes that matter most to women; breast cancer and domestic violence. To the end of 2015, Avon and the Avon Foundation for Women donated more than $1billion in 50 countries to women’s causes.  In the UK £16.8 million has been donated to breast cancer charities through the Avon breast cancer crusade and £1.6 million to domestic violence charities through its Speak Out programme.   Goals for our Lithium-powered community    We wanted to create a community for both B2C and B2B members both for very different purposes. We wanted to engage customers with relevant content, enabling them to quickly find looks/products and conversations that would enable them to engage with one another and Avon.   For our Representatives we wanted to create a seamless journey from their ordering page using SSO and again present relevant business content and information while encouraging conversation.   Overall we wanted to a fun, engaging and supportive community that would serve Representatives and Customers one and the same.   Our focus areas and tactics to meet these goals   We wanted to focus on creating the right content for both areas of the community, by focusing on working with the wider business on B2B content and working with a content agency to supply blogger and beauty content we felt we had the right strategy for success. Traffic driving was also a big goal, we had to ensure that for the B2B area we could drive traffic internally through our eMail, newsletters and links from our ordering sites as SEO would not reach us! We also ensured that we had strong links with our social team and everything public facing we did had SEO in mind.   Social shopping and selling is also a huge part of our strategy, so by engaging our users with our ‘Reward beauty, receive beauty’ scheme we are able to send them a product in return for a nice piece of user generated content which left them feeling engaged and valued.     Our results   We recently undertook research that looked at Representatives that have NEVER logged into the community vs those that have logged on at least three times in a certain period. We found that those Representatives that are regularly using Avon Beauty Connects had a 137% higher rate of retention with the business, had a 47% higher order value and 83% higher average earnings per campaign. Representatives regularly using Avon Beauty Connects also had a 43% increase in Customers.   So the value of community in their engagement and support in running their own businesses is truly working!   We have also recently launched Knowledge Base which is creating a great collection of business guides and UGC for tips and tricks to run an Avon business.   Overall we have proved that we retain and engage our audience and provide an fun and friendly and business oriented community for the Avon Representative and his or her Customers.  
Company:  Covered California/Campbell Ewald Entry submitted by: Amanda McCartney  (Senior Marketing Specialist) Community:  https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCA/ https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCAEspanol https://twitter.com/CoveredCA htt... See more...
Company:  Covered California/Campbell Ewald Entry submitted by: Amanda McCartney  (Senior Marketing Specialist) Community:  https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCA/ https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCAEspanol https://twitter.com/CoveredCA https://twitter.com/CoveredCA_es Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Covered California is California’s health insurance marketplace, established by the Affordable Care Act. It is the only place to receive financial assistance to make health coverage more affordable. Over two million Californians served.     Our customer satisfaction initiatives in 2015 In the fall of 2014, with the second Open Enrollment period approaching, Covered California was faced with a decision.   During the first year, its social media channels had been frequently visited by ideological opponents, some of whom antagonized Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) supporters and dissuaded potential customers from enrolling. At the same time, there were thousands of incoming posts and messages from distressed customers seeking assistance – many going unaddressed.   Concerns over purpose, functionality, practicality, and public relations were raised. Was it worth it to maintain social channels? Or, could these channels be turned in to functional marketing and customer support platforms? The latter path was chosen, and just in time for the start of Open Enrollment 2, Covered California embraced the Lithium Social Web platform in November 2014 as the solution to its customer service woes on social media.    With a mandate to offer a robust, responsive customer support channel option, a team was deployed using the LSW platform to handle Covered California’s thousands of incoming posts. By the end of Open Enrollment 2 in February 2015, and with a small team of four agents, Covered California Social Support successfully handled over 17,000 conversations with a 73% TAR (responses within 2 hours). This performance was celebrated as a success – Covered California’s social channels were no longer seen as a liability, but an opportunity.   Months later, and with a new agency, goals for the Social Customer Support Team remained high – seeking even faster response times and improved customer sentiment. For Open Enrollment 3 in Fall 2015, conversation sentiment conversion was tracked, showing a direct reduction of ‘negative’ and ‘neutral’ posts by half, with increased ‘positive’ sentiment (250%+). The team also improved TAR to 82% within 2 hours. Improving sentiment, responding more quickly and thoroughly, and converting upset customers into fans. Goals met.   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via Lithium implementation   Covered California, being the largest state-based insurance exchange program, is in a unique position. It is a new governmental institution, offering exclusive services and savings to Californians, who are [now] required to purchase health insurance. Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans have had questions about what to do and where to get coverage/access health insurance.   The requirement, or “individual mandate,” elicits strong reactions in both support and opposition, expressed often on social media.   The solution is Covered California offering responsive, friendly, informative, and patient social support for consumers who are often frustrated or confused with the recent and significant changes in health care policy.   Using Lithium Social Web, the Covered California Customer Support Team is able to easily organize, prioritize, and quickly respond to the thousands of incoming posts. It has also allowed Covered California to build relationships with customers by thoroughly answering their questions, offering assistance, and escalating their issues when necessary.   Through these efforts, numerous customer issues are resolved via social media without the need for the customer to call the Covered California Service Center – which, particularly during Open Enrollment, can be overwhelmed.   The Covered California Customer Support Team is small (growing to six during Open Enrollment 3), but is prepared to address any issue that may arise. The team has successfully transformed Covered California’s social accounts into effective customer support platforms, helping thousands of Californians get the health coverage they need. Below are direct quotes from customers after receiving assistance from the team:     Our metrics   All below stats from Open Enrollment 3 – Nov 1, 2015 - Jan 31, 2016 – Covered California’s busiest time of year:   23,742 posts received à 13,965 Conversations handled and closed à 6,713 replies posted 82% response rate within 2 hour target goal Conversation sentiment conversion: Positive increased 250%, Neutral reduced 51%, Negative reduced 50%     Due to the success of social customer support during Open Enrollment 2, Covered California put more dollars behind promoting content in Open Enrollment 3 to increase reach, engagement, and fan/follower growth. The campaign was successful, resulting in an increase across all channels, especially Spanish-language, highlighting a demand for in-language assistance for California’s Latino community.   Growth November December January TOTAL GROWTH New Facebook Fans (English) 1,422 3,445 6,725 11,592 New Facebook Fans (Spanish) 1,248 448 2,975 4,671 New Twitter Followers (English) 316 624 522 1,462 New Twitter Followers (Spanish) 39 52 198 289    
Company: CallidusCloud Entry submitted by: Lara Golden (Director of Global Community) Community: CallidusCloud Customer Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   CallidusCloud is the global leader in cloud-based sal... See more...
Company: CallidusCloud Entry submitted by: Lara Golden (Director of Global Community) Community: CallidusCloud Customer Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   CallidusCloud is the global leader in cloud-based sales, marketing, customer experience and learning solutions. CallidusCloud enables organizations to accelerate their lead to money process, a complete suite of solutions that identify the right leads, ensure proper territory and quota distribution, enable sales forces, automate configure price quote and contract management, simplify marketing automation, enable customer experience monitoring, create and distribute learning materials, deliver deep analytic insights, and streamline sales compensation — driving bigger deals, faster.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   We had three goals when we launched the community in 2014: Reduce support costs by enabling our customers to help themselves Improve customer retention by empowering our users Encourage cross-product adoption by openly sharing product information with all customers   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via Lithium implementation and that makes our approach to customer satisfaction a gold standard in the industry   The ultimate goal was to reduce support costs without sacrificing customer success. We are proud to have an award winning Technical Support team, but without a Community and its accompanying Knowledge Base, our customers weren’t able to help themselves. Putting a Lithium implementation in place allows our customers to get the answers they need, either from each other or from the Knowledge Base, without sacrificing the level of support. Choice is good!   Our metrics   Satisfaction has paralleled use of the community:   2014 2015 Percent change Posts 163 1899 1065% Kudos 39 384 884% Accepted Solutions 5 182 3540%   Even as the community was embraced by our customers, one metric in particular stood out: web-based engagement versus call-based engagement. Web-based and self-service support engagement is a key part of our customer success model, as our customers are happy to be able to find solutions on their own at all hours of the day. This is particularly important for a global company providing support to customers in every time zone. Since launching the Community, CallidusCloud has seen web-based engagement skyrocket to over 90% of support issues.   Finally, but no less important, we’ve see our Customer Satisfaction survey results increase from less than 90% to over 95% from 2014 to 2015.  
Company: CallidusCloud Entry submitted by: Lara Golden (Director of Global Community) Community: CallidusCloud Customer Community Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year   CallidusCloud is the global leader in cloud-based sales, ma... See more...
Company: CallidusCloud Entry submitted by: Lara Golden (Director of Global Community) Community: CallidusCloud Customer Community Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year   CallidusCloud is the global leader in cloud-based sales, marketing, customer experience and learning solutions. CallidusCloud enables organizations to accelerate their lead to money process, a complete suite of solutions that identify the right leads, ensure proper territory and quota distribution, enable sales forces, automate configure price quote and contract management, simplify marketing automation, enable customer experience monitoring, create and distribute learning materials, deliver deep analytic insights, and streamline sales compensation — driving bigger deals, faster.   Our  community goals   We had three goals in launching the Community: Reduce support costs by enabling our customers to help themselves Improve customer retention by empowering our users Encourage cross-product adoption by openly sharing product information with all customers   Historically, CallidusCloud was known as a leader in the Sales Performance Management space, with an emphasis on Compensation or Incentive Management. Today, we have expanded to create a product space of our own, known as “Lead to Money”, which encompasses a suite of many products that take a sales organization from the hiring of sales professionals through sales training and enablement, marketing, configure price quote, and finally to compensation management. The time had come to encourage open sharing of knowledge as we sought to integrate multiple products into a single Lead to Money solution for all of our product experts. That meant, among other things, making a single Community with a unified search and simple ways for experts to gain cross-product knowledge.   What design elements make our community unique    When designing the new user interface, we had two big challenges. The first is that as a closed community, we needed to make the home page as welcoming as possible, so that users who did not yet have an account would feel encouraged to sign up.     The second was to find a balance between a design that was engaging and personal, while still reflecting our corporate brand and the highly technical nature of our enterprise level products. We needed to avoid looking too “slick” to the experienced consultants who use our products. Our solution was to have a banner showing the Golden Gate Bridge, reflecting our tagline as “Your gateway to CallidusCloud”, with a large search banner and large menus leading to the most commonly used content. We think we’ve succeeded in striking the perfect balance, welcoming both novice and expert users of our products and directing them on their customer journey.       How we  executed your community design   We made our vision a reality with the collaboration of many people throughout the organization. We began by getting ideas from Lithium on other communities with similar customer bases. Our next step was to talk to our customers and partners to find out what was working for them, and what wasn’t, with the out-of-the-box design.   Once we had a vision in place, the Community Manager brought the overall vision to the User Experience team, who helped come up with a plan to bring the Community experience in line with the corporate brand while keeping with the overall feel of a customer community. Our talented web designer in India brought the design to fruition, and product experts in Technical Support, Professional Services, and Education tested the design and offered suggestions or improvements and changes before the rollout of the new design.   Our metrics     2014 2015 Percent change Posts 163 1899 1065% Kudos 39 384 884% Accepted Solutions 5 182 3540%   Even as the community was embraced by our customers, one metric in particular stood out: web-based engagement versus call-based engagement. Web-based and self-service support engagement is a key part of our customer success model, as our customers are happy to be able to find solutions on their own at all hours of the day. This is particularly important for a global company providing support to customers in every time zone. Since launching the Community, CallidusCloud has seen web-based engagement skyrocket to over 90% of support issues.   Finally, but no less important, we’ve see our Customer Satisfaction survey results increase from less than 90% to over 95% from 2014 to 2015.    
Company:  Comcast  Entry submitted by: Matt Verna (Analyst) Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums  Lithy category:  Total Community All Star    Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider... See more...
Company:  Comcast  Entry submitted by: Matt Verna (Analyst) Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums  Lithy category:  Total Community All Star    Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build a sophisticated network that delivers the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings.    Comcast’s number one goal is to transform our customers’ experience with us. Social media has become a strong and effective service channel for our customers. In 2015 we expanded the use of Lithium Social Web and completely redesigned Comcast’s community. The Digital Care team works to resolve all customer inquiries in a timely matter with a heavy focus on quality interactions. Lithium’s LSW and Community solutions both provide significant support in our goal to provide excellent service 24x7x365. With these solutions, we are able to measure success and track volume and engagement from each social platform.   Key 2015 Milestones: Created and deployed NPS survey program Achieved higher than industry average NPS score based on nearly 60% survey response rate Increase in channel (social) resolution rates to 99%+ Deployed a Quality program for our team which focused on the customer experience and the behaviors necessary to change customer perceptions & sentiments from negative to positive Deployed Spanish Language support for Xfinity Latino Twitter and Facebook Reduced non-social channel escalations per month from 4000 to 400 5M Page Views in the Help & Support Community 5M Unique Visitors to our community - nearly 10M from mobile and tablet devices More than 8.25M Solution Views - a 13% increase year over year More than 5.4M registered community users   My Account App integration with @comcastcares The XFINITY My Account app is a self help tool for the customer. Customers are guided through interactive troubleshooting guides. If the issue persists after completion of basic troubleshooting, customers are given the option to tweet @comcastcares. Utilizing LSW’s Routing features we are able to seamlessly support customer inquiries received via this channel.     Expert Help Lithium’s Expert help feature has been a game changing addition for the Digital Care team. From any platform we support we are able to escalate the conversation to key stakeholders within the company. This helps the Digital Care team provide the best customer experience by getting to the right solutions as quickly as possible. This also helps alert key stakeholders within the company about potential issues with the products and services under their direction.     Smart View Smart Views have allowed us to significantly enhance our approach to queue management. This has given us the ability, based on event, topic or outage, to capture the volume and help shift resources to the specific event or topic. As most issues found on social media are time sensitive, we have the ability to provide reactive statements and provide real-time communication to internal stakeholders.     Approvals The Digital Care team has had significant growth over the past few years. Due to this growth we have found that LSW’s Approval feature has helped our team with training new hires and our quality program. The Approval feature gives our team’s SMEs (subject matter experts) the ability to approve new hire posts to ensure they meet the Digital Care quality standards. This also helps with developing the necessary confidence to engage on social and provides a cleaner method of learning the brand’s social voice. This allows us to focus on providing the best overall customer experience.     Dashboards/Alerts The Digital Care Team utilizes dashboards to provide micro level operational insights to our Digital Care leaders and broader information to key stakeholders from throughout the company. This feature has changed the way Digital Care Team communicates with our colleagues. We no longer have to capture the volume and send an email alerting the stakeholders. We currently have 165 users with dashboard access. Many are also set up for alerts pertaining to what product or service they support. This provides real time alerts and insight to what is happening on social media.     Forums Links to Related Content When viewing a discussion thread, the bottom of the page now has links to related content that may help answer questions and green check marks to let customers quickly see that the question in that thread has an approved solution.     KB integration With the Knowledge Base integration, we are able to respond to customers on Twitter or Facebook with self-help or approved solutions from our community. This allows us to not only provide accurate information, but also helps us introduce potential new users to our growing Community. In addition to driving new users to our community, we are also able to introduce the new community user to our solution, thus furthering our reach from one-to-one to one-to-many solutions.  
Company:  Comcast  Entry submitted by: Matt Verna (Analyst) Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums  Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year     Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone pro... See more...
Company:  Comcast  Entry submitted by: Matt Verna (Analyst) Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums  Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year     Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build a sophisticated network that delivers the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings.    Who we are?   Comcast brings together the best in media and technology. We drive innovation to create the world’s best entertainment and online experiences. XFINITY TV offers customers the best viewing experience anytime, anywhere, with the most extensive collection of entertainment available on XFINITY On Demand, online at xfinity.com/tv, through the XFINITY TV App, XFINITY TV Go App, XFINITY My Account App and on XFINITY Streampix. The X1 Entertainment Operating System reflects the powerful innovation of bringing TV and Internet together to deliver a superior entertainment and communications experience for consumers. X1 delivers the simplest, fastest and most complete way for our customers to access all their entertainment from all of their screens. We provide the nation’s fastest most reliable Internet and in-home Wi-Fi speeds to more than 22 million high-speed Internet customers, even during peak use. Our millions of XFINITY Wi-Fi hotspots, allow customers to connect at the fastest Wi-Fi speeds around town. XFINITY Voice is an innovative and reliable IP-enabled home phone service that delivers digital-quality phone service with all of the functions of a traditional phone service, plus enhanced features that are integrated with other Comcast services. XFINITY Home is a growing collection of innovative security and smart home services that give customers added convenience and peace of mind.   Comcast Help & Support Forums:   Our Help & Support Forums are a great place for customers to find answers about their XFINITY products or to get help for service issues. Our forums get over two million unique visitors per month and if you search for a product or service question, links to our Forum pages are right at the top of the results.   Our forums are a place to learn from fellow customers. Nearly 98% of the searches conducted by visitors to the forums turn up related results that were generated by others posing similar questions. Our forums have been a great resource for years. In 2015 we strove to make the forums as easy as possible for our customers to use, so we rebuilt them from the ground up, with a completely new user interface and easier navigation. But we didn’t stop there, with over 40% of our customers accessing our community from smart phones and tablets, we partnered with Lithium to deliver a fully responsive design that launched in the beginning of 2016.   Improved Search   The most striking change in our new layout was bringing Search front and center for any customer to locate what they’re looking for. Additionally, our new search function now includes real-time suggestions for posts that match customer search terms. There’s also the option to create a new post right from the search bar if none of the results answer the customer’s question.     Improved Content Categorization    We’ve organized all the content to help our users find answers and solve problems faster. We were also able to move our most visited boards above the fold. Our layout helps customers save time and reduce effort to find what they’re looking for.     New Features   We’ve added improved visual cues to highlight trending alerts, recent solutions, and feature our most active users. We launched badging to encourage the right types of user behavior for new community members and recognize the efforts of super users—our Experts— to stand out for the expertise they’ve displayed in helping others.    Links to Related Content   When viewing a discussion thread, the bottom of the page now has links to related content that may help answer questions and green check marks to let you customers quickly see that the question in that thread has an approved solution.     Evolution of the Comcast Community:     Impact   We currently have more than 5.4M registered users. In 2015 we had 21.5M Unique Visitors to our community, nearly 10M from mobile and tablet devices. There were more than 45.5M Page Views in the Help & Support Community. Through our community redesigns and scaling up of a dedicated community-focused internal team, we set our focus on improving our Solution Views. We had our biggest year ever for Solution Views: more than 8.25 million (a 13% increase year over year). Our commitment to our customers is simple: respect their time, simplify their experience and make things right if we fall short. We understand many people will look online first before trying to contact us through our traditional support channels. Our forums are an invaluable tool for accomplishing all three parts of our commitment. We’re able to highlight existing answers to many common questions, promote a vibrant peer-to-peer community and allow customers to engage how they want. This saves time in quickly locating the information they’re looking for, or quickly ask their own question if they haven’t found what they need. With a diverse mix of products and tools our team continues to evangelize the voice of the customer with product teams and encourage expert engagement from our internal experts to share knowledge, tips and tricks, and deliver the best customer experience.        
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading enter... See more...
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet and voice services. We’re the world’s largest provider of pay TV. We have TV customers in the U.S. and 11 Latin American countries. We offer the best global coverage of any U.S. wireless provider*. And we help businesses worldwide serve their customers better with our mobility and highly secure cloud solutions.   *Global coverage claim based on offering discounted voice and data roaming; LTE roaming; voice roaming; and world-capable smartphone and tablets in more countries than any other U.S. based carrier.    Tune into the AT&T/DIRECTV Merger!   Our unique promotion and goal    Following AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of DIRECTV, we began plans to merge our two communities. We collaborated with our skilled Lithium success team to outline the migration mechanics potentially affecting 1.65M users (AT&T – 1.5M members with Lithium; DIRECTV – 150k members with Jive.) We wanted not only to incorporate 200k DIRECTV posts and 150k users into the AT&T Community, but also to establish trust in, and build enthusiasm for, the combined community experience.   Our strategy for community promotion   After the merger, we began with a soft launch of a new DIRECTV community within the AT&T community, seeding content and creating a one-stop community experience for our customers. We also reached out to DIRECTV community super-users at this time, months before the content migration, to introduce ourselves, let them know we valued their participation and to invite them to check out the DIRECTV forum on the AT&T Community.   When the time came to migrate the legacy DIRECTV community’s membership and content, we knew we had to create an effortless customer experience for DIRECTV and AT&T customers, and just as importantly, we wanted to present the migration in a way that would help the migrated community members feel at home.   To this end, we invited DIRECTV’s most well-known super user – Litzdog911 – to be the “voice of the merger” within the DIRECTV community. Rather than having our team of AT&T employees try to communicate the benefits of the migration to DIRECTV customers, we encouraged Litzdog911 to share what he thought was important to fellow DIRECTV community members. On the DIRECTV home page – and in his own voice - Litzdog911 bubbled over with excitement and explained why he felt the change was so positive, i.e., the advantage of the AT&T/Lithium user experience.     With an eye toward an effortless customer experience, every communication (including Litzdog911’s personal message) pointed to “one source of truth” – an AT&T Community Blog outlining the timetable, sharing illustrative “how to” examples, covering FAQ’s, etc.     To increase awareness, we used our #1 featured home page tile to point users to the blog.     Additional communication elements included Private Messages to AT&T super users as well as an announcement in their lounge; a system notification to DIRECTV users and regularly-updated home page messaging in both communities.   Post-migration in January, 2016: Communication continued with home page recognition for LItzdog911, our January ACE (super user) of the Month…..     ….plus we contextually-placed authentication reminders:     Our results   Partnering with our Lithium success team – and with only 12 hours of “read only” down time -               We migrated 200k DIRECTV posts 100% successfully into their assigned boards and categories.               We migrated 150k DIRECTV users – including their user stats and avatars - with only three users experiencing minor, easily corrected issues.   In the first 30 days post-migration, 309k unique visitors benefited from DIRECTV content – a 27% increase as compared to prior months on its previous platform.   From January 1, 2016 to March 23, 2016 in DIRECTV, we have enjoyed:             1.36M page views             766k visits             588k unique visitors             12k posts             800 Accepted Solutions created   We will continue to adjust the volume, and we might even give the remote control a shake – but we are sure not changing the channel on our great DIRECTV forum community. It’s where it needs to be – on our Lithium platform, with our combined 1.65M members fully understanding what we did, and why we did it. Like Litzdog911 said, “It’s more fun over here!”  
Company:  Electronic Arts Entry submitted by:  Jennifer Hughes (Director WWCE Social & Community) Community: Answers HQ  Lithy category:  Total Community All Star      The Worldwide Customer Experience (WWCE) organization provides supp... See more...
Company:  Electronic Arts Entry submitted by:  Jennifer Hughes (Director WWCE Social & Community) Community: Answers HQ  Lithy category:  Total Community All Star      The Worldwide Customer Experience (WWCE) organization provides support to customers across all the games that Electronic Arts (EA) publishes. The Social and Community team manages the Answers HQ Community and engages with players on social media channels. To provide the best customer experience, there for our players where they need us, when they need us. Social media and online communities are an integral part of our customer experience strategy and an important way that we support and engage with our players.   The AHQ online community is significant, with over 10.8M registered users and more than 277k new topics over the past year across five languages. In LSW, we monitor 75 social media channels with over 11.2M posts in the past year. Having an integrated approach to total community provides our team with a consistent experience that can be measured in LSI.   Total Community Details We have used Lithium Community for AHQ since its inception in 2012. In 2014, we added LSW for social media workflow.   LSW Each game that EA publishes has a unique brand and social media presence, resulting in a large volume of social media to monitor. We have leveraged LSW to manage these channels through 42 queues, 6 priorities, and 95 tags. We use custom close reasons to get the reporting that we need.   We recently deepened our unified approach by adding the Lithium Community into LSW for improved workflow capabilities. This addition enables us to prioritize incoming topics based on the types of issues that the community cannot solve in place. We expect to see an improvement in response times and first response rates.   Lithium Community AHQ is a player-to-player support community at its core, but it also allows for enthusiast conversations. Again, supporting many different titles we have used Lithium to provide a different look, feel, and overall experience for EA’s different games.     We have deployed a number of different features that make AHQ a robust community with high levels of participation. Instead of our customers calling in to report a game bug, the online contact routing system takes them directly to AHQ for self reporting. From there, we report bugs to studios and provide updates to players. AHQ also has a exceptional badging system that acknowledges community participation. We have issued over 7.4M badges since launching the program in September 2015.   LSI We Having detailed bulk data allows us to slice and dice our community and gain valuable insights, especially when connected with other data sources. The direct integration of community posts into our CRM tool allows for a unified 360-degree view across chat, phone, email, and Answers HQ. Community and social media data plays a vital role in helping us understand the full customer journey. We also use this data as an early warning system for emerging issues. The ability to tap seamlessly into a wealth of information provided by Lithium APIs is driving actions that are improving the overall customer experience with EA.   Total Community Advantage By working with one partner to leverage both the Lithium community and LSW to execute our social media and community support, we work more efficiently with a holistic strategy that best supports our players.  
Company:  Virgin Media  Entry submitted by: James Woods (Community Lead) Community: Virgin Media Community Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year   Since the invention of the internet, digital technology has had an increasing impa... See more...
Company:  Virgin Media  Entry submitted by: James Woods (Community Lead) Community: Virgin Media Community Lithy category:  Community Design of the Year   Since the invention of the internet, digital technology has had an increasing impact on the way we live. As the UK’s first provider of all four broadband, TV, mobile phone and home phone services, it’s not just the technology that interests us – what matters is how it can improve the lives and prospects of everyone.   Virgin Media is a part of Liberty Global plc, the world’s largest international cable company. Together Virgin Media and Liberty Global serve 24 million customers across 14 countries, helping connect people to the digital world and enabling them to discover and experience its endless possibilities.   Our community goals   Our primary goal is call deflection. We believe that this can be done by enabling a vibrant environment where customers can come to seek help, a place they’ll come back to in the future for assistance, and where they’ll want to return to share knowledge with their peers.   We’re also committed to supporting the wider business in trialling new products and services. We wanted to help customers who are now just using Google for their answers. The role of the Community as a shop window in the path to purchase is a key consideration, as is our continued desire to drive adoption and advocacy.   Both the wider Virgin Group, and ourselves at Virgin Media have, as you’d expect, some incredible brand guidelines to work with in terms of design, web functionality and tone of voice. These customer usability and the customer experience considerations are all tied-together by our guiding company ethos at Virgin Media, which is to be open-minded, fun and generous.   As part of our ‘Community Transformation Project’ (CTP) which ran from April –November 2015 we were able to analyse and refine our objectives and target in greater detail, and identify what we wanted to achieve as a result of our redesign.   Our specific design goals were as defined as follows: 1: Boost Helpful Answer views (reducing call traffic into Care)      a. Increase visibility (internally) and differentiate (compare and contrast to other posts)      b. Promote (external) 2: Increase traffic to the forums      a. Across the website estate      b. Across channels 3: Increase forum participation through to contribution:      a. Increase registered users and prioritise content      b. Improve repeat visits      c. Blog integration 4: Position the Virgin Media Community as a differentiator      a. Consideration phase of the consumer lifecycle – consideration-assimilation phase      b. For existing customers   What makes our community unique   We’re fully responsive. Our CTP has delivered a community that isn’t restricted by device, and is seamlessly accessible – regardless of where you are or how you use it.   We’re not just on brand – we’re shaping it. Brand guidelines were being re-written during the project, which meant we were the first implementation of ideas, palettes, and usability rules.   Community Hub page We’ve focused on creating a Community Hub page that is dynamic and welcoming. It incorporates all the key features of the community in bite-size chunks, and the principle behind this page is used throughout the site - surfacing content where and when it is needed. Our ‘Trending now’ function typifies this approach.   Personalised Each visitor is greeted with a role-specific message, with a call-to-action that fits their standing in the community. The ‘forum’ page can be adapted to hide boards that the customer isn’t interested in. There’s a different experience for non-members than members – they are directed to find help, and guided to our enhanced ‘Getting Started’ and on-brand ‘Community FAQ’ section.   Truly Social We’ve added a social-proofing community reach, which highlights the scope and reach of the site. YouTube help videos within the community – while using YouTube API to show the overall video views. This module allows us to quickly showcase topical information. The enhanced ‘Your conversations’ panel, as well as more conventional pop-up notifications and customer journey emails, means that it’s easier to know what’s been happening while you were looking elsewhere.   SEO Working with a top digital agency we assessed SEO across the site, and have introduced a number of both SEO enhancement and automated blocking features. This means that fresh relevant information will be found, and outdated or inaccurate postings can be removed from search with a click of a button.\       Navigation We’re really proud of our plectrum nav button – which we think should win an award on its own. Give it a try!   Swoosh!   How we executed our community design   We worked AGILE – which ultimately proved to be the right choice as it delivered efficient collaborative working. Following careful consideration and preparations, a small core team worked in a series of sprints to deliver a fully-responsive transformative design in six months from the Discovery Phase to Launch and Completion in November 2015.     The initial decision was whether to make a light version – a refreshed community look and feel, or for the transformative, fully responsive option, with a real emphasis on delivering results. There was really only one option: Go big, or go home.   This was the motto adopted by our project team, as they focused on a Mobile-first development. With the smallest device as the starting point, we were able to make sure that the same fully-featured functionality could upscale and prove accessible across all devices – and in doing so, we think made a big difference to the approach.    Co-location at Lithium / Virgin Media meant the team worked really closely in 10 day-long ‘sprints’, working with a Product Backlog, defined roles and responsibilities and shared project tools quickly identified across the two companies. Our core team of ten combined Lithium technical developers and a front-end / user interface designer, with Virgin Media User Experience, copy writing, design and UAT, under leadership and ownership from both parties.   Our community team populated the stage site with content, before along with our Superusers they were able to put it through its paces. In the staging environment, the community began to come together over the course of the sprints, and ideas could be tested, scrapped or implemented on the fly. One of our most successful features – ‘Trending now’ came about in such a manner at the tail end of the project.   Results (Comparing10/11/14 - 09/03/2015 and 09/11/2015 – 11/3/2015, unless otherwise stated.)     Comparing year-on-year results we can demonstrate that the CTP fulfilled it’s goal to Boost Helpful Answer views. We’ve used the functionality available within Lithium to surface Helpful Answers quicker, highlighted and authoritative with an assured bright-green border.   Our helpful content now surfaces across the wider Virgin Media help sites too in the same branded manner. We’ve seen a 54% increase in visitor referrals from other parts of VirginMedia.com since the cross-site promotion initiatives we launched along with CTP, and a steady rise in time online from those joining from Twitter.   In terms of “increasing forum participation through to contribution” we’re seeing marginal growth – this is an established mature community with over 300k registered members. However we have seen a 16% increase in Member Entrances. As a result of being responsive, we’ve taken a good look at the traffic from mobile. While the amount of visits from mobile is similar, the amount of posts has increased significantly as we’ve made it a much easier experience to participate from a device.     As a customer hub, for seeking support and sharing with their fellow customers we’ve seen so much more engagement – a 48% increase in posts, for example, and community health has rocketed – Kudos is up 80% year-on-year. Fantastic work everyone – the new community looks truly transformed, brilliant! Barbara Hall, Head of Channel Delivery, Virgin Media   Absolutely speechless, incredible team effort, you and the team should be very proud of what you have achieved. Shaun Hewitt, Senior Manager, eService – Liberty Global
Company:  Virgin Media  Entry submitted by: James Woods (Community Lead) Community: Virgin Media Community Lithy category:  Total Community All Star     Since the invention of the internet, digital technology has had an increasing impa... See more...
Company:  Virgin Media  Entry submitted by: James Woods (Community Lead) Community: Virgin Media Community Lithy category:  Total Community All Star     Since the invention of the internet, digital technology has had an increasing impact on the way we live. As the UK’s first provider of all four broadband, TV, mobile phone and home phone services, it’s not just the technology that interests us – what matters is how it can improve the lives and prospects of everyone.   Virgin Media is a part of Liberty Global plc, the world’s largest international cable company. Together Virgin Media and Liberty Global serve 24 million customers across 14 countries, helping connect people to the digital world and enabling them to discover and experience its endless possibilities.   Our road to Lithium At Virgin Media, we believe in digital technology that makes good things happen for people, communities and businesses. We do everything we can to ensure technology is a force for good. This is why we’re committed to providing the best guidance, support and services – and working with Lithium has helped us to make this a reality.   We’ve been prominent on social media for around eight years now, and a Lithium-hosted community was established in 2009, and brought into the growing eService team in 2012. As these channels developed into popular care and support destinations, it became increasingly vital for us to be able to manage these conversations within an efficient, easy to use, reliable, configurable and data-rich environment.   After trying and testing every response tool, it was quickly clear that Lithium Social Web was the best match for our demanding requirements. We started using it towards the end of 2013 on the big three – Twitter, Facebook and Community – and haven’t looked back. Targeted queues, comment threading, publishing tools, advanced analytics and tagging – these are just some of the standard LSW features that we’ve now come to rely on as part of our day-to-day operation.   After one year of LSW we were already working 30% more efficiently. We no longer miss posts, delay responding to priority queries, and we can offer an individually tailored customer experience with true case ownership and empowerment for our people.   The benefits of having both a community and LSW    Our priority is providing the very best eService customer care experience. We’re firm believers in finding the next best action for our customers – and we utilize every aspect of our social media platforms and tools to do just that. We encourage and evangelize across our organization to think ‘Community First’. It now sits at the heart of our social media operation – the hub of our own Total Community. Our Twitter operation continues to go from strength to strength, Last year we became the first ISP to hit 1million tweets: 12 months on and we’ve added another half a million – all through LSW.   Our team respond to conventional care requests, as well as managing those conversations that result from marketing or brand posts. LSW’s smart tagging and work queues allow us to ensure the right conversations are handled by the right people – whether it’s prospective customers responding to hidden posts on Facebook, or having some light-hearted on-brand chat about sports on Twitter.   We understand that Twitter and Facebook aren’t always the appropriate channel for certain queries. If our teams can’t resolve the issue directly, we draw upon our YouTube help video collection, web-chat, a revamped and finely-tuned service status page, and a vast database of helpful links to make sure that we can get customers to the right place to answer their query. More and more, we’re encouraging them to visit our community.     We’re able to be more intelligent in this channel switching. We can optimise the incredible peer-to-peer power of the community, increase the visibility of curated trending topics and helpful answers, and encourage and stimulate the conversations customers need to have to get the help they need, and to bring them close to the business.   Results   The results of placing LSW and our Lithium Community at the centre of our next best action / community first philosophy are clear.   Our primary indicator is call reduction.   We’re seeing more Helpful Answers (Accepted Solutions) and views than ever before. Answers were up 22% from 2014-2015, while views rocketed 48% in the same time period.       It’s therefore no surprise that using a combination of our own benchmarking and Lithium’s value proposition, even a conservative estimate sees the community deflecting over 10,000 calls per week in 2016.   We know that membership of the community has a great value too – 87% of members who have sought help in the past will think ‘Community first’ the next time they need assistance from Virgin Media.     Analyzing customer journeys shows that the number of tweeters we refer to the community is increasing, and our cross-site promotion initiative means that we’re seeing a 54% increase in visitor referrals from other parts of VirginMedia.com.   Our newly launched Digital Life blog is also bringing our tech-smart Twitter followers into the community, introducing them to an environment where they can ask us the kind of questions that would take far more than 140 characters to answer.   Our social media and community teams are the place to go for sentiment and verbatim on any development or project. The information we can leverage from our social toolkit, especially that from LSW and LSI, mean we can provide both high-level data and in-depth analysis – the real voice of the customer.   The internal visibility and success of the community has led to an increase in opportunities to add further value to the wider business. On our last major trial had over 5000 forum posts between the project team and the triallists as they made sure we were ready to go to market.   We’re seeing more requests than ever before to run feedback trials and host focus groups.   As a result, with every new product we launch, with every potential contact-driver, Virgin Media is seeing the benefits of embracing our Total Community, first.
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 miss... See more...
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:  
Co mpany:  Volia Entry submitted by: Yulia Shevchenko (Head of social media customer care) Community: Volia Club Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Ukraine is the biggest territory in Europe.   VOLIA is a nationwide... See more...
Co mpany:  Volia Entry submitted by: Yulia Shevchenko (Head of social media customer care) Community: Volia Club Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Ukraine is the biggest territory in Europe.   VOLIA is a nationwide Ukrainian telecommunication provider that offers a set of modern telecommunication services: analog, digital, HD and interactive TV “VOLIA Smart HD” (OTT), broadband Internet and cloud services of the biggest Ukrainian Data-Centre.   VOLIA has a business across all biggest (by population) cities (except Odessa). And we are #1 Internet and TV provider across our footprint! In 2015 the Company created and continue developing  six own TV channels − «VOLIA CINE+», «VOLIA CINE+ HD», «VOLIA CINE+ MIX», «VOLIA CINE+ LEGEND», «VOLIA CINE+ Hit HD» and «VOLIA CINE+ KIDS».         VOLIA is recognized as the best provider of digital entertainments by International Festival-Contest Choice of the Year 2015.   One of our company's strategic directions is digital care. Since 2014 Volia created client oriented and innovative environment to serve our customers online. In a year, we grew share of digital customer care from 48% to 71%.   Two great instruments – new customer self-care portal “My Cabinet” (my.volia.com) and customer’s community Volia Club (club.volia.com), drove that growth.   In March 2016, the customer self-care portal “My Cabinet” was awarded as Best Customer Experience Project on International Conference of Customer Experience in Budapest.   In 2015, we focused on answering 2 questions:   How to increase digital care possibilities to our customers – that impact CES and NPS How to become closer to our customers and make them a real part of Volia   In 2014, our self-care included several IVR modules, a little of SMS informing, an ugly self-care portal that was designed as an old-school excel and old forum, that was driven just by moderators. All these instruments covered ~48% of interaction.   At the end of 2014, we delivered 2 great online instruments (a new self-care Portal and a Lithium-powered customer Community) in parallel with updating of IVR / SMS management. And in 2015, we made a leapfrog from 48% to 71%. They're incredible results, and we are proud of it!     The most important customer service issue we were looking to  solve via Lithium implementation   We love our customers and want to be their beloved provider with a long-term relationship! That's why it is necessary to by open-minded and a close-to-customer company.  It seems customers trust other customers the most. And people like to help other people and to be proud of it – especially if you offer them a proper environment for this exchange.   Knowing this, we set out to create Volia's online community. This high-tech platform gives great possibilities to manage a huge number of customer questions with little participation of Volia moderators. In addition, it has greatly increased customer brand engagement.   It’s really another attitude and principle of customer care It's integrated not just with self-care but with Volia facebook/twitter account It has an in-built, strong gamification that helps to involve customers into customer care and grow super users that become brand advocates     Community implementation both increased customer engagement, improved business process and impacted our Internet users' NPS and CES greatly!   Metrics   1. Customer satisfaction In May of 2015, we started to measure our Volia Club’s customer satisfaction among registered users (by Survey Monkey). The questionnaire was focused on ease of use, speed, and quality of answers inside the Community. And the key question was «What is your total satisfaction with the Volia Club».   The highest score was for quality of answers – 8.41 from 10. It’s really cool as 50% of all answers were given by community members!     2. The readiness to recommend Volia among the Internet-services users increased by 19 points (against 15 planned) all over the country and by +23 points among the audience in TOP-3 Internet cities (Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv).     3. The chain of complicated request solving became twice shorter! Average response time decreased to 2 hours from 24 hours in 2014.   The chain of reply to customers now has 4 steps instead of 8.     Before Community launch   After Community launch   4. It’s impact on CES is improving! This is due to both business process simplification and listening to direct complaints of customers and quick resolution!       5. In addition we improved efficiency! The job of moderators has shortened by 39.3% (against 30% planned).   All visits were served by 4 people (2 FTE). Nearly 50% of inquiries are served by customers.   The share of the e-mail service assignment has shortened by 30% (against 25% planned).     We were the first and only provider in Ukraine that launched a customer driven community! In 2015, we arranged Volia’s top-management and best customer expert meeting to discuss Volia’s strategy. Our clients became part of the Volia transformation team!   As a result, community is one of quickest channels for customer feedback. It is first in asking, replying and clarifying information about all issues - from city outages to price changes and new product launches! Often urgent escalation helps to solve the problem before it has a big impact on business, or to prepare proper communications to the entire customer base, or to test new products before going to market!     At the end of 2015, Lithium implemented a new survey built into the system that allow to track CSAT among non-registered users! And it's our next target to increase satisfaction and engaging among newcomers in 2016!       The customers are positive towards the changes in the Company! The search and innovations implementation process is ongoing. Volia is open to the changes for the better!   During the year, 5 super-users* were developed in our community. They become the brand experts – they don’t only help us with answers to less experienced users, but also take a large part in testing of new products and giving recommendations to their development. * in communities 5+ years – normally up to 10 super-users
Company:  SANE Australia Entry submitted by: Nicole Thomas (Community Manager) Community: SANE Forums Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   SANE’s mission is to help all Australians affected by mental illness lead a bett... See more...
Company:  SANE Australia Entry submitted by: Nicole Thomas (Community Manager) Community: SANE Forums Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   SANE’s mission is to help all Australians affected by mental illness lead a better life. SANE does this through three key areas of activity to promote a better life for all Australians affected by mental illness: Support, Training, and Education.   As part of the activity of Support, SANE runs an online peer support community for people affected by mental illness. This is done through two communities – one for carers of people affected by mental illness and one for those with a lived experience.   Our  customer satisfaction initiatives   Help those with affected by mental illness feel less alone: ‘Friday Feast’ (see discussion here) started in 2015, as an opportunity for members to come together on a Friday night, bring a virtual ‘plate of food’ and have dinner together. Friday Feast is one of our most visited discussions, and received Australia wide media attention during Christmas, when members who were alone for Christmas Dinner logged on to be less alone.   Service integration: Giving people a seamless experience between sane.org and saneforums.org through Lithium discussion tagging ability.   Strengthening and growth of the community: To increase the sense of community, a new Role/Rank was created for members who have demonstrated loyalty and commitment to the community. The new role/rank of ‘Community Guide’ was given to members who have now taken on extra responsibilities to nurture and grow the community through one on one interactions with new members or members who need extra support.   Live community events: Hosting “live sessions” for members to connect with experts conducted through the Lithium platform, to increase knowledge, skills and encourage help seeking. Topics of live sessions have included: Caring for someone with Bipolar Managing and changing your thoughts Myths of Borderline Personality Disorder   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation   Member safety and those at risk of harm are identified and managed quickly, through 24/7 moderation: In 2015, SANE Australia built their moderation team to 77. The team is made up of SANE Australia’s Help Centre team and staff from our partner organisations, who are geographically spread across Australia. Through the Lithium Platform and specifically Moderator Manager, we have been able to create a strong team of moderators, who are consistent in monitoring guidelines and the safety of members. Alongside Moderator Manager, the Lithium platform has given us the ability to house training videos and to communicate with each other, in a ‘moderator only’ space. This communication has been vital to the consistency and quality of the team.   Increased access to people geographically or socially isolated, to connection, support and a community to belong to: Through our partnership syndicated model, more people have had the opportunity to access the Forums. We have continued to grow our partnership pool from 15 partners in 2014, to 35 partners by December 2015. (example of syndication)   Live Community Events: These sessions have given people access to information, advice and skill building opportunities to improve their mental health, which they may not have otherwise, due to their geographic or social isolation. In these two hour live session we see, on average, between 60 – 110 posts and thousands of views.       ‘Friday Feast’ has been particularly successful in reducing the sense of isolation, giving members a place to connect, sharing a virtual ‘plate of food’ and forget about their mental health difficulties. Over the Christmas period, Friday Feast gained extensive media coverage, as a place people who were alone on Christmas night could connect.     Website and community integration: We have provided people with a seamless transition between the SANE Australia website and SANE Forums. We have utilized Lithium’s integration ability by tagging forum discussions to be visible on SANE Australia’s website in specific and relevant locations (Example: below and SANE website factsheet).   Our metrics   Feedback: "I am a SANE community member for the long haul ..its in my home town ... not just a virtual reality existence."   “I cannot express how much hope you have given me. Thank you so much for sharing your experience because before I read that tonight I thought there was no hope.”   “Reading posts and sharing on this forum has been very important to me .. like the first time I feel fully accepted among a group of people .. like finding my tribe.”   “The forums have also helped me find motivation to do some important things I'd been putting off in my depression. This was with encouragement from other members and moderators. “I enjoy the 'Topic Tuesdays' (aka Live Forum Events), these are worth watching out for. They are like workshops where members and moderators are online participating at the same time. It's fine to be quiet or to add comments. The last one which happened about a week ago felt therapeutic. Thanks for running it”   2015 Evaluation: 82% reported feeling safe in the Forums 71% reported experiencing the support from peers in the Forums 77% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed they felt comfortable sharing their experiences   Metrics CHI average increased throughout the year and didn’t dip below 600 between August 2015 – December 2015, with 709 being our highest score in October.   Overall in 2015, 86% of posts were generated by members, demonstrating the peer to peer connection between members.   Since launch (5 May 2014) to 20 March 2016 Posts: 42,537 New discussions: 2316 Total members: 2816 Page Views - Total: 1,065,203 Page Views - Mobile: 260,860 Page Views - Tablet 59,964 Unique visitors: 110,746
Company:  Telstra Entry submitted by: Richard Manley (Project Manager – Digital First) Community: Frontline Peer Support Lithy category:  Support Savings MVP   Telstra is on a journey to become a world class technology company. A key par... See more...
Company:  Telstra Entry submitted by: Richard Manley (Project Manager – Digital First) Community: Frontline Peer Support Lithy category:  Support Savings MVP   Telstra is on a journey to become a world class technology company. A key part of this strategy is the use of Digital to improve customer advocacy. Through our Digital transformation program Digital First, we’re transforming the way we engage and support our customers. A key part of this has been the adoption of Lithium in August 2015 across our Global Call Centres.    How we are implementing Community and LSW  to meet our customer care business goals     As an international business with 37,000 staff worldwide and a 100 year history, Telstra has introduced the Digital First program with the mission to digitise our channels, remove cost, and help us become a world class technology company. In August 2015, Telstra adopted Lithium to support our frontline call centres. The tool also captures the expert knowledge of our consultants so this can be shared across the company. The adoption of Peer Support by our front line represents a significant commitment to improving our support tools and driving increased efficiencies across our business.     With Peer Support, we have improved on our existing knowledge management systems. We now also have a question and solution model, where a solution can come from anyone in the business and be validated by empowered Moderators. Critical knowledge gaps are promptly identified and flowed back full circle to improve the scope and quality of our knowledge management systems.       To ensure rapid adoption across our business, we produced a series of Peer Support training videos that are both engaging and punchy. These videos represent part of our core induction experience for new starters, and enable them to intuitively start using Peer Support to find solutions from day 1.   Peer Support Training Videos:   Check them out here.             But the Peer Support story does not end there. Our customers have also benefited, through improved service levels. This is evidenced by results showing an increase in First Call Resolution, and a reduction in Multi-Agent Events since we rolled out the tool. For our customers, this means we’re getting it right first time more often, and we’re transferring customers less. All this equates to greater customer advocacy, and brings to life what it means for Telstra’s journey towards becoming a world class technology company.   Changes we implemented in our customer care organization because of cost reductions based on Lithium Community and LSW   Through Peer Support our frontline staff across different countries are able to support each other, and reduce reliance on support staff. It has also expedited the onboarding process for new starters.     Telstra agents are now able to draw on the huge wealth of knowledge captured in Peer Support.  We’re driving efficiency by being able to serve our customers better and with less transfers as agents have access to more information. And we’re giving our centres visibility of key metrics and performance through the Lithium Social Web Monitor Wall which is enabling us to embed Lithium into the way our centres operate.   The efficiencies realised by Peer Support has been a critical enabler in reducing our reliance on traditional support channels. A great example of this is we have been able to reduce support FTE in centres, which is a direct cost-reduction benefit to the business. These cost efficiencies, delivered by our Digital First transformation program, will continue as we progress and industrialize the tool across our organisation, and in our journey to becoming a world class technology company.   Our metrics   Peer Support has enjoyed significant success since launch in August 2015, with results showing an increase of 1.92 percentage points in First Call Resolution, and a reduction of 1.19 percentage points in Multi-Agent Events (call transfers).   These impressive results were proven using a robust data analysis and benefits model.     The natural language search capability in Peer Support has been a real game-changer for Telstra, enabling our consultants to search for a solution using phrases intrinsic to their business area. Our traditional knowledge bases have always found this challenging. This has enabled a reduction in training time for new starters, as they can get up to speed more quickly by searching for solutions as they learn on the job. Lithium’s natural language search capability, combined with our multi-faceted approach to enabling the Global Call Centres to adopt the tool, led to 320,000 page views in the first 6 months.  Our strategic focus on questions and solutions has led to 96,000 verified solution views in the same period. These figures alone show significant value is being extracted from the tool, and there’s much more to come with plans to industrialize Peer Support as the de facto support channel not only across our call centres, but also into our retail channels.  
Company: Upwork Entry submitted by: Garnor Morantes  (Director) Community:  Upwork Community Lithy category:  Total Community All Star   Upwork is an online global talent pool that connects professional freelancers with quality client... See more...
Company: Upwork Entry submitted by: Garnor Morantes  (Director) Community:  Upwork Community Lithy category:  Total Community All Star   Upwork is an online global talent pool that connects professional freelancers with quality clients. We are the world’s largest talent marketplace with an annual run rate of over $1B+ in freelancer earnings. We have 4M clients and over 10M freelancers who have registered, with approximately 30,000 new freelancer registrations per week.   Our clients and freelancers are distributed globally. Our largest client regions are the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Our largest freelancer regions are US, South East Asia (India, Pakistan, Philippines) and Ukraine.   What Total Community means at Upwork   Filling a void in the future of work Our community platform is a mechanism for users to connect with each other and with the Upwork brand in ways that contribute to their professional and work-oriented marketplace experience. The forums are used to foster the learning, social and collaborative relationships that are otherwise difficult to come by for freelancers and clients who often work in solitary workspaces.   Giving the brand a Voice The community also serves as a communication mechanism for the Upwork brand, allowing us to notify and position key product, policy, feature and other changes to a large customer audience. Through our forums and other community channels, we highlight tips, best practices and help content, thereby aiding in case deflection for our customer support teams.   Knowing our customers As a business, Upwork has a unified digital strategy built on Lithium technologies to monitor, gather and report on customer activity. Through LSW and the Lithium community (LSI), we use these channels to identify: Site performance and incidents Feature usage and reaction Customer sentiment   These insights are then delivered directly to product and business owners and shared with the entire organization in a formal report each week. With this unified approach the organization is closely aligned with customer needs and sentiment and we are rarely, if ever, surprised by customer response.   More about our Community and how it’s evolved   In 2014, we hosted two separate community forums, one each for the Elance and oDesk marketplaces. These forums were hosted on Drupal, and resulted in a combined page view total of ~1.3 million/ year. In November 2014 we launched our Lithium Community for oDesk and migrated over those users and approximately 12 months of historic content.   Within the first 6 months of our Lithium Community, we had surpassed 1.5 million page views and now regularly exceed that number on a quarterly basis.       Performance Results of Our Total Community: Since launch, we’ve consistently maintained a CHI score of 700+ and now reach around 1.5 million page views, each quarter! Consumption is trending higher every month. Users are clicking around the site more with an average of 6 page views per visit. Registrations are continually trending upwards with roughly 1000 new registrations a week. SEO is working very well with the majority of the traffic (83%) coming from Google. We are Best In Class for consumption and join rates.       Expanding our Total Community - What’s Next?   The Upwork Community has done well to bring our company closer to its customers and to enable members to fill a void that many of us who work in a traditional work environment take for granted. Our high engagement metrics prove this.   We’ve also become a reliable source for information and other resources that can contribute to success on the Upwork marketplace. According to our latest Value Analytics survey, users are coming to the community for answers and find our Community to be a reliable source of customer information and support.   An increased focus on Community Support To further our progression as a resource for customer support, we recently redesigned our community with a focus on ways to help with case deflection and assist new users in finding the information they need. We changed the way our search worked and provided a convenient call to action so users would know to post their questions right from the search bar. We’ve also added more descriptive text and an introduction video that gives a tutorial style walk-thru for new users to navigate the community. With the new redesign and optimization we aim to achieve the following:    Case deflection of Customer Support tickets; Increased CHI; Organized content to improve the user experience.   Launching LSW   An important step in our connection with our Social and Support teams was the launch of LSW. LSW went live at Upwork on February 2, 2016 and has helped our teams to be better equipped when addressing user concerns. Through LSW’s capabilities our teams have been able to seamlessly engage with our users, escalate communications to other teams, and respond to user's posts, questions and requests better than before.   LSW has helped in the following areas: Time to reply (avg. 3 mins faster): Because our teams can manage all activity from one location and leverage macros, bulk responses, etc. they are able to respond faster on social and in the community. The Lithium App also allows our CS agents to access tickets/messages through their mobile devices, which helps them stay informed/reactive when an urgent case comes in outside of their work hours. Queue management: Posts are flagged and deposited into appropriate queues, based on “@” mentions and other keywords. As a result, the teams are able to assign areas to specific personnel.  Tags help our agents ensure that more urgent issues take precedence over others in case of a backlog. The queue and priority system makes it easy to ensure everyone's taking care of priority posts first and nothing gets missed. Visibility: Because of the cross-functional dashboards and supervisor views our community, social and CS teams can see activity across channels, allowing us to collaborate more intuitively.  For example, outages and other incident activity have been identified via email ahead of our Engineering teams allowing us to use LSW to help with incident alerting and management. Tracking/User management: Agents can add user notes and are quickly able to identify a user’s social influence (followers) and social history (past posts/tweets). The customer conversion history and internal notes make both internal coordination and customer responses easier and better. Agents can tag customers (VIP, problem customer, Upwork employee/associate, etc.), store customer information (UIDs, contact info) and make internal notes to build a collective knowledge base. This allows us to readily handle inquiries, giving each agent a full perspective of who that customer is.  
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 pay... See more...
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: Optimizely Entry submitted by: Amanda Swan (Website Product Manager)  Community: Optiverse Lithy Category: Community Design of the Year    Optimizely is the world’s leading experience optimization platform, providing website and... See more...
Company: Optimizely Entry submitted by: Amanda Swan (Website Product Manager)  Community: Optiverse Lithy Category: Community Design of the Year    Optimizely is the world’s leading experience optimization platform, providing website and mobile A/B testing and personalization for the world’s leading brands.   Our community goals   The vision of the Optiverse is to be the most-visited digital destination for optimization industry thought leadership, peer-to-peer discussions, tutorials, how-to education and resources.   The Optiverse Community helps Optimizely scale education and support.   What makes our community unique   The Optiverse is made up of our Community, Knowledge Base, and Academy. In order to facilitate easy navigation between the three properties, we implemented a sticky left rail and top global navigation so it’s easy for visitors to jump between properties and explore different types of content. The left nav has a hover and expanded state.     We also created a responsive homepage for the Optiverse that sets context and explains why a visitor might use each of the three properties.       We’re implementing a custom implementation for premium gamification in our community with unique badges our members helped design.     In our quest to provide the best possible digital experience for an individual visitor, we’re also personalizing headers and layouts based on behavioral and firmographic attributes. We continually use AB tests and user test to inform and guide our decisions.   How we  executed our community design   There’s a blog post that digs into this process in detail that can be found here.    Here are the main steps: Do you research and know your data. We were continually looking at analytics, talking to community members and performing user tests. Get the right people in the room. We gathered a team of internal stakeholders who were invested in the success of the community and set clear KPIs together. Draw a line in the sand. We created a strategy brief that became the source of truth for the entire design process. The Strategy brief outlined the vision and mission of the Optiverse, key user behaviors we wanted to influence, emotions we wanted the design to convey, target audience motivations, primary and secondary target roles, guiding UX priciples, and measureable goals. For example, based on common feedback trends from customers, the Optiverse team distilled the emotional and visual identity with six principles: Helpful, Educational, Trustworthy, Industry Leading, Thought provoking and Interactive. Of course, the tone and mood of the design should also follow these attributes. Having a strategy brief helped communicate the project to external team members and helped us evaluate success of the project. Move quickly and eliminate dependencies in design. Wireframes were essential for rapid prototyping because they allowed us to move quickly and are extremely cost-effective.  Along the way, we were constantly throwing new and crazy ideas on the wall to see what stuck. We always referred back to the user experience brief and used customer feedback to validate hypotheses.  Keep community members involved. Once we finally moved into the design phase, we made sure to keep our Community MVPs up to speed so they could contribute feedback and ideas.   Our metrics   2 months after the launch of the re-design (but still prior to rolling out gamification) we saw the following results (as compared to months prior to the launch):   Total Page Views 76% Total Unique Visitors 58% Completed Registrations 190% Member Time (min) 103% Member Entrances 117% # of Posts 15% Pages per Session 5% Session Duration 40%
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, busine... See more...
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW ® .   Our Unique Promotion   We launched external and internal Super User programs to give a recognition and commitment boost to super active community members. These programs publicly honored our strongest members for their outstanding contributions and gave them tools to expand their community leadership so they can get more out of their community experience – and help the community as a whole.   External SAS Super Users felt special because they: Received a badge and special rank icon that appears on their community avatar:  Had access to a private "Super Users" forum, where they can confer with their fellow "supers" and the SAS community managers. Were invited to "Super Users"-only meetings with SAS staff, where they get the inside scoop on SAS communities and other SAS goings-on. Received privileges like moving stray posts to the proper board and marking spam. Received periodic surprise community/SAS swag and personal gifts in the mail. They completed a “What are your favorites” Q/A so we knew what to send them. On their birthdays, we posted a “Happy Birthday” message on the community homepage banner that is visible only to the member with a birthday.       Internal SAS Super FREQs (FREQ is a name of a commonly used SAS procedure) received:   A special rank icon and badge:  Community management rights such as moving stray posts, featuring good ones and editing topics that need clarity. Note of appreciation and thanks to each of their managers. Choice of community swag: branded coffee cup or USB charger.     Our Promotional Strategy and Tactics   We identified our first pool of super members by analyzing community activity from Lithium bulk data. We decided to appoint a new group of Super Users/FREQS every six months and that “alumni” members will be awarded an Emeritus status and special badge. Example for Super Users:   We then defined program parameters like: Guidelines complete with “how-to” instructions for executing special tasks, posted on private board:   Promotions to serve two purposes: recognize super members and elevate awareness of communities in general.   Promotional tactics include:   Super Users Community Memo blog post and Getting Started TKB article. Feature on community home page: Social updates on SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities, using multiple text variations, headlines and this social tile:     Super FREQS: Intranet article that highlighted employee contributions and what it means to participate in the community, including quotes from the Super FREQs themselves on their activity. Intranet video about how being a community star is like being a super hero.   Be a Hero       Results   Expanded community management coverage Using bulk data from Lithium, we saw that Super Users acted on new privileges like topic moves. From Feb. 1 – March 27, Super Users moved 92 topics to appropriate boards while the community management team moved 35. What’s more, these moves occurred at all hours of the day/night due to the global scope of our Super Users. In effect, the Super User program allowed for 24/7 community moderation; our Super Users became an extension of the SAS communities team.   Our Super Users increased their participation in the communities, as well. Analyzing the 60 days prior to the inception of the Super User program with the 60 days post-program launch we saw:   Super Users increased their shared content/messages posted between 18-90%. The number of accepted solutions given to Super Users increased between 30%-300%. Yes, you read that right: 300% for one Super User in particular.   Super User social sharing of program perks In one instance, a Super User shared a piece of Super User swag through a creative social update. The swag installment sent to Super Users was a pen made out of reclaimed wood from an old SAS building on campus headquarters. The package included an article about the building’s history and a note from SAS Co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. One of the Super Users tweeted about the pen, thanking Dr. Goodnight publicly for the gift.