The holy grail of a successful customer community lies in leveraging your most important resource: Your users. In this session, you will learn about implementing systems and strategies to nurture your user base to grow into a self-sustaining peer-to-peer network, which in return will enable your Community Management team to evolve and expand your community into your company’s most important Customer Success asset.
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Thanks everybody for coming to our session today.
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And our track, where it's all about empowering our customers to help themselves
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and to excel
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at what they're doing.
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Apologies for my voice.
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If you were not here last session, I have a bit of a voice issue right now.
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My name is Julian.
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I'm an Enterprise CSM for Gainsite.
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I work at the community product.
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So all these topics here, I write up my alley.
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And I'm actually super, super excited to have somebody on stage today that I
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work with
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me for seven years, six or seven years, and I have weekly meetings with them
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and I actually
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enjoy them.
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To have weekly meetings with my customer.
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It's our for Gainsite communities, our most active and biggest community that
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we have.
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So definitely also make sure to pick his brain after the session.
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We will share the slides in the recording.
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So don't worry about taking pictures of the slides.
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We will share that.
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Please head to the PULTS app to track for go to the Q&A section.
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Ask your questions there, but also there's a poll waiting for you.
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So please, please go to the app and be active there.
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All shut up.
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Welcome to the stage.
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Björn Scholzer from O2 Germany.
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Give them a warm welcome.
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Hi everyone.
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I believe most of us in this room are being faced with similar challenges in
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our work.
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One of them being having to achieve more with less.
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So we have to create more value for the company.
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We have to make more people buy our stuff.
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We have to make less customers leave.
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And at the same time, we are not getting more budget for it or more resources.
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So in the session, I want to talk about how we can bring your community to the
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next level
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while leveraging the limited resources we have at hand.
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The scope is quite ambitious and complex.
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So I asked Ainsight for six hours, but they only gave me 45 minutes.
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So I propose that we skip the introduction round in the whole room and I just
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go on.
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My name is Björn Scholzer.
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I've been building and helping communities grow for about 15 years now.
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I started out as a community manager in 2010 and since I've grown into a hybrid
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of community
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architect, strategist and owner.
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And I've worked with several companies and several brands in the meantime.
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The biggest being O2 Germany.
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O2 Germany is one of Germany's great three established mobile network operators
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and Internet service providers.
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It is part of the global telephonic group.
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I joined the O2 Germany community in 2015 as a community consultant and since
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2021 I'm the owner of the whole program.
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Before I joined, the O2 community was mostly a support community, but it
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already showed great potential for more because of the ever-growing peer-to-
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peer support.
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So we started to expand the scope of the O2 community to also cover brand,
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product and innovation.
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And our goal was to create a self-sustaining network that covers all steps in
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the customer lifecycle,
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while at the same time covering the whole product development cycle.
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A few new numbers about the community and where we stand today.
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We have about 800,000 registered users.
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We have almost 2.5 million posts online.
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In the community they are working 25 moderators and community managers.
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About 60% of all solutions are peer-to-peer solutions.
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Almost every day a new product review is being published.
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And this year alone we have done already 10 feedback projects.
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Today I want to share some of the measures and some of the strategies we've
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implemented during the past years.
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And yeah, hopefully you'll get something out of it.
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Most of our communities launch with the mission to reduce support costs,
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which means that the very first thing you want to establish is that your
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community becomes the best destination for everything service related.
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Because you quickly need to provide value for both your customers and your
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bosses.
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At the same time you might be competing against other touch points your company
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already has.
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Like a live chat bot, maybe even a classic hotline.
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So you are competing against real-time channels.
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So how can you stand out from the very beginning?
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You have to prove that your community is an easy and fast-paced source for help
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and solutions.
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Because like I just said you are competing against real-time touch points.
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This means that from the start you have to become the destination for fast and
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valuable support.
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So what you should do?
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If your customers fail at other touch points your community will step in and
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help.
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If your team doesn't have a solution to a question they never send users away.
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Instead they get the information themselves and provide the solution in the
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community.
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If several users have the same question over time you turn your solution into
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an FAQ or a tutorial.
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Your user should see that your community provides quick solutions, is easy to
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use and provides added value right from the start.
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So now we have established a basic support routine for our community platform.
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What's next?
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Now we are ready to scale and now it's time to actually doing the community
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thing.
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But how can you scale up when you can hire more moderators or community
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managers and how can you make your platform inviting so that it really becomes
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a community?
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You start helping your users to help themselves and help each other.
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This one is controversial I know that your goal is to free up your own
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resources.
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You aim to make yourself redundant as support and service moderators.
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You will never get there because there will always be a need for individual
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support but you can go a long way when you scale your moderation and you let
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peer to peer evolve.
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So start enabling your users to provide solutions and help them share their
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knowledge.
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You can do this by sharing your own knowledge.
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You can do this by being accountable and by giving room for peer to peer
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interaction.
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As soon as your community starts to pick up pace it's time for you to adjust
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your own response times.
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If you are always the first to respond to a topic then your public helped us
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but not a community.
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But then it's important to also ask questions, to give context and to always
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close the loop.
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If your users resolve their problem on their own, ask them to share their
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solution.
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If you need to pull a conversation to a private message post a public follow up
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to tell everyone how the issue was solved
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and always be open and transparent with your information.
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Every solution you give, every follow up question you ask, every additional
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information you provide isn't just aimed at the person who asked the question.
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It's aimed at everyone who will ever read this topic.
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The more you give, the more your users can learn and eventually they will ask
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those follow up questions themselves.
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They will provide the solutions themselves, they will link to the additional
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information themselves so you don't have to anymore.
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So please, please, please make sure that something like this never happens in
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your community.
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I just mentioned that you should scale back on your response time so let's
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quickly dive into that.
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What you see here is a workflow that I created for the O2 community. We call it
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concierge workflow. It's based on the hospitality industry.
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A few years ago, we suddenly got tons of new users and new questions coming in.
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At the highest peak it was about 5,000 a month.
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So we had a huge backlog and we couldn't keep up anymore. So I created the conc
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ierge role.
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While the moderators work on a first in first out basis, the concierge job is
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to monitor the community near real time.
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The concierge needs to make a quick decision based on a few questions.
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It's the topic and the pain point time sensitive. Does it have escalation
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potential?
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Then you respond immediately and you give it to the moderation now.
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Can the question be answered peer to peer? Then let it sit for 24 hours.
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If after 24 hours the solution hasn't been provided by the community. Then you
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can step in.
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You can provide the solution. You can provide additional information and your
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users can learn.
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It's a topic a customer support issue. Or do you need more information before
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you can even help?
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Then you can respond immediately. You can ask for more information.
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And your moderation team or the community can step in after.
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Also, you always try to empower your users. You can break it down into three
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rules.
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Be welcoming and show early present like concierge. Empower peer to peer
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engagement.
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And also escalate to the classic moderation when the concierge can't solve it
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within one click and one single action.
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Next up, we want to look at an example of how a moderator can do that.
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You can see here the moderator welcomes the user to the community. They provide
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support.
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They also provide a link to a self-service resource. Then they ask a question
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to better understand the issue.
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If the user now responds, then you have a real conversation going on and
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hopefully other users can chime in.
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For me, that's community one-on-one. A moderator is doing a good job, but they
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can do better.
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So, where are we now? We have established a basic peer-to-peer support.
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Because of that, we have freed some of our resources. And now we can extend the
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scope.
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We can now talk about feedback and we can talk about customer experience.
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People will give you feedback in your community whether you ask for it or not.
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So, I recommend that you stop, collaborate and listen.
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Listen to their feedback very carefully and then collaborate with your product
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team to fix their pain points.
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If you can evolve your community to become a customer experience hub, then you
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can become a very powerful asset in your own company.
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So, now it's time to make use of the resources you saved and you start becoming
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an advocate for your users.
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Like I just said, your customers will give you feedback about the experience
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they make with your product.
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It could be hidden in a question. It could look like a throwaway comment.
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It could be a long ass rant about a very specific function they are having
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trouble with your product.
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It could be anything. So, the very first step now is to actually find the pain
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points.
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With content monitoring, your goal is now to identify the pain points, to
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evaluate the urgency and to create the content
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so later your product team can get actionable items out of it.
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So, have processes in place that let you stay on top of your content no matter
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if it's automatic or manual.
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With CX service, you can start to actually ask users questions about their
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customer experience.
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One example is the classic net promoter score.
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You can enhance your existing NPS survey and ask users why they voted the way
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they did.
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And automatically you get tons of new feedback.
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Also, you can launch a community feedback program that directly connects your
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product team with your community.
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I will talk about this in a moment.
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Now that you're gathering feedback, it's time to actually do something with it.
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Your role as a community team now is to become the customer's advocate.
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You are already open for their feedback, so that's good.
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You show them that you care, that you understand, and that their opinions
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matter.
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And now you have to actually deliver.
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It's time to turn their pain points into laugh points.
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So, get in touch with your product team, show them the pain points, show how
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many of your customers are affected, show possible solutions, get their
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feedback, let the product team explain what will be done and when and stay in
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the loop.
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And let, and then be transparent with your community.
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Be honest what happens with your feedback, what will be picked up and when,
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what won't be picked up and why.
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Customers understand that every pain point or every future request can be
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delivered, but you have to be honest and transparent about it.
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So, now how can you really boost your community in terms of customer experience
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Like I just said, by creating a community feedback program.
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In the community we call it Auto Beta Vergstad or Auto Beta Workshop.
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And we have found that it's a win-win-win situation.
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The program adds great value for our product teams because they can directly
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talk to our customers who are using our product.
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It makes our users feel seen and be heard because they have influence in the
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product they use.
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And it positions our community as the destination for customer centric exchange
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So, let's have a quick look at how your feedback program will fit your product
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development cycle.
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This is a simplified version of a product development cycle.
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It includes all the steps of the voice.
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It includes all the steps where the voice of the customers can have an
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influence in the development cycle.
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In the research phase, your product team can use the community to find out the
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needs and wants of the customers.
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In the development stage, your product team can test first prototypes and they
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can get feedback about the user journey they are thinking of.
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Then there's a beta testing phase, you can let your community test for bugs,
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you can test the actual user journey,
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and you can get feedback about feature priorities.
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And you won't stop after the launch because after the product is launched, you
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can again listen to the community in terms of bugs and pain points
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and you can find out the best cause for future updates.
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It could be its own session to talk about how to launch and grow a community
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feedback program.
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We don't have time.
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So, I won't go into detail about the different kinds you can launch, but I want
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to talk about the basic principles that every feedback program should follow.
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So, no matter if you start an ideation program or if you do market research
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surveys, if you launch a beta testing program or something else,
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there are some rules that you should follow in my opinion.
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First, don't waste anyone's time.
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Second, be precise in what you want out of the project.
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Always ask precise questions.
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Third, what do users get out of it when they join?
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Then, keep a conversation going, ask follow-up questions, don't make it a one-
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way street.
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And very, very important, let the participants know what will happen with their
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feedback.
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In the end, you want them to trust you with their time and with their feedback.
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You want them to be motivated for the next project because they see that their
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opinions and their influence matters and makes for a better product.
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And you also want to have that they have a sense of ownership and become an
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advocate for the product.
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You want them to feel proud and say, "Hey, I was part of making this product."
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By now, this scope of our community has already expanded.
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We started with support and now we've added customer experience value.
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The users start to trust us with their time, they leave feedback, and we have
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started processes to make use of it.
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So, now it's time to focus on building a strong community where people really
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feel like they belong.
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And that's why you want to get to know your users.
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I believe this is the hardest thing about evolving a community.
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Enabling your users and your team to build relationships and a strong community
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culture with shared values, with shared norms, with a sense of belonging,
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and constant encouragement to participate.
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You can do automation for a lot of stuff, but you cannot automate personal
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relationships.
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So, this process takes time and it takes manual effort.
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Earlier when I talked about the concierge workflow, I mentioned peer-to-peer
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empowerment.
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So, how can you bring the right users together?
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How do you know which users provide the most value?
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And how can you successfully invite them to make your community and your
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products better?
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I want to share the engagement letter.
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The engagement letter is one of the most essential tasks in my opinion.
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Your engagement letter can be based on so many things.
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For example, your gamification concept, your product feedback program, your
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community education,
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and other added values you add to your community.
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What you see here is a simplified version of the engagement letter we built for
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the O2 community.
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It basically works like a funnel.
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It starts with the first contact, usually when a customer needs support.
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If they have a good first experience, they will come back the next time they
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need support.
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If your community is inviting and sticky, then they will start to engage in
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topics that go beyond their own service needs.
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They will become active in other topics.
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They will start to give feedback.
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And their main motivation will slowly change over time.
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And so progress it further.
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Until you reach the highest level, where the users come to your community on a
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weekly or even daily basis,
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then it's not about getting support anymore.
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Those users probably know more about your product than you do.
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They feel a sense of belonging.
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They want to share their knowledge.
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Their main motivator becomes the community itself, which means they build
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relationships and they thrive on the recognition.
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They get for being active, constructive and influential.
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The hard part about all this, people won't climb the ladder on their own.
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You have to understand their motivations, you have to understand their needs,
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you have to build real relationships with them,
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and you have to give back to them.
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Now, let's measure how successful we are in converting users from one step of
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the engagement ladder to the next one.
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And that's where the activation funnel comes in handy.
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On the left you can see the stress-roads we have defined for activity levels.
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And on the right, you can see an example of how many people made the next step.
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For example, here 1% of the visitors have registered for the community.
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Of those who have registered, 50% have been active at least once, and so on.
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So, depending on your numbers, you can find out at what stages of the
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engagement ladder you are losing to many users.
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And then you can work on optimizing your touch points, your recognition, your
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benefits, your gamification and so on.
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By the way, I had about 10 of those KPI slides, but like I said, we don't have
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6 hours.
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So, if you want to ask about KPI, just use the poll, and we can talk about it.
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In the next part, I want to talk about using all that we have established so
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far, and how we can get to the next level.
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So, the question now is, how can we convert as many people as possible from
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feeling like they are a guest,
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to feeling like they really belong in our community?
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How can we really establish a community in the original sense of the word?
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First, let's have a look at the most important users in our community, our
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super users, and our potential super users.
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Your super users are the most important resource in your community.
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They provide solutions, they give you constant feedback, they often recognize
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pain points before you do.
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They give authentic purchasing advice to others, and they do many other things.
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They want to trust you with their time and their effort, and they are willing
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to advocate for you when you get criticized.
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So, what should you offer them in return to prove that you trust them, that you
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appreciate them in their time,
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that you appreciate their loyalty and value their opinions?
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In my opinion, it's as much as possible, and it doesn't need to be monetary.
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In the O2 community, we basically treat our super users as an extension to our
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community team.
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For that, we created our community expert program.
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We are a team. We are all in this together.
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We shape the community together, and our inner circle is a safe space.
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When we started the community expert program, in the early days, we appointed
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super users based on how they gave peer-to-peer support.
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With all the new scopes we introduced, like product reviews and beta testing,
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we redefined our selection strategy,
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we optimized the recognition, and we added new touch points and benefits.
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Today, our selection strategy is mostly based on soft factors.
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Of course, we still look at activity and engagement in other KPIs for pre-
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selection,
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but then it is about things like the tone of voice, the way they interact with
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other users and our team,
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and if the character matches our team values.
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Let's have a quick look at our super users strategy.
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For example, we know they are interested because we have to build a
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relationship with them.
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We mentioned them when we believe their expertise will add value to a topic.
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Then, every expert has their own mentor/body from the community team.
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They receive a personal appointment letter from me when we invite them to
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become part of the expert program.
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They sign an NDA, so we can share much more information with them.
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Also, we can do confidential feedback projects with them, and they get special
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permissions to moderate the content because we trust them to do this.
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We invite them to workshops and many other things.
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In short, we trust them with information and permissions.
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We give them direct access to the team and to the company, and we give them
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lots of public recognition and appreciation.
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Let's get back to the example.
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This one I call CommunityPro.
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The moderator now pulls in the super user into the conversation.
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This way, the super user can do the peer-to-peer support themselves, but they
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also feel seen and appreciated, and they have a stage to shine.
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And for us, it's less work.
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Next, I want to pick up one topic again that is very, very important to me.
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Your community wins or lose based on how you as a community team live your
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community.
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Like I said earlier, you cannot automate a personal relationship, and it takes
25:55
constant manual effort to build an inviting, trusting, and healthy community.
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In the long run, users will be loyal to you if you are loyal to them.
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They will trust you if you show that you are trustworthy.
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They will feel a sense of belonging when you make them feel like they belong.
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Your users can only give back to you what you give to them.
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You lead by example.
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So, if you want your users to help each other and help themselves, then you
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have to give them all the information and the tools they need.
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And you have to know your users so you can connect the right people with each
26:32
other.
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By the way, it works the other way around too.
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If your users know you, then they get to connect in a very different way with
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you.
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If you want your users to give your product feedback, then you have to be open
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about what's happened with it.
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And you have to mean what you say, be accountable.
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If they feel like it's a one way street, then their motivation will quickly
26:55
fade and you will struggle to find any users who are willing to give you their
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time.
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If you want your users to be understanding and forgiving when something doesn't
27:06
work as expected, then you have to be transparent with why things aren't
27:10
working the way they do.
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If you want users to be advocates for you and for your product, then you have
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to be ready for honest feedback.
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Which brings me to the next topic.
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Compared to marketing, peer-to-peer recommendations carry more weight.
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People trust product recommendations from people they know.
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And they trust real consumer opinions online.
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So, in my opinion, it makes total sense to open up your community for product
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reviews.
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This way, you turn your community into a trusted source for purchasing advice.
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You don't need to advertise your product yourself because your community is a
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trusting place for your customers to recommend your products within each other.
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And if they criticize your product, then you get the chance to turn their pain
28:00
points into laugh points.
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As you can see on the slide, your community can bring in a lot of value to
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every step of the customer journey.
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Your community can create very positive first impression.
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You can connect your advocate to your prospect.
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Your community can make people trust that they aren't just buying a product,
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but they are also getting great support
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and they can have influence in making the product better.
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With the help of the community, they can learn how to get the best out of the
28:31
product
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and they can become an advocate themselves.
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So, the circle closes.
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So, my recommendation, be bold and let your customers post product reviews in
28:47
your community.
28:50
Now we have all the building blocks and everything can come together.
28:55
We have implemented strategies and workflows to let our customers success power
29:01
has grow.
29:02
Our community now is self-sufficient in terms of support and self-service.
29:08
We gather feedback and we fix pain points.
29:11
We have a community feedback program that brings your product team and your
29:14
customers together.
29:16
We have open and transparent communication. Our community is inviting.
29:21
We are building great relationships with our users, especially our super users.
29:25
And we are a trusted source for peer-to-peer recommendation.
29:29
So, now with all this, you can enjoy the magic of the self-sustaining community
29:38
Your community now offers high-quality peer-to-peer solution, which will help
29:42
your SEO visibility.
29:44
More people will visit your community because you cover their service needs.
29:51
They will find trustworthy peer-to-peer support.
29:53
They will see how inviting the communities and the content will improve their
29:56
customer experience.
29:58
So, they stay and they start engaging, which leads to more peer-to-peer
30:03
interaction,
30:04
which will people find on search engines, which will bring new people to the
30:08
community.
30:09
The membership base will grow because of all the different use cases you can
30:13
provide.
30:14
The larger your community, the more credible it becomes, which will drive more
30:19
users to your community, and so on.
30:22
So, let's have a final look at our example.
30:28
With all the right strategies and all the right workflows, your team can now
30:32
become the community MVP.
30:34
We are welcoming, we provide support, we give additional context and
30:38
information, we are engaging,
30:41
we connect our users with each other, we make our most important users feel
30:45
seen and appreciated,
30:46
and we also invite everybody to make their products better.
30:54
That's it? You have won the Internet.
30:58
I believe you have now successfully elevated your community beyond service.
31:09
Congratulations.
31:10
Thank you so much, Pierre. Thank you. Wonderful session.
31:14
Packed with information, I bet a ton of you will probably download the slides
31:17
later and review that in your own time.
31:20
Please connect also with him on LinkedIn. He's very friendly. He likes to
31:24
respond also there and help you.
31:26
If there are any questions, we have a ton of questions, so we try to cover them
31:32
, but I think you also offered.
31:34
If we cannot cover your question, please also repost it on LinkedIn and we are
31:37
happy to help you there.
31:39
I'm off for closing the loop, like I said, so no question gets an answer.
31:45
Great. Let's go to the Q&A.
31:52
First, actually, at the poll. I'm very curious about it.
31:56
What maturity stage is your community? I'd love to see that.
32:01
It's actually matching what I see in our customer base.
32:05
We have a lot of, especially B2B communities, that are more in the crawl and
32:09
walk phase,
32:10
where we get more and more up and running, I think, as well.
32:13
I think this is also right where your presentation comes in handy.
32:16
Going beyond support, going beyond that, and really having something that
32:21
provides more value than just self-service.
32:24
Super, super interesting. Thanks for participating in the poll.
32:29
So, what a question to start with. Great talk. I'm curious.
32:34
Who are your moderators? Are they just volunteers from your community? Is their
32:37
remuneration involved?
32:39
Or are they full-time employees sitting in the community team?
32:45
Quick question. Your moderators are part of Telefonica.
32:53
We have a customer success team, and we have a team of, like I said, 25
33:03
moderators and community managers.
33:05
A lot of them initially started in the one-on-one support, like hotline, email,
33:15
chat and stuff.
33:17
So, when they came to the community, they had to learn a lot.
33:21
So, because it's a completely different world out there if you're talking to
33:26
the whole world potentially.
33:28
So, we try to educate our moderators to become a real community manager.
33:36
And it takes time, it takes effort.
33:39
And we also kind of need and ask them to be also open, because I don't believe
33:47
that you can be a great community manager if you aren't able to share anything
33:54
from yourself.
33:56
So, that's one of the characteristics we are also looking for, that people are
34:02
willing to be outgoing in a way.
34:06
But, yeah, it's a team of moderators, and we are trying to establish them as a
34:11
community team and community managers.
34:14
And I think this is probably the most efficient also, because then these people
34:17
that train, they know what they're doing on the community.
34:19
It's not just transactional, here's your answer, buy exactly what you're
34:22
showing in your slides.
34:24
I want to point out, in B2B also interesting dynamics, I have some customers
34:28
that even employ their partners on the community.
34:34
So, you're a partner, we give you exposure on the community, you help us with a
34:38
quota of questions answered or articles co-created.
34:42
So, there are also models like this where you can also get other resources.
34:46
Maybe, I'm not part of the company to help you.
34:48
Not necessarily moderate, but definitely help providing answers as well.
34:53
How do you compare the service value of the community with other traditional
34:56
support channels?
34:58
That's a good one.
35:00
That's a good one.
35:03
It all depends on trust, I would say.
35:08
So, if you have done a good job in your community over years, I would say,
35:20
then people will quickly get a feeling about how trustworthy the content and
35:26
the community is.
35:28
You can very quickly get a sense of how people are interacting with each other,
35:36
if it's respectful,
35:38
if they are there friendly with each other.
35:42
And this also transports to the actual solutions and stuff.
35:47
So, I believe if your community is inviting and people feel a sense of
35:54
belonging and they feel like they are being heard and being seen,
36:00
then I believe the service value to be much higher than compared to one-on-one
36:09
situation.
36:12
Especially when in our case, we want the community to be the destination, like
36:19
I said in the beginning.
36:21
Users will fail at other touch points.
36:24
And our mission is that no one gets left behind.
36:28
So, we never send anyone away.
36:30
So, I think this also builds trust.
36:33
That they say, "Okay, on the hotline, no one could help me.
36:37
The chatbot is useless." And the automated stuff I get recommended, it doesn't
36:43
work for me.
36:45
And we grab them and we don't let them go until their problem is solved.
36:51
Just in case there might be also a ROI, KPI kind of business impact angle to
36:56
this question that also,
36:59
maybe that's also a way to interpret the question.
37:05
If you want to look at the ROI of a community support versus hotline, emails,
37:10
whatever.
37:12
Of course, emails you can see how many tickets are coming in, how many people
37:15
are creating tickets for community.
37:19
If you look at value there, never underestimate the power of the lurkers.
37:23
People are just reading along, getting their value from that.
37:25
Not just saying like we have 50 people asking a question and they did not ask a
37:28
question to support.
37:29
It's actually hundreds of people that will read that in the future and get
37:32
their value from that.
37:33
So never ever make the mistake of underestimating the power of the lurkers.
37:38
Most service communities have exit service where they ask,
37:42
"Did you cover the question? Did you find the solution here? Would you have
37:44
content as otherwise?"
37:46
And then I have a percentage that I can just project on the general traffic
37:49
that I'm seeing.
37:50
And that's that I can say we saved 500 tickets from being created this month.
37:55
So maybe one answer to that. One very important KPI for us is the deflection
38:03
rate, the call deflections.
38:06
So that's one thing that we are being tasked with.
38:11
Our hotline costs money per user calling. It's two and a half years or
38:16
something like this.
38:19
So every call the people don't make is money saved for the company.
38:24
So what we do is we have like an exit survey and we ask,
38:29
"Did the community help with your issue?" Yes or no? If they say yes,
38:34
then we ask the follow-up question, "Would you have otherwise called the
38:37
hotline?"
38:38
If they say yes to both, then we have all the information we need to calculate
38:44
the deflection rate.
38:47
And would I like also to try to say there's a bit more to be to be and not just
38:52
customer support because people are also asking me questions.
38:56
That's also an angle or an implementation manager. I think persona did that.
39:01
Like on the persona community you're asking, "Would you have contacted the
39:04
company otherwise?"
39:05
So you can make it more generic but get a general impact on that.
39:09
How much you actually added value or just ask, "Did the community help with
39:12
what you tried to achieve today?"
39:15
Let's go to the next question.
39:17
"How have you managed closing the look with customers when product team don't
39:20
want to guarantee,
39:21
realization and/or timeline?" Yeah.
39:24
Never happens, Alex. Never. Never.
39:28
It takes years. It takes years and it takes a lot of internal marketing
39:37
and it takes being bold and being courageous and sometimes it takes doing stuff
39:47
just because you feel like it's the right thing to do and later you have the
39:51
proof.
39:52
And so what I want to say is that I'm working for a big company and they are
40:03
risk-averse
40:06
and up to today a lot of people that are working in engineering and IT and
40:14
stuff,
40:15
they have the mindset of why do the customers need, why it's broken.
40:22
They can see it's broken.
40:24
Let me work on my stuff and if I don't have to tell you how long it would take
40:29
and what is wrong,
40:30
it would be done faster.
40:33
So we had to do a lot of groundwork to show them actually it helps.
40:38
It helps bring people's emotion down, it helps to get people to understand that
40:45
not everything can be working perfectly.
40:47
And so I don't have like a blueprint.
40:53
But generally you have to make people trust that your experience tops their
41:02
stereotype.
41:05
And I think also working with product is a process right?
41:08
Like you learn and you evolve from that.
41:11
But like two thoughts maybe about this.
41:13
First of all, never not respond.
41:17
Like close the loop if you say like I don't have the information or I don't
41:20
know. Like it's better to go back to the customer rather than like leaving them out
41:23
in the rain.
41:24
It's a super poor experience that will not come back to the community.
41:26
So even if I don't have information I'll share that with you.
41:29
Second, manage expectations.
41:31
For us we have an ideation module where people can submit ideas and upload them
41:36
Like you also did not go to the customer as you say give me all the ideas in
41:39
the world.
41:40
Tell us what we should do.
41:41
Like you know change your brand color to like green whatever.
41:44
You limited the scope.
41:45
And that's a very good way for a product team to ease also there and to like
41:49
that process.
41:50
If you say like look we're going to work on this area of the product.
41:53
Share all the ideas about this area.
41:55
And then you can contain the risk a little bit more maybe.
42:00
Yeah.
42:01
I think it was one of the slides where I said be precise in knowing what you
42:04
want and be precise in knowing what to ask for.
42:08
Yeah.
42:09
I'm afraid we had a time.
42:10
It's time for lunch.
42:11
Probably you're belly-scenting.
42:13
That's grab some food.
42:15
The other questions again we have some time also here if you want to join and
42:18
have a good discussion. But thanks a lot for coming.
42:19
Thank you guys.
42:20
[Applause]
42:21
(applause)