Company: HP Enterprise
Entry Submitted by: Margaret Nugent Social Media Marketing Manager (maugent)
Community: HP EBC (http://h30499.www3.hp.com/)
Lithy Categories: Best Social Customer Experience
Summary
Facts
Our goal for the first two years was to consolidate all the external-facing communities managed by HP Enterprise onto a single instance.
Within our first year we built five brand new categories and migrated four local language communities from our Asia-Pacific Region (APJ):
This was the first time non-English language content had been hosted together on a single instance along with English, so it took great collaboration and partnership between HP and Lithium to make this happen.
In 2011 we completed the largest migration, with over ½ million members from an 11 year old HP support forum to our instance. Despite the year’s notice we were given, this migration was a huge project for both HP and Lithium. The go-live date was fixed due to HP server retirements. Thanks to Lithium’s experience garnered from the smaller migrations completed in 2010, we were able to complete this with minimal downtime to our members. We also worked with our super-users to help facilitate the change and support while communicating the benefits of the migration.
Here is what our members said:
“I’m excited about the changes coming soon. I have always enjoyed this forum, but participating at the new Consumer Forum since it opened 11/08 I have come to really appreciate the extra features it offers…hyperlinks, macros are just two that I think of instantly. Kudos is another great feature. It is very rewarding to have multiple people give kudos to a solution or tip that you provide and be able to realize how many actually benefited. I believe everyone here will soon come to wonder how they ever did without all the extra goodies. It may take a bit of time and some adjustments, but is well worth the effort.” Cheryl G.
“Thanks for the heads up about what's getting ready to happen with the forum. I'm looking forward to the new functionality. And thanks to HP for continuing to provide such a great place to share ideas and to get and receive help.” Prof Julie
November, 2011 saw HP EBC launch a mobile version of the community: http://m.hp.com/ebc in combination with a new HP.com redesign.
Learning
HP Software originally launched its own instance in April 2010, with a view to migrating the software support boards from the HP legacy community (aka HP ITRC) in June 2011. Once HP Software made the announcement of their intentions at their annual customer event, they received lot of feedback from members asking “Why?” HP Software’s perception was that software customers were different from other enterprise members and only focused on software products.
The reality proved quite different as approximately <20% of HP Software members were active on both communities. They were asking why HP Software had their own community, why was HP asking members to join two communities. So HP Software listened and acted on this by migrating their instance to HP EBC.
ROI
The platform has become ingrained in the way we conduct our support business, here are some examples:
HP Software Support
Support Call Deflection
HP Expert Days
Registrations |
73% |
Logins |
73% |
Posts |
135% |
Topics |
127% |
Accepted Solutions |
157% |
Kudos |
38% |
Growth
The evolution and growth of the HP EBC has brought about a new requirement to bring in a limited access area to meet specific business needs with our customers (members) and our channel partners.
HP Software has introduced three Limited Access programs within the community:
1. Customer Advisory Boards (CAB)
These are Advisory Boards for our top customers, who have the opportunity to meet face to face twice a year. All meeting notes, presentations and discussions conducted are shared within this category.
2. BETA Testing program
HP Software has started to conduct beta testing of the next software product versions with our beta customers within limited access categories in the HP EBC. In the past all communications were conducted via email after the software was downloaded and installed. Using the HP EBC has been a great success as more customers have seen the advantages of using the discussion boards versus email.
These advantages are:
3. Practitioners Forum
The Practitioners Forum provides a unique opportunity for experienced members to share their experiences and learn from other like-minded practitioners. Outside of the discussions taking place in these forums we also conduct bi-weekly one hour round table sessions between HP product experts and members, where active participants can contribute or simply listen. Experienced members wanted a place where they could conduct discussions or have conversations with other members with the same level experience.
HP EBC is really a cluster/nest of communities – each managed by separate ‘neighborhood’ or ‘category managers’ and one overall administrator. It is funded by seven internal cost locations within HP by internal cross charges based on proportionate page view costs.
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