Company: SANE Australia  Entry submitted by: Faruk Avdi (faruchidor) Director – Digital, Service Design & Technology Community: SANE Forums (www.saneforums.org) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction     SANE Australia is a leading mental health charity. It is devoted to helping all Australians affected by mental illness lead a better life -- through support, training, and education. SANE began its operations almost thirty years ago, and its award-winning information services and Helpline are highly regarded.   In 2014, our customer satisfaction initiatives were as follows: The release of anonymous, moderated online peer-to-peer support services for people affected by mental illness, in the form of two online communities: one for people living with mental illness, and one for family, friends and other carers An innovative Partner-and-syndicate model (the first to our knowledge in the health sector) involving syndication of the communities to 15 other not-for-profit service providers (See: https://saneforums.org and then http://saneforums-access.org/t5/custom/page/page-id/Forum-Access for partner versions. By ‘syndication’ we mean the communities are ‘embedded’ in partner websites, taking on their branding, and seamlessly available via primary navigation. Partner organisations are also enabled to publish their own content via custom components within the communities, see: http://mindaustralia.saneforums.org/t5/Our-experience-stories/bd-p/le-forum-0001 for an example) A mobile customisation of the services mentioned above (Lithium mobile version 1), integrated into SANE’s website menu and adopting branding elements for partner versions.   The most important customer issues SANE Australia was looking to solve via its Lithium implementation were: Providing a moderated and anonymous online peer-to-peer service to all people affected by mental illness, in all locations of Australia, including those isolated by distance or other factors A service covering the full spectrum of mental illness, but focused on the person, not the diagnosis Creation of strong and welcoming communities Enabling members and non-members alike to safely obtain and discover quality peer support and information, which empowers them to deal with mental health issues Contribute to the improved mental health of Forums users Enable discovery of the service via trusted relationships formed within pre-existing (offline) communities   SANE Forums has been designed as a service, end-to-end, utilising user-centred design. User-centred service design helped SANE identify potential difficulties in discoverability of the service (with only a small budget for marketing).   This led to the design and eventual delivery of the partner-and-syndicate model referred to in Q1. This model allows individuals in the community to discover and participate in SANE Forums via a trusted context of an organisation they are already familiar with. This has extended the reach of SANE Forums to tens of thousands more individuals.   This partner-and-syndicate model has had many collateral benefits. Taken together they demonstrate a ‘gold-standard’ approach in the mental health sector: Between 60% and 75% of users are obtaining the intended benefits of the service THE Community Health Index (CHI) of SANE Forums sits around 500-550 since the launch of the forums in August Nearly 30% of service traffic has come in through partner websites The service is free-of-charge to partner-organisations in return for a contribution of hours and/or expertise into the pool of moderators, thus increasing the specialist advice available via the forums Organisations in an underfunded sector are able to leverage expensive world-class technology, pooling efforts and expertise    SANE Forums is unique in Australia, providing the first non-diagnosis-specific, online peer-to-peer support service for people living with mental illness, and the first truly national and viable online peer-to-peer support service for families, friends and other carers.   ‘I so truly love that I can honestly share a little of me here and be privileged to read and know of others stories. Thank you Sane and all the people here sharing. I feel a glimmer of understanding and connection in this forum that I have not felt before.’ -  Member, Lived Experience Forum    ‘ Hi Everyone, Just wanted to let you know how helpful I have found the information posted here. My husband has major depression and has been receiving treatment in a clinic. This process was a stressful one for us both, including the time leading up to the hospital stay.   As a result of your input, I have found myself being far more assertive and proactive … and I have made contact with carer support organisations and have a couple of referrals in for programs for both myself and my husband.   Thankyou for helping me navigate a way through/ into the system!’   - Member, Carers Forum   SANE Forums was funded by the Australian Government, Department of Health and launched in August 2014. The service has exceeded all expectations and metrics set by the Department for visitation and usage. Within seven months of the launch and as at 21 March 2015, SANE Forums have had: 32,141 unique visitors 8,700 visitors from rural, regional and remote areas (estimate) 1,002 members 265 members (27%) from rural, regional and remote areas 10,795 comments posted 339,366 pages of comments and information viewed 101,334 pages of comments and information viewed via smart phone Almost one third of users (28%) have accessed the service through our partner organisations.   Registrations for the service have very steadily increased since launch. An initial seeding and testing pool of 300+ members helped launch a warm and welcoming service, vibrant with helpful discussion, from day one.   Member registrations per month   The service remains non-diagnostic in focus, and uniquely available to people experiences health issues across the full spectrum of mental health issues.   Content analysis in an Evaluation conducted on the service found a great diversity among members, with 29 different diagnoses discussed across the Carers and Lived Experience Forums.   Common non-diagnosis specific discussion themes include the following: Issues Carers Forum % Coping with mental illness and symptoms of loved ones 60% Navigating mental health systems 45% Refusing treatment 40% Relation breakdown/conflict 40% Stress/worry/anxiety 30% Lived Experience Forum % Symptoms 63% Assessment/treatment 40% Medication 47% Relationships 41% Stress/worry/anxiety 26%   Both communities are showing various signs of good and growing health, including a CHI score hovering between 500 and 550, and the vast majority of comments being posted by and in response to community members:   Member and moderator generated posts % In terms of the primary purpose of the service, early indications look very promising. The highest-rated themes reported by respondents to the recent Evaluation survey were: Safety Connection Less stigma Feeling supported by peers   The fostering of these elements will assist in continual growth and participation of members and the overall sense of community. Evaluation findings also show that mental health benefits are emerging. Increased mental health literacy and empowerment were highly rated across both communities.   Repeat visitors to the service average 25-30% per week. Average session durations on the forums averages above 10 minutes per session. The Evaluation referred to above has many positive statistics indicating the service is becoming an important resource for people living with mental illness, and for families, friends and other carers in Australia.   To share some statistics from just one category, concerning ‘access to reliable information, advice and referral drawing on the vast experience and expertise of peers as well as that of experts in the field’, the Evaluation found: 88.9% of survey respondents from the Carers Forum and 64.4% from the Lived Experience Forum agree that they can find advice and support that is suitable and/or relevant for their needs 81.5% of survey respondents from the Carers Forum and 80% from the Lived Experience Forum agree that they have gained new insights through hearing about other people’s experiences 51.9% of respondents from the Carers Forum and 48.9% from the Lived Experience Forum agree that they have used information resources (links, phone numbers and other) provided in discussion threads 55.6% of survey respondents from the Carers Forum and 48.9% from the Lived Experience Forum agree that they’ve learned new practical strategies 37.0% of survey respondents from the Carers Forum and 31.1% from the Lived Experience Forum agree that they have accessed services recommended by members and/or moderators   These statistics show that the service is making a real difference in people’s lives.   This marks a turning point for online, peer-to-peer support services in Australia.   All of this has been made possible via the efforts of talented and caring people from Snaffle Web, Isobar, Persistent Systems and Lithium, and with Lithium's platform and ongoing generous support.  

Company: Spotify  Entry submitted by: Meredith Humphrey (Meredith) Community Manager Community: The Spotify Community (Community.spotify.com)  Lithy category: Most Creative Promotion or Launch   Spotify is a music streaming service based in Stockholm, Sweden that is currently available in over 55 markets. With over 24 million active users and over 6 million paying subscribers, our customers use Spotify to discover, share, listen, and organize their music.   This growing customer base has also meant a need for various customer support channels since Spotify’s launch in 2008. In February 2012 we launched our Spotify Community with Lithium and now have over  200,000 registered users. Our Community is now top source for customers with queries on everything from their account to device troubleshooting, maintenance, product feedback, and music discussion.   Since the launch of the Community in 2012 up until mid-2013 we also had a core group of around 20 Super Users. These included users that were newly, currently and formerly active across the boards.   Our main focus for the past year was encouraging the growth of our Super Users across the Community so that self-help was promoted across the forums as we continue to look toward Spotify’s future growth.      We’ve always taken great effort to reward the Super Users that make their way to the Spotify Community.   Using Lithium’s metrics, we determine the Top 10 Super Users each month and recognize them in our Community Blog. These Top Contributors are rewarded with anything from Spotify merchandise, a month of free Premium, a blog post on our official news site, and branded playlists.    Those Super Users are also invited for other perks including Skype calls with team leaders for Q&A sessions, access to early version of updates, and direct emails to some Spotify.   However, we knew in 2013 that there was still a large untapped group of users that would make great additions to our Spotify’s Super User team. With close to over 200,000 registered users there was clearly room for improvement and retention with interested users.   We also knew that our Lithium Community was the place to find these brand advocates and Super Users that are vital the future of Spotify’s support channels.     In an effort to not only encourage new Super Users to become active, but also to raise awareness of Spotify’s Community and praise the efforts of our current Super Users in 2014, we established the Rock Stars Program in November 2013.      "The Rock Stars Program is really an extension of what we were already doing organically over the years. Since we've made it something more concrete, we've seen a massive increase in the funnel of new Super Users in our community. We're grateful to have so many new fans who are passionate about our brand and helping people." – Rorey Jones, Spotify Global Community Manager   Previously, when Moderators reached out to welcome users that stood out in their accepted solutions, kudos and post count it became clear the benefits of being of a Super User were intangible and difficult to grasp.    Thanks to the Rock Stars Program (RSP), all the benefits of being a Super User are now visible to everyone—not just the Super Users already getting perks.   The Rock Stars Program is a three-tier system: Registered Users, Rising Stars, and Rock Stars.   The first step in the program invites all registered users to simply start posting. They can then rank up 26 different music-themed positions as they start participating in the Community. Our ranks were adjusted to go from “Newbie” and “Casual Listener” up another 26 musical ranks, including “Gig Goer”, “Festival VIP”, “Garage Band”, Radio Producer”, “Singer” and at the top “Senior Producer”.   Users that are gaining kudos, writing accepted solutions, getting to know staff and bringing a great disposition to the forums are then invited to be Rising Stars. For three months these users are given access to a few private boards, meet the staff, and start learning more about Spotify.   At the end of three-month period they can be invited to be Rock Stars—the rank given to top group of Super Users.   Rock Stars are defined as users that are actively helping other customers, gaining kudos, posting accepted solutions, and establishing relationships with Moderators. In the RSP, Rock Stars have a rank structure as well—they can rank from “Label Star” up another 14 ranks to “Musical Legend”. Finally, Rock Stars that slowed in participation and left the community are retired as “Veterans”.   Once a Rock Star, there are different roles users can take as a member of “the band”: The Fun Master, The Protector of Newbs, Community Yoda, The Ideas Guardian, The Blog Maverick.   When we launched the RSP we invited our established Super Users to join as Rock Stars right away. We then invited some new users to join as Rising Stars so they could learn a bit more before gaining all the Rock Star perks.   The public, tiered structure the RSP provides has given users an incentive to start participating, getting to know staff and increasing their overall presence in the forums.    When comparing the month after the launch (November) and the second month after the launch (December), our Accepted Solutions were up by 19% to 611 while Completed Registrations were up 18% to 12,264 from Dec 7, 2013 to Jan 7, 2014.   Our Overall Topics also increased by 11% while Logins and Overall Posts increased by 5% and 6% respectively.   Since the launch of the RSP not only have we seen not only a jump in the User Sessions per month by 4% to 3,869,869 and Searches by Users up 27% to 60,303--but we’ve seen an increase in the post frequency and quality from best top Rock Stars.   At the end of the first three months we nominated four of our Rising Stars to become Rock Stars. We then initiated another six Rising Stars to the program.   Our top Rock Star Peter has increased his post count by 20%--now averaging 85 posts a day. Marco has been a consistent top 10 Super User for years and has increased his post count by 169%.    With these results just four months after the launch, our team is eager to see what a full year of the program will bring.  Our ever-expanding Spotify user base means the need for knowledgeable, supportive Super Users is become more vital to our Customer Service future and we want the Rock Star Program to be at the center of the Community.   To give you a proper tour of our Rock Star Program, let us introduce the Spotify Community Moderator Greg.  He’ll take you through the register user’s journey through our Community and into the Rock Star Program. See you backstage.    Watch video here:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/4cwsu93abq3by8i/LithyProgramLaunchSpotify.mp4      

Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Community Design of the Year   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   Our community goals   We wanted to increase visits to the community, the number of users. To achive them, we redesigned our community homepage and added a new version accessible via Smartphone and tablets. We have also boosted our Vodafone Heroes User Programme and enhanced content created in the Community.    The design elements that make our community unique   We have created a very visual and usable community where you can browse all categories at a glance to directly choose where to post. Also we have included direct links to the most important sections Vodafone’s website like mobile coverage and Management tips for our Vodafone Private Area from web and App.   Community design:     Mobile design:     How we executed our community design   We used Clicks heatmaps to detect the hotspots and help us to do a better design tracking most popular links and sessions. We wanted to make it more useful and organized through a very simply and insightful menu of categories and attractive banners.   Our metrics     Our achievements during 2015 were:   Nealy 15K new registered users. Over 386 content posts generated by Community Manager to engage users. Almost 4.8 million visits during 2015 and over 100K total posts within the Community. 15% increase on NPS and over 90% resolution rate on our Employees contacts.     Visits     Completed Registrations     Member Time     CHI         

Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Support Savings MVP   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   How we are implementing Community our customer care business goals   Our target are: Increase total number of registered users. Increase Community Content counting number of created posts Increase community participation Acquire new “super-users” that help us as community mods. Increase NPS and Employees Resolution Rate.    Changes we implemented because of cost reductions based on Lithium Community   The changes we have made:   New community home: it’s more visual and accessible. We have used click map to detect the hotspots. Launch new mobile version enabling users easier access to the community for smartphones and tablets. New badges for super-users integrated on console. We create content based on Key trends such as movies, series and video games to increase user participation and gain awareness to promote eForum Channel. Our employees are continuously improving their answers and performance to encourage further volume of customers using eForum as the contact mechanism prior to Call Center contacts.   Our results   €3.7 M potentially saved on incoming Customer Call Center Calls.   

Company: Comcast  Entry submitted by: Jared Schultheis (jschultheis) Executive Director, Digital Care Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums (Forums.comcast.com)  LSW: @comcastcares, facebook.com/xfinity Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Comcast Corporation is a global media and technology company with two primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast Cable is the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build an advanced network that delivers among the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings.    Transforming the customer experience is Comcast’s number one goal. Our customers deserve the best experience every time they interact with us. We have made significant changes and investments in our infrastructure, systems, processes, technology, and tools to improve the customer experience, including the ability to reach our customers quickly and easily through social media.   A key strategy in our multi-year roadmap to improving customer experience is using technology and innovation to delight customers. Expanding and continuing to evolve our Digital Care is an essential tactic in giving customers more choice in how they connect with us and solve problems.   The Digital Care team’s mission is simple: provide care and support to anyone who needs help, whenever and wherever he or she wants it. In 2014, the Digital Care team was challenged with these goals:   Increase the percentage of customers served through social media (by 100%), Improve our ability to resolve customer inquiries directly within social care (to 90%+)   Through the application of technology, operational rigor and a determination to provide world-class service, the team more than exceeded our goals.   Our 2014 objectives were to achieve greater scale, resolve customer inquiries directly within our channel and drive positive change within the organization through actionable insights.   Scale: The number of customers supported by the Digital Care team since forming in 2008 has increased by 2,000% and continues to expand exponentially.  Satisfying our customers’ needs begins with organizing the team in a way that is scalable, flexible and fully supported by the larger organization. We created distinct roles within Digital Care that include three teams: Triage Generalists Tenured experts capable of addressing complex inquiries.   Creating this team and new processes was made possible by the advanced routing, tagging and tracking within LSW.   In Channel Resolution: When customers call, chat or tweet about their service, they expect a resolution to happen through that channel. Our ability to resolve customer inquiries directly within social media depends on the team having access to all appropriate tools, the training to use those tools and direct lines of contact to other internal teams. Even when we call in other teams to help work through the customer’s inquiry, we remain the single point of contact for a customer. Through this approach, we have garnered credibility and demonstrated the long-term viability of social as a strong and effective service channel that requires much less effort from the customer.     Insights:  Through LSW, we have created a Social Operations Center and Alerting System that provides real time trending specific to our product lines. This gives us an unfiltered stream of customer input and the ability to alert the appropriate teams when issues begin trending. This technology allows us to sort through the noise and provide meaningful information to the organization on a real time basis to consistently seeking out opportunities to transform the customer experience.     Because social and community support are ‘one-to-many’ interactions, a solution for one customer can often help out dozens or even hundreds of others, helping to avoid unnecessary customer questions and contacts. Based on a number of factors, including the ability to reach us through digital and social channels and tools like the My Account app that allow customers to more easily troubleshoot issues, Comcast has reduced the volume of customer contacts in traditional channels. Since 2010, we have seen nearly a 25% reduction in calls coming in and a 35% reduction in the need for service visits to customers’ homes in part by providing solutions through social and community channels. Through detailed analysis and application of data garnered through our LSW Analytics and LSI for our communities, we have seen that this amplification benefit has helped the Digital Care team handle nearly double the volume of more traditional channels.   There are several key areas where the Digital Care team is driving improvements that directly and indirectly impact customer satisfaction including:    Efficiency Gains: making it easier and faster for customers to find resolution to their issue Channel Shift: meeting customers where they live online or in social media Reducing Need To Call: solving customer issues through shared resolutions

Company: giffgaff Entry submitted by: Gregg Baker (gregg) Head of Community Community: giffgaff Community (http://community.giffgaff.com) Lithy category: Support Savings MVP     giffgaff, founded 5 years ago and known as “the mobile network run by you”, utilizes Lithium to provide a first class experience for our members. At giffgaff we like to do things differently. We don’t believe in having shops on the high street, call centers you have to ring for help or generally just making life difficult for people. Instead we are online only and pass on the savings to our members.   ‘giffgaff’ itself is an ancient Scottish word meaning mutuality and from day one we ensured we founded a business built on mutual relationships and understanding. We built the business around having a community at the heart of it, suggesting ideas, helping each other and keeping us real. This allows us to operate a very lean business and pass on the savings to our members. Lithium as a platform allowed us to facilitate that and evolve our thinking even further.   Our community provides first line support for our business by utilizing the Lithium platform. Members answer support questions, create knowledgebase articles and even create tutorial videos. We utilize standard platform features as well as embedding a tool to ask the community on our product pages. We empower our Community members to be powerful advocates for us, driving acquisition, while also giving them the tools and the channel to be our front line support. Reflect on that for a moment, our members provide all support for us (apart from private account related issues). As a result, we have seen a contact rate from our customers of once every five years.   Community members write the articles that go into our Knowledge Base, they help create the video tutorials taking members through difficult set ups and they are on hand to answer member questions, with an average response time of just 90 seconds (that's well under the average of 11 minutes for call centers). Typically tracked in minutes or even hours, our Community can solve a situation in seconds and then have that solution seen by at least 50 other people a month.   On average we receive 10,000-11,000 questions a month, of which the solutions are viewed at least 500,000 times a month. That’s a lot of calls deflected. We estimate savings in the region of $35M a year thanks to all of the amazing work our Community does. The best part is that members are happy with the responses they receive, in fact so happy we even picked up an award from ‘Which?’, that’s a pretty big deal here in the UK. We even found a way to add some giffgaff charm to that by letting one of our Community members go and accept the award on our behalf.   We truly believe we have a better way of providing customer service and so far satisfaction scores of over 80% would agree.  

Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community: Foro Vodafone  Lithy category:  Social ROI Titan   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   Our 2015 goals for our  Lithium-powered community    Our target are: Increase total number of registered users. Increase Community Content counting number of created posts Increase community participation Acquire new “super-users” that help us as community mods. Increase NPS and Employees Resolution Rate. A quality customer care Redirect our customers to the online customer care       Our focus areas and tactics to meet our goals   The changes we have made:   New community home: it’s more visual and accessible. We have used click map to detect the hotspots. Launch new mobile version enabling users easier access to the community for smartphones and tablets. New badges for super-users integrated on console. We create content based on Key trends such as movies, series and video games to increase user participation and gain awareness to promote eForum Channel. Our employees are continuously improving their answers and performance to encourage further volume of customers using eForum as the contact mechanism prior to Call Center contacts.    Our results   Our achievements during 2015 were:   Nearly 15K new registered users. Over 386 content posts generated by Community Manager to engage users. Almost 4.8 million visits during 2015 and over 100K total posts within the Community. 15% increase on NPS and over 90% resolution rate on our Employees contacts.    

Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   Our unique promotion and goal   Vodafone Spain launched their Vodafone Heroes Programme in 2013 for super-users to help other customers in their enquiries. There are currenly 24 active super-users in the Programme contributing to help other customers. However, the total number of nominated Heroes throughout those 3 years surpass the 100.   Our  strategy and tactics for  community    These super-users participate in a contest, fighting to unlock new badges while earning rewards points. There are 4 main categories that help us to achieve our goals and SLA: Speed, Wisdom, Aim and Creativity. We have implemented new badges on their profiles and created a catalogue of rewards as well as small benefits and ad-hoc contests.   Our results   Super-users activity in 2015: Over 3,500 customer served. 1700 posts managed directly via Vodafones Heroes. Over 1600 attributed Kudos and 500 accepted Solutions.    

Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Christelle Dorat (Cexplor) Community Manager Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Social Marketing Program ___________________________________________________________________   In February 2012, Groupe Casino launched Cvous.com, the 1 st community in France allowing customers from our 3 retail chains Casino, Franprix and Leader Price to co-create products and services for our stores.     C'VosIdées is where community members can propose, from scratch, ideas of products and services for the stores. The community votes for their favorite ideas and Groupe Casino reviews the top ideas and implements them when possible. For example, the concept of Idea N°1, a vegetarian corner gathering several vegetarian products in the same area of the stores, is currently undergoing testing.     C'VosProduits allows Casino, Franprix or Leader Price customers to vote for their favorite products and recommend them to others. It also helps our marketing teams collect customer insights on products sold in stores.     C'EntreVous is a forum where members can ask questions or give advice about retail shopping or everyday products. They are also able to post recipes and add the ingredients they need directly to their online shopping cart. This really simplifies and shortens shopping time for our customers!     Last but not least, cvous.com regularly proposes to its members to co-create products. There are two types of product co-creation. The first one consists of asking members to choose between different extensions of a product.     The second way is a deeper engagement with our members. One example we are very proud of is the Apérichefs story. This started with a casting. To participate, members submitted recipes or ideas of snack food products. Out of the candidates, nine Apérichefs were selected and invited to GroupeCasino's office in Paris to brainstorm and taste snack food products using their recipes or ideas. Currently on cvous.com, community members can vote amongst 6 delicious propositions of snack food products (madeleines) recommended by the 9 Apérichefs.     The C'Vous community is completely integrated into Groupe Casino's overall marketing strategy to support its goal to build proximity with customers and consumers in general.  Thanks to the community, we can listen to our customers and improve their shopping experience by implementing their product and services ideas that impacts our sales positively increases customer loyalty to our stores.   C’Vous also received professional recognition. We were awarded two TopCom Awards in 2012 and two E-Marketing awards in 2013 (Grand Prix and Award of the Best Community Strategy).   The C'Vous Team

Company: Cisco Entry submitted by: Juana Dehanov (jdurande) Community Strategist Community: Cisco Tech Zone Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight _____________________________________________   Tech Zone is Cisco’s internal engineer community that was built by engineers for engineers. Our users are extremely engaged in driving Tech Zone’s collaboration and content creation to the next level.   With this in mind, Tech Zone launched the “Best Greasemonkey Widget Contest” in which we asked all our engineers to create a widget that would enhance the Tech Zone user experience.   (Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that allows users to customize the behavior and display of a webpage using Javascript).     The idea behind this contest was to give engineers an opportunity to innovate within Tech Zone. In addition to the prizes the winners had their scripts natively integrated in to Tech Zone.  One big advantage of the Lithium platform is that taking these scripts and integrating them as native features is a relatively simple process.   This initiative triggered the engineers to experiment and enhance a platform to make it more their own. They developed some incredible new features such as:   A Table of Contents option on the rich text editor                         A Tech Zone Navigator that will show in all the pages                             A "Kudo Givers" widget to allow users to view the list of kudo givers for a thread or TKB article               Over 300 engineers submitted, commented and voted on the contest entries. After much deliberation, the Tech Zone community selected the winners.   “You know, what people like today is to have very powerful tools that are very easy to use. If the tools are amazingly powerful (as Tech Zone is), but not easy to use, then people might not use it which is really sad. Also, it will make Tech Zone a bit faster, as users can jump directly to the category they need, without the need of an additional jump to the homepage. I know that it is only a matter of a few seconds, but the difference between Usain Bolt and an average person on a 100 meter run is also a matter of a couple of seconds :-)” - GreaseMonkey Winner Tristan Van Egroo.  

Company: McDonald's  Entry submitted by: Julie Fuerst (juliefuerst) Social Media Supervisor LSW: McDonald's LSW (https://mcdonalds.response.lithium.com/console/agent) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   On a daily basis, McDonald’s has thousands of customers that contact the company via phone, email or letters; or through social media channels. Through innovative processes and systems, McDonald’s Customer Experience & Insights (CEI) team strives to engage with customers in the channel that they prefer, and provide insights that help protect the brand and customer loyalty. More specifically, the goals of the CEI Social Media team are to protect the brand by helping our customers in social media with issues or questions. The CEI Social Media team works to respond to as many customer service opportunities as possible in hopes that the customer will be “recovered.”   The CEI Social Media Team at McDonald’s has partnered with Lithium to help drive customer recovery on Twitter. McDonald’s began using the LSW platform in January 2014 after a successful demo of LSW at the end of 2013 showed that the platform could help drastically increase the number of customer service Tweets the team was responding to on Twitter.   Prior to Lithium, McDonald’s CEI Social Team was only able to have one “queue” where all of McDonald’s customer service related Tweets would filter into. Having only one queue caused the Social Team to spend a large amount of time filtering through the Tweets, and assigning Tweets to the appropriate teams within McDonald’s. Additionally, the Social Team was fairly limited with searching, filtering, and routing capabilities, which ultimately affected the number of Tweets the Team could respond to.   Lithium has drastically helped the CEI Social Team bring in AND respond to more customer service related Tweets while maintaining reasonable response times. The CEI Social Team’s ability to respond to more customers on Twitter has led to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, as displayed in customer Tweets below.              The CEI Social Team has been able to use Lithium’s functionality to automatically route Tweets to the appropriate team/queue (for example, international Tweets automatically get routed to Global Team, etc.). The CEI Social Team has also been able to use Lithium’s functionality to setup a “Proactive” queue where we’re capturing Tweets outside of @mcdonalds and @reachout_mcd. For example, if a customer Tweets a customer service issue without using one of our Twitter handles, we’re now bringing in and responding to these Tweets when we previously hadn’t- hence increasing the number of customers recovered.   Lithium has allowed the McDonald’s team to bring in 60 times more incoming messages than what the team was bringing in with the previous engagement tool.   The team has also been able to reply to around 135% more customer service related Tweets with Lithium compared to the previous engagement tool and increase customer recovery by about 4%.     Screenshot from previous engagement reporting tool:   Screenshot from LSW Export during comparable time period for queues CEI Social Team monitors:      

Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (1 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 used the transition to Lithium as an opportunity to relaunch, reenergize and redesign SAS Support Communities. We aimed to make it easier for members to: Find correct information faster with intuitive searches Connect with peers Share what they know with others   We wanted members to recognize the immediate benefits of the new site, including: A quality mobile experience A new system of ranks and badges that rewards community contributions Better SPAM filters, keeping the noise level down so they can enjoy the good content   Our  Promotional Strategies and Tactics    The community management team deployed an integrated communication plan geared toward new and potential community members, employees and social media influencers to generate awareness of the relaunch.   After finalizing a launch-specific tagline for SAS Support Communities, “Your forum, transformed,” we came up with a succinct, evergreen tagline that invites community action: “Ask. Find. Share.”   Then we identified key pieces of “getting started” information for members, and produced six community articles and videos covering the points:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities How to get fast, helpful answers Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities How to add SAS syntax to your post 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile   We held a soft launch phase for “super” active employee and external community members to gather feedback and create a sense of ownership among this influential group from the outset.   Social proved to be a critical channel for all promotional efforts. Over several weeks, we promoted the following assets across SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities:   How-to videos SAS Users blog post Six social tiles with quotes from community super users. Examples:     Multiple SAS-owned websites promoted the news including the SAS homepage, support site, and appropriate support pages like SAS Training and Books. Three SAS user e-newsletters promoted it as well.   The relaunch received third-party validation through earned media placements including a Huffington Post interview and Social Business Engine podcast episode.   We internally promoted the launch through a video, article on the SAS intranet, post on social media blog, email blast to marketing and sales teams, posts on internal communities and email notices to other communications groups.   Our Results   SAS Support Communities have enjoyed healthy membership and web traffic since their inception in 2006. The relaunch built on this momentum resulting in bumps to online visits, membership and engagement.   Analysis* of SAS Communities traffic, post launch: Comparing Oct 1, 2015-March 27, 2016 to same time last year (Oct 1, 2014-March 27, 2015) 19% increase in sessions (visits) (1.53M vs 1.28M) 25% increase in page views (3M vs 2.4M) Higher rate of return visitors (80% returning vs. new, instead of 74.5% returning vs. new) 31% increase in new registered members rate (14,510 vs 11,067)   *Sources: Google Analytics and Lithium bulk data/history   Traffic to specific promotional tactics contributed to the online traffic boost. Here are a few sample metrics:   Cumulative views on how-to pieces: Articles with embedded videos: 4,407 Stand-alone YouTube videos: 1,061   Breakdown:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,399; video: 325 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,064; video: 265 How to get fast, helpful answers: article: 560; video: 123 Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities: article: 738; video: 77 How to add SAS syntax to your post: article: 471; video: 200 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile: article: 175; video: 71     SAS-owned social channel engagement:   We sprinkled promotions from corporate and user-focused social channels for months following the community relaunch date of Sept. 8, 2015. From Sept. 8 through Dec. 31, 2015, here are a few promotion results.   137 posts 940 engagements (709 likes, 13 comments, 218 shares) 282,500 account followers   Sample comments:   1. A quoted active member retweeted and pointed to specific SAS product board:     2. Same member replied and cited tagline, Find. Ask. Share:     3. One update received a technical question from a SAS user:     4.  Supporting visuals: Please include any supporting visuals/graphics into your above answers. Insert them into your text copy, so we’re clear on desired positioning of the graphics. We will accept videos for this entry. All videos must be submitted as publicly viewable links on YouTube or Vimeo.   Answer #2 includes links to external promotions, such as community articles with embedded videos. In addition, here are direct YouTube links to the videos:   SAS Support Communities: YouTube playlist of all introduction videos Welcome! Boost your rep! How to get answers… Community guidelines Create an awesome profile New for SAS programmers    

Company: Groupe Casino Entry submitted by: Henrik Perrochon (Henrik) C'Vous Co-founder Community: C'Vous (www.cvous.com) Lithy category: Best Community Technical Implementation ___________________________________________________________________   In February 2012, we launched Cvous.com, the 1st community in France where customers can interact to create products and services for our stores. We had already thought about the design of our community and its user interface when we started working with Lithium. We wanted every C’Vous member to be able to contribute easily from the member’s page and from the website home page.     To reach these goals, we’ve created many different custom components. Within the first year, the community grew significantly and with the number of posts increasing it began to be difficult for the members to follow comments and reply to their ideas or forum messages. To improve our members’ experience, we decided to implement a system of notifications. Every time they have a new rank or when other members give kudos or comment an idea or a forum board they have initiated, they get alerts in their notification system.          We recently launched C’Vos recettes where members can post recipes and add the ingredients they need directly to their online shopping cart. To enable them to add recipes, we created a specific idea post page in which the community member can enter a title, ingredients and instructions. This page was technically mandatory to enable the external widget to transform any member’s recipe into a list of ingredients to order. It configures the post to look like a recipe to help the user writing its recipe.     On the C’Vos recettes’ post page, ingredients (“40g of dark chocolate”) are turned into generic ingredients (“chocolate”) which are automatically identified as labels and tags. This makes it possible to filter all recipes by ingredient. In the future, we will launch a mobile application that will allow our customers to scan a product in stores and display all related recipes available on C’Vous.    

Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Gustavo Casado (Piquio) Social Media Specialist Community: Foro.Vodafone (http://foro.vodafone.es/) Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Vodafone Group is a British multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London and with its registered office in Newbury, Berkshire. It is the world's 2nd-largest mobile telecommunications company measured by both subscribers and 2013 revenues (behind China Mobile), and had 434 million subscribers as of March 31, 2014.   Our most important customer satisfaction initiatives are: 1) NPS 2) Resolution rate 3) Customer experience program   Our challenge that we were looking to solve via our Lithium implementation was to reduce calls through social media support. 6,000 interactions on our Lithium eForum per month reduced 50,000 customer service calls on Vodafone's customer service platform!   Additional results: 2% savings in customer service calls 20 points of increase in NPS 30 points of increase in resolution rate 100 points of increase in CHI score  

Company: Vodafone Espana  Entry submitted by: Gustavo Casado (Piquio) Social Media Specialist Community: Foro.Vodafone (http://foro.vodafone.es/) Lithy category: Social ROI Titan   Vodafone Group is a British multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London and with its registered office in Newbury, Berkshire. It is the world's 2nd-largest mobile telecommunications company measured by both subscribers and 2013 revenues (behind China Mobile), and had 434 million subscribers as of March 31, 2014.   In 2014, we established three main KPI's: 1) NPS 2) Resolution rate 3) Customer journey   We set our goal to increase at least 10 points of improvement in NPS and resolution rate in the year ahead. We needed a customer profile for creating links and conversations with different customer's segments.   Due to this policy through our Lithium-powered Community, we moved not just 10 points but more than 20 points at the end of the fiscal year!    Results: 1) Our NPS increased by 20 points. 2) Our resolution rate moved from negative results to 40 points positive! 3) In including differenciated new ranks and roles, we improved our communication with customers, bringing in more than 20% of new users!   In addition, LSI gave us the chance to extract the most mentioned keywords and topics that are nowadays used by our fraud and complaints departments to improve the satisfaction score of the company.  

Company: HP  Categories: Best Community Story or Anecdote Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum   Get to know Erico...   Retired from the US Coast Guard, Erico is a US expatriate living in the Netherlands. During his Coast Guard career, Erico participated in many rescue missions around the world... A hardware genius, Erico personally owns 6 personal computers and 2 monitors.  As a sideline, he operates a small PC repair shop.  He notes that it’s a way of keeping his skills sharp and staying in touch... Erico and the HP Forums...Erico is “addicted” to the forums.  Spending many hours conversing with HP users around the world, he loves helping others, and... HP loves having Erico as an true fan and valued enthusiast.   As a treat, the HP team got to meet Erico and say thank you personally - from L-R: HP EMEA Leads Sabrina Grollier and Wendy Schippers, Erico and Global HP Lead, Dani Weinstein.  

Company: HP Categories: Most Innovative Social Customer Program Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum   Expert Day Key Feature: Ask questions, get answers LIVE from HP enthusiasts and experts   On the forums, we strive to nurture a highly engaged and robust support community by reaching out and talking with customers and cultivating and rewarding high-powered community members. The HP Ambassadors are dedicated HP employees who converse with customers and share their expertise to solve issues, find information, and help customers get the most out of their HP products and services.   As of December 2010, over 100 HP Ambassadors were actively participating on the forums with impressive resolution success and a healthy contribution to the community’s overall health and effectiveness.   The results were notable:   5% of the total number of posts were written by Ambassadors  and they authored 10% of Accepted Solutions,  while receiving 7% of Kudos.    In addition to the HP Ambassadors, Forums SuperContributors are enthusiastic customers who voluntarily share and help fellow peers on the forums. SuperContributors are growing in numbers while making a significant global impact through tremendous participation and engagement.   In December 2010, there were over 50 SuperContributors worldwide. They created a whopping 52% of Accepted Solutions, and received 54% of Kudos.   Bringing further excitement and value to the community are the Expert Day events on the HP Forums, which are held periodically throughout the year.   In January 2011, the Global Social Media team hosted a global Expert Day that spanned across all printing and computing topics for customers.   Most recently on March 23 rd a highly successful Expert Day was held in German.     Fondly termed the “Super Bowl” of expert assistance, these events give customers 24 hours of free access to a wealth of technical experts in 4 languages:   English,  German Simplified Chinese,  and Korean.    The broad appeal to our customers was apparent with over 100,000 customers attending the event online, and over 230 HP experts sharing their knowledge and experience with customers that day.   In the English Forums, there was a 707% increase in solved threads, a 555% increase in posts, and a 307% increase in new members. In the Chinese Forums we saw a 975% jump in new customers who chose the Forum as a trusted channel for troubleshooting. These new members came to post with an overwhelming 1406% increase in posts and a 100% increase in solved threads.  The Korean Forum also exhibited impressive success. Though it is uncommon for Korean customers to readily extend “thank yous” in online communities, their Expert Day wrapped up with a 200% increase in kudos and a 200% increase in solved threads attributed to the enormous 2075% increase in posts!    Needless to say, customers were thrilled to connect with the best and brightest minds HP has to offer, and LIVE! HP Expert Day has been an incredibly powerful way to effectively increase problem resolution via the web and, most importantly delight customers real-time!    

Company: HP Categories: Best Community Business Integration Entered by: Dani Weinstein (Dani) Community Name: HP Support Community URL: hp.com/supportforum Seven HP Consumer Support Forums were launched between November 2008 and February 2010. HP Consumer Support Forums are available in seven languages and in more than 200 countries. Collectively these forums have grown exponentially and continue to grow significantly well in to their third year of operation.   HP customers have shown that online channels are a preferred method for finding answers to questions about HP products. To date, more than 20 million customers have resolved their issues via the HP Consumer Support Forum.     The HP Consumer Support Forum is easy to navigate, and visitors now have access to more than 600,000 forum posts on a myriad of technology topics. Discussion boards are broken out by topic area, such as Notebooks, Desktops and Printers, and offer search capabilities and advanced features like bookmarks, RSS feeds and rich multimedia.   HP also actively monitors the forum to identify common support issues and gain customer feedback and insights. This customer input is then used to improve future products and support. HP’s online service and support offerings include the HP Total Care Ambassador Program and a dedicated HP support video channel.   The HP Consumer Support Forum also features dedicated Expert Days where more than 100 experts across the globe spend 24 hours answering tech questions. HP will host the next Meet the Experts event from April 26 at noon ET to April 27 at noon ET. As part of a continued initiative to provide superior customer support, HP has added seamless mobile functionality to the HP Consumer Support Forum.   The HP Mobile Consumer Support Forum may be accessed anywhere, anytime from any mobile device – no app download required. Visitors can browse content, post questions and even assist other customers all while on the go.   Finally the HP Support Forums were recognized in Nov 2010 with a prestigious Groundswell award. The HP Consumer Support Forum is a free global interactive community where HP customers connect online with one another and exchange insights, tips and answers to each other’s questions.   The forum received the accolades in the award category of International Business to Consumer: Supporting. “We’re thrilled by the diversity and quality of the entries in this year’s International Forrester Groundswell Awards,” said Nate Elliott, principal analyst at Forrester. “With consumers worldwide embracing social technologies, the Groundswell is now global. The finalists and winners we’ve recognized – including local efforts on four continents and a number of truly global programs – are among the leaders in using social tools to reach and serve their customers.”   2010 Awards for the HP Consumer Support Community   • 2010 TSIA STAR Award for Best Online Community • 2010, 2009, 2008 TSIA Excellence In Service Operations • 2010 Forrester Groundswell Award for Social Technologies (Groundswell Award Press Release) • 2010 Mashable Award Finalist • TSIA Hall of Fame Life Time Achievement • 2010 Hay Group Top 20 Best Companies for Leadership    

Company: Spotify Entry submitted by: Rocio Guerrero (rociogc86) Community Manager Community: Spotify (community.spotify.com) Lithy category: Best Superfan Story or Insight ___________________________________________________________________   In just one year the Spotify Community has accumulated 15-20 super users, and all of them super cool and amazing folks. However just 6 months ago..a 20 year old boy from England started shining like a star in our Spotify Community! We are all amazed by his work, passion, enthusiasm, talent, kindness...he just has it all! We are very happy to introduce you to "Hammeh"....if you want to know more about this little fella and his more than 6,000 posts in 6 months!!! We've dedicated this song to Hammeh. Take a listen!   View the infographic here: Best Fan Story Ever!