Company: Nextbit Contact: Kay Linayao (Program Manager, Community and Social Media)    Community: The Nextbit Community Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Nextbit has created the only cloud-first, design-forward smartphone for anyone who wants to be freed from the limits of today’s mobile technology.   Nextbit was founded in 2013 by early Android veterans Tom Moss and Mike Chan, and is based in San Francisco. In order to produce a high-end, groundbreaking phone that would surmount common smartphone shortcomings, Moss and Chan brought on former HTC design lead Scott Croyle, best known for designing the iconic HTC One M7 and M8. Croyle was hired in 2014 and serves as Chief Design and Product Officer. The team has developed an elegant, cloud-first Android smartphone that will extend the storage capabilities of the phone beyond what the specifications currently allow, designed from start to finish in San Francisco.   Nexbit investors include Google Ventures and Accel Partners.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   As a startup, we launched in February 2016 (just a few months ago). With the tools that we have, we base our customer satisfaction on community sentiment, sense of community, and top contributor nominations (quality referrals).      Focusing on scaling support   We are focused on scaling support through peer-to-peer support. Our vision for community: the first place users go for excellence in customer service.   Our metrics    Our customer satisfaction results are focused on sentiment, decreased customer complaints, and traffic to our store.   We’ve seen these exciting results in the first two months of launching our community: 21,144 Unique Visitors 79,714 Visits 12,867 Posts 531,186 Page Views 7,328 Kudos given  

Company: du Contact: Samya Chahin (Director Digital Self Service) Community: du Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   About our team: Digital Business Our goal is to drive the digital revolution for our customers and our business. We will do this by offering a seamless, excellent experience across all our digital channels, as well as finding smarter digital solutions that offer the greatest value.   About du du started operating in 2007, offering mobile and fixed telephony, broadband connectivity and IPTV services. Today, we serve more than 7.5 million individual customers and over 80,000 businesses in the UAE. We also provide carrier services for businesses and satellite up/downlink services for TV broadcasters.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives  We see all of our digital channels, including du Community, as an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction. Our aim is to set the standard for service providers in the UAE by giving customers the best experience online. 2015 was a period of intense investment in our digital channels to improve customer satisfaction, take away pain points and reduce the need to queue in stores or at our call centres: Revamping our online self-service channel ‘My Account’ – to offer 50+ online self-service features – resulting in 25% increase in users in just six months: Added flexibility – quick and easy way to change plans Greater transparency – view payment and usage history Trouble shooting – allowing customers better manage spending and resolve queries Only UAE telecom to allow customers to renew personal ID online – previously customers had to queue in store to renew ID in person to comply with the country’s strict ‘My Number My Identity’ requirements.   Offered queue jumping service on du App We’ve reduced their waiting time in du stores by allowing customers to forward book appointments on du App. Customers can book appointments up to two hours before visiting a du store and ensure they’re next to be seen on arrival – minimizing their wait time. Nearly 12K customers saved time using the service in the first 3 months.   du App revamp A major revamp of du App added new functionalities and a vastly improved user experience as it moved from hybrid to native. This resulted in a 37% increase in downloads of the du App – encouraging customers to switch to a more convenient way of paying for and managing their services.   Positive customer satisfaction indicators from our digital initiatives in 2015     The most  important customer issue we  were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation     We want our customers to spend time on the things that matter most to them, not queueing in our stores or on the phone to our call centers. Like any major service provider we experience an unnecessarily high volume of customers visiting, these channels which is a good spend neither of their time, or efficient operationally for our business. Our Community allows us to remedy this problem by solving basic problems for customers.   We also believe communities build trust between brands and people. Engage in two-way conversations with our customers is essential to building relationships with them. Our Community allows us to be more open as an organization, listen to our customers, help them and act on their advice to improve service and drive innovation.     In 2015 the main focus for us was to understand community’s member need and to encourage community to help each other and make it easier for them to find solutions. We believe word of mouth is key to spread trust with du and the Community is the ideal place for this.     Results: Community is giving the opportunity to du employees to interact with customers directly, in a less formal way, which facilitates better discussion and shows we are more open as a brand. This gives us a deeper understanding of their needs and accordingly improve our services as per customer expectation. We are now starting an ‘ask the experts programme’ with leaders in our organization facing live questions on the community.   Compared to 2014, we observed an increase of completed registrations by 84% and an increase of unique visits by 207% by end of 2015 – indicating value to our customers.   The idea section in the Community proved very successful. This gave customers an opportunity to share ideas, observations and suggestions for improvements. A dedicated team have been assigned to look into over 100 ideas shared, with 35% likely to be taken forward to fulfill the customers needs.   These ideas also contribute to the Ruler of Dubai’s vision for the city to be the happiest in the world. The team assigned to Community team also share the responsibility of working with the eGovernment smart initiative to collect from the public ideas and comments to participate in building the future of Dubai. This helps maximize the value of each idea shared.     Our metrics Since we launched du Community, our customer contact base measure, which presents the number of customer complaints received through shops and contact centers versus subscriber base has decreased from December 2014 to December 2015 by 5%.     NPS scores for online channels:     The first Community value analytics report resulted in an impressive satisfaction result compared to similar telcos:   83% come to the community to search for information 59% found the information they are looking for on the Community 33% would call support, 14% would go to the store & 13% would post on Community their question if they can’t find an answer 53% would recommend Community to friends   du Community stands at the top when benchmarked with communities of top 4 global communication service providers (CSP) for on customer satisfaction.   Source of top 4 CSP: Lithium December 2015      

Company: Fido (Rogers Communications) Contact: Caroline Lalonde (Social Media Support and Community Manager) Community: Fido Community Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Fido connects Canadians to the things they love through its ultrafast LTE network, as well as services such as Fido Pulse Plans and Fido Home Internet (Fido Home Internet currently only available in parts of Ontario).   Fido was originally launched by Microcell Solutions Inc. in 1996 and went on to revolutionize the wireless industry in Canada with a unique approach to pricing, a money-back satisfaction guarantee and more. Today, we continue to move ahead with new voice and data technologies as well as the latest in wireless Internet services to keep you connected to what matters most in your life.   The Fido network consists of three network technologies GSM, 4G HSPA+ and now LTE – the new global gold standard of wireless technology. Fido wireless compatible devices fall back onto each network, assuring you have a network to fall back onto. Fido also offers its customers access to the Fido TM  wireless network coast-to-coast and with over 300 roaming partners in over 200 countries your device will be compatible wherever you travel.     Customer Satisfaction Initiatives   Our Community initiatives included: The optimization of our Community content, A complete redesign, and increase in customer support, Deliverance of a seamless self-serve flow for our customers.   The primary motivation behind our redesign was to increase customer satisfaction by making them feel welcome and comfortable to participate in the Community. Our optimization project in early 2015 served to clean up the content on the Community to ensure accuracy and relevancy, enriching the self-serve experience for our customers. In total, 6600 threads were reviewed and labelled and over 3000 posts were marked as the Accepted Solution. 2015 was also the year we increased the number of Community Moderators, for the purpose of offering better and timelier support. Furthermore, we’ve taken measures to be more transparent with our customers by keeping the Community up to date with information such as software and network updates, website changes, really anything that would be useful for customers to know.   For Social Media, our goal was to: Differentiate ourselves by delivering best in class service Improve and maintaining an excellent response time and resolution rate.   We created a team of multi-skilled specialists to service our customers on our Social channels and act as Fido brand ambassadors. Offering the best customer service while maintaining a great response time means having the best tools at your disposal. This is where LSW comes in as a game changer. Not only does LSW help our Specialists offer the best customer service thanks to features like Knowledge base and queue assignment, it also proved to be the perfect tool to keep on top of our response time. Our resolution rate and NPS score are testimony to how LSW has reshaped how we help our customers on Social Media.     Our Approach   For the Community, we wanted to improve our CHI score and response time while offering full customer support. As a company who takes pride in the quality of our customer service, we understand that answering customers in a consistent and timely manner is key to their satisfaction. The implementation of LSW and the redesign of our Community were crucial elements in achieving these objectives. The redesign and promotion of the Community attracted more members to participate, which in turn generated more traffic and liveliness overall. Over time, these steady increases resulted in a healthier and more active Community (significant increase in CHI score).   The implementation of LSW was essential in managing these new volumes of activity. Thanks to LSW, we were able to reduce, control and maintain our response time strategy for public and private messages, while ensuring no one ever remains unanswered.   With the help of Lithium, we have developed a world-class peer to peer support Community. The outcome of using LSW to process our customers’ requests in Community and Social Media channels was outstanding and resulted in our customers being incredibly satisfied.     For Social Media Support, we wanted to improve and maintain a best in class response time while increasing our NPS. LSW proved to be the best tool for us to achieve our goals, primarily thanks to the following features:   Analytics: Analytics helps us with reports and the analysis, such as our volumes (incoming posts, responses), response time, top topics…we can clearly see what our customers are chatting about, which allows us to address potential issues in a more efficient manner. Tags: Tagging conversations gives us greater business insights, which in turn allow us to better serve our customers by identifying potential trends and proactively reacting to them, improving overall customer satisfaction. Coaching: LSW is also a useful tool for coaching our specialists as it provides access to the conversation history, which in turn helps us deliver a better service to our customers. Support: LSW helped us support the launch of FB Messenger and Twitter DM enhancement and in turn provided a better customer experience. Pending: Having pending conversations sent back to our queue after 48 hours allows us to follow up with customers who stopped replying to us and therefore improves the customer experience and making us look on top of everything. Rules and Routing: Through key words, we can proactively engage and offer help to people who are talking about us but aren’t actually reaching out to us. This shows our customers that we’re always willing to help and we’re not afraid to be proactive.   Traffic control: The prioritization (Klout), snooze feature and ability to assign posts to different queues helps us better manage our responses, and keep a close eye on our response time.   Our results   Our CHI increased by 159 points (30% increase) and we successfully reduced our Community response time by 93%. For Social Support, we registered an NPS of over +60 by the end of 2015, and reduced our response time by 87%, meriting and keeping the Very Responsive Facebook badge on March 1 , 2016.    

Company: NetApp Inc. Contact: Teresa Peluso (Head of NetApp Community,  Customer Success &  Loyalty) Community: NetApp Community Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   NetApp, a leader in data management and storage solutions, is committed to helping our customers achieve what matters most to them. Leading organizations worldwide count on NetApp for software, systems and services to manage and store their data. Customers value our teamwork, expertise and passion for helping them succeed now and into the future.   NetApp is a pioneer in online community building and launched an online community years ago to support its customers from around the world. The goal of the NetApp Community is to be a source of truth and belonging for our customers, partners and employees – a safe place to connect and share through a digital experience that cultivates relationships, conversations, and expertise. But most of all, NetApp realizes trust is earned and the community demonstrates NetApp’s commitment to ‘being there’ for its customers and partners.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   NetApp has always valued and participated in online forums -- we launched our own online community years ago (2008) to support our customers from around the world. The goal of the NetApp Community was (and still is) to be a source of truth and belonging for our customers, partners and employees – a safe place to connect and share through a digital experience that cultivates relationships, conversations, and expertise. But most of all, NetApp realizes trust is earned and the community demonstrates NetApp’s commitment to ‘being there’ for its customers and partners.    In September 2014, we decided to take a bold step in order to stay true to that goal. We thought carefully about long-term community goals, analyzed the data, and realized we needed a new platform to support our marketing excellence strategy and customer-centric approach. NetApp migrated to a Lithium-powered community and transformed their entire digital customer experience for the better.   Transforming the NetApp community experience   We knew that to enable customer success and drive preference and loyalty for NetApp, we had to take stock. Was the community thriving? Are members happy with the experience? The solution became clear – we needed a powerful platform and a solid partner. By moving to a Lithium-powered community, we were on our way to greater ROI and increased customer engagement and satisfaction.   NetApp’s previous community platform and infrastructure did not meet their true goal of being customer focused. Prior to the relaunch, the NetApp community was plagued with technical issues. We were unable to focus on connecting with customers because we were inundated with cumbersome upgrades and spam. In fact, spam was so pervasive on the platform that NetApp employed a separate vendor to manage the problem. Plus, we did not have the controls required to govern for a robust and healthy community, so we knew massive overhaul was in order.   After a rigorous RFP process (no stone left unturned) , NetApp selected Lithium’s SaaS platform because it gave us the flexibility to make extensive customizations. Another benefit to choosing Lithium are the seamless bi-monthly technical upgrades, which is a huge improvement compared to before the move to Lithium. Lithium’s tools make it easy and simple to measure community performance and engagement. This real-time information has led to smarter decision-making based on hard data. The data has also helped us prove the value of our community investment.   Our results   Key metrics: 37,000+ registered members (1100 new members per month) 82% monthly average response rate +25% increase in accepted solutions since moving to Lithium +13.5% increase in community CSAT since moving to Lithium   NetApp now has a new look, new platform and a simplified structure. There have been several upgrades to the platform including site search, improved social sharing and browser support and have created a better mobile experience.   We now have a streamlined number of discussion boards to focus on three areas: Products and Solutions, Developer Network, and NetApp University & Training. We also consolidated and simplified the community structure for easier navigation. Using Lithium gives NetApp a competitive advantage by allowing customers to provide peer-to-peer support, share best practices, and connect with other NetApp influencers. We used this ‘fresh start’ to button up our governance, redefine user guidelines and moderation models (we now have ‘topic owners’ who are notified when new discussions are posted).   The NetApp community framework is based on member satisfaction balanced with business objectives. For measuring success, we established new custom index metric, which calculates different behaviors such as posts, kudos, replies, etc., into a weighted indices for engagement and satisfaction of the community. NetApp is also conducts an annual CSAT Survey which informs and validates the community roadmap from both a technical and program perspective. While there are always improvements to make, the member feedback has been positive.   “Our Lithium-powered community has continued to grow and to exceed all baseline metrics, including its newest key engagement metric, the number of kudos, which is a strong indicator of the customer’s overall satisfaction with content.” - Terri Peluso, Head of NetApp Communities,  Customer Success &  Loyalty  

Company: Sky UK Contact: Graham Henderson (Community Manager) Community: Sky Community Lithy category:  Excellence in  Customer Satisfaction   Sky is Europe’s leading entertainment company. The group serves 21 million customers across five countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, the UK and Ireland. We offer the best and broadest range of content, deliver market-leading customer service and use innovative new technology to give customers a better TV experience, whenever and wherever they choose.   Our 2015 customer satisfaction initiatives   Community Oracle Programme   At Sky our service message is a simple one; “We want to offer the best service in the country”. The Sky Community was founded in 2010. Since inception we’ve adopted and tested a number of engagement models. At the outset we had a handful of staff and then moved to full service model with over 50 fulltime agents responding to customer posts in the Community. The long-term aim was for the Community to move to a peer to peer model when the user base was high enough. We felt the time was right at the end of 2015 when we had a staggering 1.5 million Community members. We now operate with a peer to peer model with strategic engagement from a team of 5 Community Engagement Specialists and one Community Manager. How can you go from 50 staff to 5 staff overnight while growing a community and out performing business KPI’s like NPS and call deflection? For us, the answer was simple! We had to empower our members by opening our doors and letting them look inside- a real challenge with multiple sites and over 30,000 employees across the UK. We had been running a community Superuser program since 2011 with a relatively small number of members, typically ranging from 8 to 12 members. Despite this small number, these particular members were responsible for creating the best engagement, sharing the best knowledge and generating balanced discussions. We’ve never had a formal Superuser structure in place. No events, no incentives, limited communication and no additional tools. We literally gave them a Superuser badge and said “off you go”. We realized that this had to change!   The most important customer issue we  were looking to solve via our Lithium implementation   We wanted to increase NPS, increase the number of accepted solutions and ultimately deflect calls. We wanted the community to become our customers first port of call, regardless of their interests and levels of digital platform usage. We had already identified our Superusers as the solution, but had to find a way to increase their contribution, offer them more support and grow our Superuser numbers. So what did we do? The first thing we did was listen! We asked our Superusers for feedback and spoke Lithium about best practice. Some of the feedback was great, but much of it was tough to hear. Our conclusion was simple; “we’re letting these members down and need to do more. We’ll never increase NPS or call deflection with this current model”. It was then that the “Oracle” programme was born. We launched in January 2016.   Features of the Oracle Program: Annual event – We introduced an all expenses paid annual event to show them how much we care. For the first time we brought the whole business together using our community. They viewed our product labs, touched Sky Q for the first time, toured our news and sports studios, sat in a McLaren F1 car and met some of our TV presenters.   Our Sky News HQ presenters left the studio to meet our Oracles. (from left to right: Natalie Sawyer (Presenter), Robbie (Oracle), Adam Leventhal (Presenter)   Our Oracles toured Sky studios and many fulfilled a lifetime dream to see and touch a real McLaren Mercedes F1 car.   Annual program that recycles every year. This allows us to keep the program fresh and current. It also allows us the ability to take time out to reward our best members. Incentives – for the first time our best members are rewarded. The annual program allows us to modify and improve the incentives as we learn through data and qualitative feedback. We also invite Oracles to adhoc events, such as the Sky Q press launch. Two Oracles attended and subsequently answered over 90% of all questions related to the product up until launch.   Andrew Olson (Director of New Products) presents Sky Q to the world during our London launch event. Our Oracles were there along with the press and VIP’s.   Quarterly hangouts – We jump on a call every quarter and tell our Oracles about our jobs what we’re working on. We also invite guest speakers from across Sky to answer their questions. They love the techie stuff! Badging- we implemented Lithium gamification and incorporated an Oracle badge to recognise their community contribution. Access to ALL product BETA trials. Our Oracles are the first customers in the UK to use our new products and apps. VIP access to priority customer service line.   Our metrics   After months of work, many late nights and a trip to SKY HQ we had to ask our Oracles for feedback. This is what they said about our first ever Oracle event held at Sky Studios, London:   A few quotes from our Oracles after our first ever oracle event:   “Great day”   “Lovely to see you all there Thank you for a lovely day. “   “It was great meeting you all and sure was a busy day. I’d just like to say a big thank you to all the staff involved in making this day possible, and to those of you who were able to come along”.   “Thanks again to all those there today, thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish”.   The Results   Our NPS rose by 71 points following the introduction of our Oracle programme.   Our accepted solutions more than trebled following the launch of the programme. We asked our Lithium Strategy Consultant to run a short session to explain how to write and structure posts. This was delivered to our Oracles in a fun and interactive session- the results speak for themselves!   Post volumes of Oracles that we invited to the Sky Q VIP launch. Following the event, they became advocates for our new product offering. The red line signifies the Sky Q launch and Sky Q comparison shown in relation to existing TV product..   In summary, we increased our net promoter score (NPS) by 1800%. Increasing accepted solutions by 467% was key to our uplift in NPS. We made solutions easier to find by installing the “featured thread” component and highlighting solutions at the start of all discussion threads- both Lithium features. Inviting Community Oracles to take part in our new product launch resulted in them responding to over 90% of all customer questions within that new product area. In addition, we promoted community blogs via our Twitter help handle by utilizing publisher in LSW. We focused on promoting digital services and Sky Q. This increased blog views by 682%.      

Company: Dixon Schwabl (representing Frontier Communications) Entry submitted by: Jessica DiLuglio    (Social Media Account Executive ) Social channel: https://www.facebook.com/FrontierCorp/ Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Frontier Communications is an S&P 500 company and is included in the Fortune 1000 list of America’s largest corporations. Frontier serves predominantly a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas across the U.S. The company offers a variety of services to customers over its fiber-optic and copper networks, including video, high-speed internet, advanced voice and Frontier Secure digital protection solutions. Frontier Business Edge offers communications solutions to small, medium, and enterprise businesses.   A focus on customer support   The company’s social media networks are primarily used for customer engagement, support and retention.   On April 1, 2016, Frontier acquired over three million customers from the states of California, Texas and Florida. To manage the anticipated volume of conversation, Frontier needed a tool that could coordinate community engagement between its 100+ customer service representatives, determine strategic workflow of responses and help the company easily serve its new customers.   With Lithium, Frontier was able to help listen to the conversation, identify pain points that customers were having and respond to the customers in a timely manner. Due to the efficiency of Lithium Social Web (LSW), social media became a key source of information for Frontier’s senior leadership. What are the main concerns of the customer? Where is the largest amount of volume occurring? How can we help the customer?   Thanks to LSW, Frontier was able to answer all of those questions and more in a timely and efficient manner. Plus, Lithium has made it easier for Frontier to prepare for business as usual conversations that occur on the page – and will help them transition forward with helping their customers at an optimal level.   LSW helps with customer retention   Frontier’s social media platform is a vibrant collection of customers and prospects that use the social channels to ask questions, seek customer support and learn new information. Since every interaction with the customer matters for Frontier, this online network is vitally important to the success of the company and its digital goals.   For these reasons, Frontier views their social media, and digital strategy, as a customer retention platform. If the customer remains happy they will continue to purchase the services that Frontier offers.   Lithium’s presence for Frontier allows its customer service team to be more efficient and knowledgeable with customers while keeping them happy throughout the communication process. In particular, the workflow operations enabled by LSW allow the Frontier team to work together while helping each customer, ensuring that customers are not seeing duplicate messages or requests.   Plus, Lithium’s data allows Frontier to stay ahead of the game when it comes to customer pain points and trending topics that the company needs to be aware of.   Frontier’s customer satisfaction results   Before the acquisition began, Frontier set a goal of an 85% SLA under 1 hour. During the first few days, Frontier looked at the data and realized that SLA was not reaching the target goal. Knowing what they were tracking at, Frontier was able to readjust and after April 5, the target SLA of 85% under one hour was met each time – it did not get back under 86%.   Other helpful metrics that Frontier was able to track were total inbound posts, volume of Facebook, Twitter and Spanish comments, response time, and top topics of what customers were talking about on social media. By being able to track volume of posts, to topics and its average response time, Frontier was able to find out how quickly customer questions were answered and compare concerns expressed by customers on social media to concerns expressed by customers calling into contact centers. This helped the company as a whole quickly identify service issues before they became widespread.   The Frontier digital management team has continually exceeded its SLA under one hour goals since April 1, and they have been able to do this despite the volume of the social media conversation increasing by 10x since March.  

Company: Breast Cancer Care Contact: Anna Brown (Digital Community Officer) Community: Breast Cancer Care Forum Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   The Breast Cancer Care Forum is the largest single cancer forum in the UK.  It was the first peer support forum of its kind, originally launched in 1999/2000.  Our Lithium powered platform enables users to safely share their personal stories and receive emotional support from other people affected by breast cancer. Central to the success of the forum is an environment from which trust can develop, thereby encouraging empathy, human connections and interactions, albeit virtual; this in turn creates a safe space that lessens isolation and anxiety.  Real people-virtual connection:  Overcoming isolation using accessible technology. There are many ways to face breast cancer, we help people find theirs.   Our organization’s customer satisfaction initiatives in 2015   In 2015 we aimed to increase registrations, user engagement and widen our reach to be accessible to everyone affected by breast cancer. As a charity we looked at ways for delivering more for less and reduce our expenses whilst maintaining safety and integrity.   We are a user centric organisation and incorporate all user feedback, input or direct data from LSI to inform improvements to customer experience and user journey on the forum. By listening to our users in workshops and reading comments in posts, we know they want instant access to online support at the time they need it, for this reason we have removed first post moderation and implemented SSO so users only need one account for our Forum and breastcancercare.org.uk.   To support this reduced moderation we have customised the keyword and smut filter systems, as well as activating the abuse notifications and spam quarantine.  By doing this we have reduced our moderation team from 6 sessional moderators and 1 Coordinator to 1 Digital Community Officer and 1 Digital Community Assistant. Through this careful implementation we have not only preserved our outstanding reputation of being a safe and risk free environment, we have significantly built on it. We can safely rely on robust Lithium technology, and through all these changes we have simultaneously increased and expanded our customer engagement and service provision. To illustrate, below are our targets and achievements for the year.     User engagement and satisfaction We know that the ‘midnight terrors’ are real for many people, both newly diagnosed or further on in their treatment of breast cancer.  A popular thread used by many during the ‘witching hours’ is ‘The Night Birds’; where members of the community chat and reduce isolation when everyone else is asleep.   The community is an invaluable source of support and information regardless of the stage of breast cancer journey:  At the beginning when it is all new and frightening;   “i have been reading the forums since waiting for my results and found it a tower of strength. Thought it was time I joined in........”   Experiencing side effects of treatment;   “ I think the side effects affect us more than people realise and that is one reason why these forums help so much”   Coming out the other end of treatment and wanting to support others;   “EXTOLLING THE VIRTUES AND BENEFITS OF THIS WONDERFUL FORUM AND THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE ON IT. ALL OF WHOM, BASICALLY "SAVED MY LIFE". Our users regularly share their experiences both of online and offline services.  Increasing user engagement with the rest of Breast Cancer Care is important to us and our users are the best sources of referral:   “I’m part way through a course called Moving Forward run by Breast Cancer Care – it’s four morning sessions with other ladies who have recently finished treatment and we are covering topics such as diet, exercise, relationships, menopause symptoms, recurrence etc, and to be honest the most powerful thing is being in a room with ten other women who, just like you guys, absolutely get how I am feeling and thinking.  If this is your thing then I’d urge you to have a look and see if there is a course running near you.”   We recognise that for many users they receive the information and support they are looking for by reading posts rather than by actively contributing.  We wanted to encourage this group of forum users to still feel a member of the community and achieved this by introducing Hugs, customised from Kudos. Users are now able to connect with each other as well as show compassion and empathy by sending Hugs in response to a post.  This function has been very popular and from launch in December to the end of March a total of 3,948 Hugs have been given.     Another recent user focussed innovation has been the implementation of Community Champions.  We identified 21 possible users who naturally offer support and empathy as well as support new users and signpost to other areas of support.  100% of people contacted accepted the recognition:   “I’m knocked out ‘cos all i do is out of love and passion for my fellow womankind.  How wonderful.”     We have noticed a steady increase in engagement since this implementation and plan on building on this success.     Our plans for the very near future include a forum restructure. Using the data and analytics from LSI, we have identified areas of the forum which are underutilised.  The flexibility of the Lithium platform enables us to move categories and boards to reflect the needs of our users and to enhance the ease of user journey. Removing inactive areas allows us to introduce new areas which have been requested, such as a ‘Coffee Lounge’ where users can still connect in a safe online environment but in conversations which are cancer free.   Other new areas include a closed private group for our Community Champions and an innovative category, ‘Ask Our Nurses’. This is where users can directly ask questions to our highly regarded clinical specialists enhancing our Helpline and ‘Ask the nurse’ email service.       In the last 12 months our forum has grown by 40% and we have no intention of sitting back and settling for that.  With the ability to be reactive to our users’ needs and having the data, both quantitative and qualitative to support and underpin decisions, we will continue to grow from strength to strength.      

Company: Hilton Worldwide Contact: Lee Diaz (Social Media Product Manager) Community: Hilton Suggests Twitter  Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Hilton Worldwide is one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, with mre than 4,600 hotels, resorts and properties in 100 countries and territories, and we’re growing faster than ever. Our 96-year history as pioneers in the industry makes us the preferred venue for travelers, developers, partners, and team members alike.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives of 2015   Hospitality and customer satisfaction should be extended to all travelers, even before they are your customers. With this focus, in 2015 we continued the expansion of the Hilton Suggests program to be an even broader global community of Hilton Worldwide team members, at all positions, that serve as a proactive resource for travelers visiting around 100 global markets. Hilton Suggests members give their time to listen for travelers’ questions, point unfamiliar travelers in the right direction, and even assist fellow locals seeking the next hidden gem for their bucket list. Through this, we deliver tweet tailored reccommendations for where to eat, what to see and what to do in our cities, to any traveler that needs a little direction.   A 2014 Study by Google on the Traveler’s Road to Decision showed that 83% of users that go online to find travel inspiration use social networking, video or photo sites. The @HiltonSuggests team helps develop some of that inspiration and alleviates some local research by surprising and delighting Twitter users seeking out travel advice with unique, local recommendations. By reaching travelers where they are, and when they are asking questions, we were able to share over 30,400 responses in 2015.     The most important customer issue we  were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation?    Travelers, as resourceful as they are, often need direction as they get ready to explore. Our focus is to help answer travelers’ questions of where to go, what to see, and where to eat that we all have as travelers to a new city. Even when they are not looking to Hilton Worldwide to answer their questions, we want to surprise and delight them with our focus actively listening, taking the time to respond, and delivering a quality piece of information from a local perspective.   Each suggestion is an authentic, first-hand recommendation based on the experiences of one of our local team members. And while we are happy to help travelers find a hotel - our primary focus is always to enhance the overall travel experience during a new-nomad’s visit.   We understand that it’s easier to appreciate the quirks and cultural nuances, too, when you’ve had a chance to experience the culture at its originator. We live and breathe the vision that our founder, Conrad Hilton, understood to be so important:   It’s our mission to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality - one tweet at a time.   Our metrics     Given our focus, to reach any traveler seeking local recommendations, our core satisfaction metric is based on our ability to connect to travelers: Response. In 2015, we had just over 90 Team Members Tweet over 30,400 responses to travelers’ questions.   We leverage Lithium’s Social Web to ensure that each Team Member is receiving traveler questions from their local city / region / market, and can quickly identify which questions they can answer based on their experiences in the city they live and work in.    

Company: Zuora Contact: Lana Lee  (Support Community Manager) Community: Zuora Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Zuora’s Relationship Business Management (RBM) solution helps businesses launch or shift products to subscription, implement pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain insights into subscriber behavior, open revenue streams, and disrupt market segments to gain competitive advantage. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, London, Paris, Munich, Beijing, Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Clients come from a wide range of industries: media, travel services, consumer packaged goods, cloud services, and telecommunications. Clients include Financial Times, Schneider Electric, Box, Honeywell, NCR, RTL, lynda.com, The Guardian, YP.com, BlueJeans, Shutterfly, TripAdvisor, Vivint and Trulia.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   Customer Satisfaction Initiatives in 2015 was to establish more visibility on use cases, implementation and enhancement requests. Seeing how our customers, partners and internal Zuora staff interacts, opens a new world for us to give us better positioning on how to help our customers with a different level of approach (Voice of Customer, Customer Advocacy Program, etc.)   Focusing on customer support excellence Nothing stands in the way of excellence for Zuora’s multi-Stevie® Award winning Global Support Team. Our support team spans the world, giving our customers just-in-time solutions to help power their subscription business and grow in their Zuora expertise. With over 30 global support agents, Zuora support provides quick response, resolution times and received an average customer service rating of 95% for the entire team. By implementing Lithium for our Zuora Community, we’re continuing to focus on delivering the best customer service possible to aggregate content by bringing togther sources of knowledge and information, deflect support tickets to save costs and give customers an integrated visual experience with corporate branding. We believe that we’ve solved these customer issues and more with our cutting-edge Zuora Community that moves Zuora Support to a higher level with its innovative platform that enables peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and gives customers a voice in shaping Zuora’s product roadmap. Our Community User Groups give customers and partners a space where they can network, provide feedback and receive updates on the latest Zuora releases and features.   Our results   30% of our Community’s traffic is in our Ideas forum, which proves to be a popular Community destination since our product managers frequently interact with customers who give suggestions on improving Zuora. Time spent in the community is approximately 9 minutes per member and we see an average of 20k page views per month which shows us that our users are browsing ideas and forums for solutions. Using our Zendesk integration with our Community, any customer post that has no intial response within 48 hours will automatically create a Zendesk ticket. Once a Support agent answers the Zendesk ticket, the answer goes back to the Community as a response and is auto-selected as an accepted answer.  With over 30 support agents in our global Customer Support Services and Community team, we ensure that no issue is left unattended.    

Company: Domo Contact: Dani Weinstein (Senior Community Manager) Community:   Dojo Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction    As the world’s first Business Cloud, Domo brings together all the data, all the people and all the insights business users need to run their entire business to make faster, better-informed decisions to improve performance.   Dojo Community   Domo’s online customer community, the Dojo, includes more than 1500 members and serves as a platform for customers to collaborate with fellow customers, post and receive answers from Dojo experts, connect with peers, share best practices, offer ideas to improve the Domo product, participate in contests, events, rewards programs and much more.   Recently passing its one-year anniversary, the Dojo realized exceptional growth and customer adoption, increasing the number of community posts by over 200% by the 4 th quarter of its first year. With consistent growth, Dojo is cultivating a community of Domo super fans.   Dojo and Lithium Integration   Utilizing the Lithium platform, the Dojo community set out to increase customer participation and engagement including the creation of the Dojo Ideas Exchange.   The Ideas Exchange was created as a place for members to contribute thoughts and ideas surrounding the Domo products and services. Members can submit ideas or suggestions, facilitating conversations and allowing their voices to be heard with the goal of improving Domo’s products and services.   To date, the Ideas Exchange has generated nearly 500 customer ideas with almost 1 out of 7 ideas being approved and or implemented to date in product. By integrating the Lithium platform, the Dojo was able to develop a robust process using Domo software to pull in the data from the Ideas Exchange and providing a consumable and easy-to-view dashboard for our product management team that includes:   Real-time status updates for all ideas on the Ideas Exchange What product manager owns the specific idea, pending review and approval Hyperlinks to the Ideas Exchange allowing for updates and comments on specific data   Product managers can view ideas by status in a real-time pie chart     The moment a new idea has been posted and received at least one vote, Domo’s product management team receives an alert to assign that idea to a product manager for review. The goal is to ensure each idea that receives at least one vote, be assigned for review from a product manager. It’s easy for our product managers to see and track all of the ideas they have been assigned.     From there, product managers can drill down to see the detailed view with hyperlinks to the exchange where they can manage and update ideas status real time.     Nearly 14 percent of ideas submitted have been approved and executed in the Domo product thus far and a number of other ideas are pending serious consideration. Customers love this exchange because they have a voice in influencing the Domo product road map. Ideas are crowd-sourced and voted on by fellow members.   One of our Dojo members submitted an idea for a new card that would track how many Domo licenses they had used up and how many licenses were left open. We were able to create this Participant License Gauge to better track our customers license usage.     At our annual user conference that we held in March 2016, we honored one of two Ideation Champions (who delivered more than 70 combined ideas) during our Dojo VIP awards lunch.   The winner, Robyn Linden stated, “The Dojo has been an amazing resource for me. I know when I submit a question or idea, my voice is heard by Domo staff members. It’s great to know that my ideas are being reviewed and discussed to have a greater impact on the overall product.”   Linden posted a tweet following her win as Ideation Champion.     In the Dojo’s first year as a community, we achieved a 185% percent increase in the combined number of posts made and ideas submitted in comparison with the first quarter that the Dojo went live.     Finally, we have seen almost a 600% increase in idea votes received in Q1 2016, compared with Q2 2015, while we witnessed more than a 250% increase in likes received in Dojo during the same time frame. Customers love the Ideas Exchange which has driven community engagement and customer satisfaction!    

Company: MicroStrategy Entry submitted by: Daphne Tan (Market Engagement Manager) Community: MicroStrategy Community Lithy Category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   MicroStrategy provides business intelligence solutions by empowering organizations to make sense of large data volumes, get answers to their toughest business questions, and build beautiful data visualizations.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives    MicroStrategy provides business intelligence solutions by empowering organizations to make sense of large data volumes, get answers to their toughest business questions, and build beautiful data visualizations. Our community offers users, partners, and customers a platform for peer-to-peer support at any time across the globe. In 2014, we only had about 300 active users. Today with our Lithium-powered community, we have about 17,000 active users and 63,000 registrants.     At the end of 2014, we had just transitioned from our forums to the Lithium. Our challenge in 2015 was to make the community one of the channels through which our customers felt connected and supported. Prior to our transition to Lithium, our forums lacked ease of use and did not facilitate conversation or collaboration. We did not know how vast the MicroStrategy user network was or could be.   Additionally, our tech support staff was overwhelmed, not having enough hands or minutes in the day to troubleshoot the same basic questions over and over. Time and energy was not going to the cases and questions that mattered and there needed to be better management of tech support resources. We wanted to make our technical notes and solutions searchable, so that any user could google something and find his/her answer right away.     Within the overarching goal of facilitating a greater customer care were underlying objectives of gaining user trust and developing a stronger online presence. We hoped the community would better resonate with our customers than the forums did and offer them a space for industry connections to form. Anything that could offer users and customers a sign of life or suggest potential engagement was a clear need.     Ultimately, we wanted to make 2015 the year of the customer: we wanted our customer service to keep pace with our most dynamic product release that became generally available that summer.     Improving technical customer support & reducing support costs   In particular, we wanted to improve technical customer support and reduce support costs through the community. Improving upon technical customer support by transforming the online customer experience would ultimately reinforce Microstrategy's engagement strategy across the organization.   Every community post and response became a touchpoint for us, making our organization ever more personable and approachable. For an enterprise technology organization as large as ours, it is crucial to ensure that users know that on the other side of the community, MicroStrategy indeed is listening. The community reoriented our customer service methods by giving us an opportunity to leverage social listening.     By partnering with Lithium, we were able to launch a vibrant community that improved responsiveness and support costs through increased user engagement. Support now operates at a much larger scale. MicroStrategy’s use of the community began and continues to be about meeting the needs of customers. We place the community on the forefront, prioritizing it as a channel through which customers can vocalize their thoughts and needs. Every single MicroStrategy customer uses our community. With the help of Lithium, we are able to bring the online and offline interactions with MicroStrategy into one seamless experience and change the way others view our customer care organization.   Our metrics   Lithium’s data-driven approach to community through Value Analytics allows us to measure the results of our community implementation and the overall impact it has had on our business. The survey pop-up gave us an opportunity and mechanism to measure customer satisfaction (CSAT) and call deflection.   Our indirect call deflection satisfaction data shows that 61% are satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience on our community. 85% of those visiting our community are seeking information, 72% of them actually find what they’re looking for, and 23% are likely to contact MicroStrategy if their question wasn’t answered through the community.   Our Value Analytics data further shows a 15% increase in case deflections since we rolled out our community, proving that our community helps reduce the volume of customer cases. To calculate case deflection, we created our own formula where we use accepted solutions and a factor of solution views. This has enabled us to show our executives the value from the support side of our community. At our annual conference in Miami, we’ve been able to get a better sense of where the community stands among our users. We brought together a number of our community superusers physically in the same location for the first time ever. All in all, users are satisfied and more well-connected with MicroStrategy with Lithium’s platform and incorporation of gamification. They feel more valued and connected with not just MicroStrategy, but one another.  

Company: Telenet NV Entry submitted by: Geoffrey Ramon (Social Media Lead) Community: Telenet Community Lithy Category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Telenet’s purpose is to help and inspire our customers to make the most of life and business in the digital world, and to do so wholeheartedly.   We brought superfast broadband to Flanders, we made phone calls via cable cheaper, and we made digital TV the standard. Telenet introduced its customers to a world of new possibilities.   Technologies which were in their infancy only yesterday are now accepted as standard. Customers don’t have to think about them;  they just want to get on with things.   If you are supported by exceptional services, you can let yourself go completely in what you want to do. Infinite possibilities help you focus on opportunities.   Families discover a completely new style of entertainment where they can watch what they really want to see, anytime, anywhere. Businesses are also discovering new opportunities as Telenet helps them to fully embrace the digital world.   Opportunities to make the most of life and do what we wish wholeheartedly and share it with others.   1 year of an amazing customer experience   Within Telenet, our mission is to make it our customers as effortless as possible. One our strategic pillars is to deliver an amazing experience, whether it is through our products or along the customer journey. To emphasize this, a separate department was founded 'Ace' = Amazing Customer Experience. Following from customer insights an intensive multi-year program was set in place, that allows us to visit all of our customers to fix inhouse connectivity issues, as this is the biggest grievance of customers.   Bearing the customer effortless and an amazing experience in mind. It brought us to being the N°1 Social Devoted Brand on Facebook in Belgium since June 2013 and belonging to the top 500 Socially Devoted companies in the world.   We’ve learned that there is a good appreciation in the market from our customers, prospects and opinion leaders on social media (acknowledged by www.socialbakers.com).   Resulting from, amongst others, these excellent results and keeping the effortless/ ACE in mind Telenet was ready to take on the next level in its social maturity by launching its own branded platform powered by Lithium in 2014.   As from the start it was made clear that the Telenet Community Forum needed to be an addition to the existing customer proposition and not a replacement. The main focus is out of boundaries support by a peer to peer community and being a home for internal and external beta tests.   Throughout the first year we achieved a great success in consumption, unique visitors and registrations.   But most of all, from the very start, we noticed an analytical but positive mindset from the community members towards each others and towards new members. Best illustrated during our latest price adjustment, we saw a neutral-objective tone of voice. A self- regulating base has been made for our future superuser program .      The issue that we are looking to solve with Lithium   Together with the growth of the approachable social media accounts, so grew the out of boundary questions towards Telenet.   A growing number of connected devices with specific settings and operating systems “Out of the ordinary” set-ups of connected audio and video devices together with our inhouse modems/routers and their specifics Numerous “internet of things” that are way out of our (company) league   All of these challenges needed a centralized, searchable and Telenet-branded approach, as an addition to our existing customer propositions.   From 2014, we were able to redirect customers towards the Telenet community. Both our spoken and our social media team had a specific solution towards our customers for all of their “out of boundaries” questions, resulting in linked traffic between social media and The Telenet community. 

Company: Rogers Entry submitted by: Margaret Tsuji (Community Forums and Social Media Support Manager)  Community: Rogers Community Forums Lithy Category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Rogers Communications is a diversified Canadian communications and media company. We are Canada's largest provider of wireless communications services and one of Canada's leading providers of cable television, high speed internet and telephony services.     In 2014, we launched a multi-year plan, called Rogers 3.0, to revitalize the company’s legacy of innovation and growth. The plan is centered around delivering a better experience for our customers. We are focused on fixing the basics, creating a more consistent experience and improving customer self-service.   Our 2015 customer satisfaction initiatives   Rogers made a $100 million commitment in 2015 and another $100 million in 2016 to customer experience improvements overall. One of our goals is to deliver the best end-to-end customer experience with minimal customer effort.   We adapted support models to customers’ mobile habits, so customers can get service on the digital and social platforms where they already spend time. In 2015, we made the quantum leap to offer support 24/7 for our customers through social media. We are still the only major Canadian telco to do so.   In partnership with Facebook, we were the first telecommunications provider in the world to offer customer support through Facebook Messenger. Customers can reach us through Facebook Messenger to ask questions, make changes to a plan, update an account, set up a new line and more.         Customers have the ability to respond at their convenience and keep track of the conversation just like they would with their friends.     Leveraging LSW has allowed us to seamlessly and efficiently respond to support requests on Facebook and Twitter, resulting in an average response time of 30 minutes or less. In fact, our goal for 2016 is to achieve an average response time of 15 minutes or less. LSW has also helped us better understand our volume and traffic patterns so we can make operational changes to better serve our customers. In order to support Facebook Messenger, we drastically increased the size of the team and were able to rely on the scalability of LSW to do so.   Our response time has steadily decreased and we have earned the “Very responsive to messages” badge consistently on our Facebook page:   How Lithium helps us solve customer issues   We want to make it easy for our customers to get help. More than 16 million Canadians are on Facebook every day, so it makes perfect sense to bring service to them -- when and where they want it. Now, our customers can message us on Facebook Messenger, ask questions, make changes to their account, and get their problems solved without waiting on hold.   Rogers has seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction metrics for social media support, and attribute part of this to the support customers are receiving from Messenger.   NPS has increased since the launch of Facebook Messenger. In fact, the Social Media Support team has the highest NPS score of all consumer contact channels at Rogers! Furthermore, customer complaints, as reported by the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) declined faster than all key competitors, down 26% in 2015 and down 50% over the past two years. At the time of this submission, the Mid-Year Report from the CCTS was just released: The Mid-Year Report lists the number of complaints received from the customers of all Participating Service Providers, and shows a substantial decrease in the proportion of complaints received from customers of Rogers. “Although Rogers still had the second-most complaints, it generated 65% fewer complaints in the first half of this year than in the same period last year. We applaud Rogers for the time and effort it has invested in working with CCTS to reduce the number of customer interactions that require recourse to CCTS, thus improving the customer experience for its subscribers. We encourage all of our Participating Service Providers to make similar efforts.” In our first month alone, we had over 70,000 customer interactions on Messenger. As we continue to invest in personalized, online and self-service options, contact volumes have declined by almost 13% in 2015.    

Company:  TELUS Entry submitted by: Scotty Jackson (Sr. Strategy Manager) Community: TELUS Neighbourhood Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   TELUS is Canada’s fastest-growing national telecommunications company, with $12.5 billion of annual revenue and 12.5 million customer connections, including 8.5 million wireless subscribers, 1.5 million residential network access lines, 1.6 million high-speed Internet subscribers and 1.0 million TELUS TV customers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video, and is Canada's largest healthcare IT provider.   Putting our Customers First   Our top priority since 2010 is putting our customers first. We do this by consistently delivering exceptional client experiences and winning the hearts and minds of Canadians on our journey to become a world leader when it comes to the likelihood that our customers recommend our products, services and people.   We know that listening to our customers is an integral part of our Customers First journey and that taking action based on what they say is just as important. Over the years, we’ve worked harder to identify what our customers are looking for and delivered products, services and experiences that met their expectations.   Every team member, regardless of their role, has a responsibility to put customers first, which is why we have continued to integrate a Customers First culture across the organization.   How We Executed Our Customers First Initiative   In 2015, we reimagined our social strategy, developing a new operations team focused on not just customer service and engagement, but on content development and deep communication skills. Pairing this team investment with existing LSW capability, the launch of the Tribal Knowledge Base inside our community, the TELUS Neighbourhood, and publishing capability, we have developed and implemented a virtuous cycle of customer listening, engagement, and needs fulfillment (see supporting visual).   This meant redefining and redesigning the role of social operations, its job description, and its day to day functions. We diligently tested and recruited for this newly redefined role, and have worked with the successful team members to provide them with increased levels of access to and capabilities within both LSW and our community, the TELUS Neighbourhood.   Our goal was to create a team rooted in both service and content creation excellence who could look at customer questions as unmet demand for support content, then work to meet that demand with social and crowdsourced content. In doing so, we engage and satisfy our users while saving organizational cost. Through our revamped operational team, their access to content creation, adoption of LSW publishing and campaign capability, and their access to management of and response to Ideas, Blog, and Articles (TKB) conversations, we have effectively realized that goal.   A key example of this strategy in action was our development and maintenance of a software update schedule. Upon hearing social conversation and having customer concerns expressed, we were made aware of an opportunity to more transparently share the process for and schedule around delivering software updates to mobile devices. We created a Blog post and Article that addressed these needs, and have leveraged them to great success in fielding inquiries and concerns.   A second example was the StageFright campaign. When Android customers were vulnerable to the StageFright exploit and it started gaining media attention and driving social conversations, we wanted to get in front of the questions. As such, we rapidly developed an Article about the StageFright vulnerability, leveraging content from users already posting. Customers could then be referred to this not only in social, but via our IVR when phoning in and through a mass text campaign where we promoted the Article and community to all Android device users.     Our Q1 2016 Success Results   A summary of the benefits realized in Q1 2016:   98% customer satisfaction 90% likelihood to recommend TELUS (NPS) 89% likelihood to share experience > 11,000 Twitter and Facebook conversations and over 30,000 responses sent 80% of Twitter conversations responded to in 35 minutes or less > 1,600 community posts, 90%+ community-created > 330,000 unique community visits Offsetting of over 66,000 live contacts (call, email, web chat, or store visit) $3.6M in annualized operational savings

Company: USAA Entry submitted by:  Bill Gerth (Director, Social Business) Community: USAA Community Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Organizational Background and Customer Satisfaction Goals   USAA provides a full range of financial products and services to the military community and their families. Our world-class employees are committed to delivering superior products, appropriate guidance and exceptional customer service. We started as a word of mouth company, in 1922 when 25 Army officers met in San Antonio, Texas and decided to insure each other's vehicles they laid the foundation for an organization that would one day serve millions of members. USAA has earned its member’s trust by providing years of award-winning service through a comprehensive suite of financial products and advice. Our members expect excellence in customer service from a financial services organization that’s served generations of military families. Service, Loyalty, Honesty and Integrity, USAA stands ready to serve.   Our members were asking for support through their channel of choice and USAA was committed to extending customer care in social networks. Meeting our member’s needs with the immediacy of social customer care is an extension of our commitment to service. USAA recognizes that member care is a mission critical deliverable. “We know what it means to serve” is at the root of everything we do. In 4 months we moved at the speed of social to implement an enterprise platform that would enable the gold standard for member social care.   USAA’s 2015 customer care satisfaction goals were to enable an enterprise platform which meets the needs of individual business units in the financial services and insurance industries, address social customer care, member complaint and communications needs, achieve an enterprise SLA of 30 minutes or less, reduce social acknowledgement time by a minimum of 15%, expand social customer care coverage addressing the immediate needs of our membership, reduce enterprise social customer care internal documentation by 25%, enable seamless customer care from social channels to internal CRM processes.   Customer Satisfaction and Business Accomplishments with Lithium Implementation   Through a joint effort with enterprise business partners, calculated planning, resource training and the implementation of LSW for social customer care USAA was able to: Implement an enterprise platform for multiple business units Meet the unique social customer care handling needs of our financial services business partners Train an enterprise workforce of 104 users in 2 days to expand social customer care Establish an enterprise social customer care SLA of less than 30 minutes Reduce social acknowledgement time by 20%; 5% over goal Expand social customer care from 8 business hours to 24x7 coverage Reduce social customer care internal documentation from 24 hours to 1 hour; time on task savings of 95% Establish seamless customer handling from social channels into CRM processes Implement early alert system associated to key business indicators Implement LSW Social Handle USAA CRM Single Member Profile.     USAA has been recognized year over year for our service and commitment to members on traditional communication channels.       Our implementation of LSW enabled USAA to meet our member’s social customer service needs with speed and efficiency. The net result is a reduction in time on task for business processes and FTE savings. With LSW USAA has an enterprise solution integrating managed properties like Facebook and Twitter with our Member Community, powered by the Lithium Community Platform. Our Member Community has over 300K members; this owned social property was an integral part of our strategy to maintain superior customer care where members demand our presence. The USAA Member Community has hosted over 8M unique visits with over 35K same session product application completions. 11 major business units at USAA utilize LSW with 6 key financial service business teams interacting with members in social channels on a daily basis.

Company: PT. XL Axiata, Tbk Entry submitted by: Ariesa Pramudito  (Manager, Social Media, Digital Experience Transformation) Community: XL Care  Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   PT XL Axiata Tbk. is one of the major cellular providers in Indonesia. XL’s focus is to provide digital services for the people of Indonesia as well as to encourage the development of Indonesia’s digital economy. XL commenced operations on the 8 th of October 1996, and has wide and high-quality network across the nation. Since December 2014, XL began to deploy its 4G LTE network.XL is part of the Axiata Group. The Group’s mobile subsidiaries and associates operate under the brand name ‘Celcom’ (Malaysia) ‘Dialog’ (Sri Lanka), ‘Robi’ (Bangladesh), ‘Smart’ (Cambodia), ‘Ncell’ (Nepal), ‘Idea’ (India) and ‘M1’ (Singapore).   Our initiatives in 2015 We created the Rangers who have Lithium weapons and are the admin of XLCare Social Media. We see the concern faced by netizen customers is when the customer has a problem or a question about service, they send the question to the company, but they don’t know if they’ll received an answer by a human or a machine (bot). With the Rangers, customers feel that a real person is serving them. Customers can interact with people who have high skills, have a relationship with the communities, and understand customer service.   XL Care Rangers:   Lithium Social Web (LSW) is the weapon used by XLCare Rangers to directly connect with customers. Rangers using LSW for several purposes:   Fast response & monitoring Service Level target: :   Quality monitoring (Conversation history checking):   The interaction / activity with followers/fans is not only questions and answers. We create some online & offline activities with our customers to build engagement and a close relationship with the customer:   1. #XLRangers, Social Media Journey activity by utilizing the Social Media Day (June 30, 2015). We introduce XL Care Rangers to our new followers and give them challenges related to Rangers hobbies, then we give gifts to the winner.   2. #XLGames invite customers to play games easily as routine activity.   From this example, customers should answer the name of XL package (LDR package) by cross checking with the image given.   Sometimes we give gifts as a surprise for the winners. For example, we had special #XLGames by utilizing the Independence Day 2015 (August 17, 2015). We gave free historical islands tour tickets to the winners (we invited Historia Community to give historical education to the participants).   3. #XLShare, sharing product & technology to customers as routine activity   In this example, we share a video editing application. We created a quiz game to build attention.   The most important customer issue we  were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation The basic needs from netizens when they complain or ask in social media is a Fast Response and Solution. This fast response can generate positive sentiments from followers. LSW can fulfill this need to achieve XLCare KPI.   Here is the video about XLCare Rangers generating a fast response and solution with LSW:     To measure our fast response to customers, we set the target. We used SL (Service Level) as our target. Our SL target is 70% incoming posts should be responded to under 10 minutes. Rangers use LSW to provide faster response and solution by these features in LSW:   The easy-to-use interface has helped Rangers provide a fast response and solution.   Rangers can manage all incoming posts (filtering function, sort by function, easy to claim, easy to assign, etc) easily.   The easy to read conversation history between customers & XLCare has helped Rangers provide the best solution to the customer. It also helps our quality assurance team in analyzing Rangers’ quality answers / solution.   With Lithium, it’s easy to monitor SL’s hourly, daily, weekly & monthly achievement.   It’s also easy to analyze trends & anomaly issues by using tags which were needed to improve our quality as well as the handling flow.   Our Lithium implementation has answered our needs to give a fast response & solution to the customer.   XL Care SL Achievement (2015) :     We exceeded our SL target (70%) in 2015. We achieved 79.46% average in 2015.   By using Lithium, we were able to provide a fast response and solution to customer and reached 1.044.998 incoming posts (9% of total incoming volume) from all XL assisted touch points in 2015.             Type Touchpoint 2015 % Assisted Hotline 7,957,616 69% Walk in Center 2,546,604 22% Email 40,863 0.35% Social media 1,044,998 9% Total 11,590,081 100%    Our metrics   From the online & offline activities in XLCare social media, we use an NPS survey to measure customer satisfaction, as well as engagement rate.   1. NPS Mechanism : We provide customers with a survey to recommend XLCare on a scale of 0-10.   0 – 6          : Detractors 7 – 8          : Passives 9 – 10        : Promoters   NPS formula: NPS = Promoters (%) – Detractors (%)   We have our segmentation of customer, then we divide NPS in 2 kinds of NPS. Regular customer NPS & Premium customer NPS.   Regular customer NPS: We send NPS survey to customer by the day after we give answer/solution to all customers. Regular customer NPS target is 55%.   We exceeded our NPS rate target (55%). We achieved an average NPS of 59.01% in 2015..   Premium customer NPS: Every premium customer will have dedicated Rangers to answer and provide solutions to them. We also have initiatives to create engagement events with them. To determine our premium customers, we set the priority of customers using Lithium tags (choosing by number of followers & Klout score).     We give the survey links using Lithium as well. We send our NPS survey to customers in batches (1 batch: 3 month) after we provide services and activities to our premium customers.     We exceeded our NPS rate target (70%). We achieved an NPS average of 75.48% in 2015.   2. Engagement Rate We use an Engagement Rate to measure how interesting XL Care posts/tweets are on social media from the customer side.   Engagement Rate Formula: Total number of times a user has interacted with a Tweet (Click, retweet, reply, follows, favorites) / Number of times users saw the tweet on Twitter * 100%     We exceeded our Engagement Rate target (1.8%). We achieved 2.09% average in 2015.  

Company:  Covered California/Campbell Ewald Entry submitted by: Amanda McCartney  (Senior Marketing Specialist) Community:  https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCA/ https://www.facebook.com/CoveredCAEspanol https://twitter.com/CoveredCA https://twitter.com/CoveredCA_es Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Covered California is California’s health insurance marketplace, established by the Affordable Care Act. It is the only place to receive financial assistance to make health coverage more affordable. Over two million Californians served.     Our customer satisfaction initiatives in 2015 In the fall of 2014, with the second Open Enrollment period approaching, Covered California was faced with a decision.   During the first year, its social media channels had been frequently visited by ideological opponents, some of whom antagonized Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) supporters and dissuaded potential customers from enrolling. At the same time, there were thousands of incoming posts and messages from distressed customers seeking assistance – many going unaddressed.   Concerns over purpose, functionality, practicality, and public relations were raised. Was it worth it to maintain social channels? Or, could these channels be turned in to functional marketing and customer support platforms? The latter path was chosen, and just in time for the start of Open Enrollment 2, Covered California embraced the Lithium Social Web platform in November 2014 as the solution to its customer service woes on social media.    With a mandate to offer a robust, responsive customer support channel option, a team was deployed using the LSW platform to handle Covered California’s thousands of incoming posts. By the end of Open Enrollment 2 in February 2015, and with a small team of four agents, Covered California Social Support successfully handled over 17,000 conversations with a 73% TAR (responses within 2 hours). This performance was celebrated as a success – Covered California’s social channels were no longer seen as a liability, but an opportunity.   Months later, and with a new agency, goals for the Social Customer Support Team remained high – seeking even faster response times and improved customer sentiment. For Open Enrollment 3 in Fall 2015, conversation sentiment conversion was tracked, showing a direct reduction of ‘negative’ and ‘neutral’ posts by half, with increased ‘positive’ sentiment (250%+). The team also improved TAR to 82% within 2 hours. Improving sentiment, responding more quickly and thoroughly, and converting upset customers into fans. Goals met.   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via Lithium implementation   Covered California, being the largest state-based insurance exchange program, is in a unique position. It is a new governmental institution, offering exclusive services and savings to Californians, who are [now] required to purchase health insurance. Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans have had questions about what to do and where to get coverage/access health insurance.   The requirement, or “individual mandate,” elicits strong reactions in both support and opposition, expressed often on social media.   The solution is Covered California offering responsive, friendly, informative, and patient social support for consumers who are often frustrated or confused with the recent and significant changes in health care policy.   Using Lithium Social Web, the Covered California Customer Support Team is able to easily organize, prioritize, and quickly respond to the thousands of incoming posts. It has also allowed Covered California to build relationships with customers by thoroughly answering their questions, offering assistance, and escalating their issues when necessary.   Through these efforts, numerous customer issues are resolved via social media without the need for the customer to call the Covered California Service Center – which, particularly during Open Enrollment, can be overwhelmed.   The Covered California Customer Support Team is small (growing to six during Open Enrollment 3), but is prepared to address any issue that may arise. The team has successfully transformed Covered California’s social accounts into effective customer support platforms, helping thousands of Californians get the health coverage they need. Below are direct quotes from customers after receiving assistance from the team:     Our metrics   All below stats from Open Enrollment 3 – Nov 1, 2015 - Jan 31, 2016 – Covered California’s busiest time of year:   23,742 posts received à 13,965 Conversations handled and closed à 6,713 replies posted 82% response rate within 2 hour target goal Conversation sentiment conversion: Positive increased 250%, Neutral reduced 51%, Negative reduced 50%     Due to the success of social customer support during Open Enrollment 2, Covered California put more dollars behind promoting content in Open Enrollment 3 to increase reach, engagement, and fan/follower growth. The campaign was successful, resulting in an increase across all channels, especially Spanish-language, highlighting a demand for in-language assistance for California’s Latino community.   Growth November December January TOTAL GROWTH New Facebook Fans (English) 1,422 3,445 6,725 11,592 New Facebook Fans (Spanish) 1,248 448 2,975 4,671 New Twitter Followers (English) 316 624 522 1,462 New Twitter Followers (Spanish) 39 52 198 289    

Company: CallidusCloud Entry submitted by: Lara Golden (Director of Global Community) Community: CallidusCloud Customer Community Lithy category: Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   CallidusCloud is the global leader in cloud-based sales, marketing, customer experience and learning solutions. CallidusCloud enables organizations to accelerate their lead to money process, a complete suite of solutions that identify the right leads, ensure proper territory and quota distribution, enable sales forces, automate configure price quote and contract management, simplify marketing automation, enable customer experience monitoring, create and distribute learning materials, deliver deep analytic insights, and streamline sales compensation — driving bigger deals, faster.   Our customer satisfaction initiatives   We had three goals when we launched the community in 2014: Reduce support costs by enabling our customers to help themselves Improve customer retention by empowering our users Encourage cross-product adoption by openly sharing product information with all customers   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via Lithium implementation and that makes our approach to customer satisfaction a gold standard in the industry   The ultimate goal was to reduce support costs without sacrificing customer success. We are proud to have an award winning Technical Support team, but without a Community and its accompanying Knowledge Base, our customers weren’t able to help themselves. Putting a Lithium implementation in place allows our customers to get the answers they need, either from each other or from the Knowledge Base, without sacrificing the level of support. Choice is good!   Our metrics   Satisfaction has paralleled use of the community:   2014 2015 Percent change Posts 163 1899 1065% Kudos 39 384 884% Accepted Solutions 5 182 3540%   Even as the community was embraced by our customers, one metric in particular stood out: web-based engagement versus call-based engagement. Web-based and self-service support engagement is a key part of our customer success model, as our customers are happy to be able to find solutions on their own at all hours of the day. This is particularly important for a global company providing support to customers in every time zone. Since launching the Community, CallidusCloud has seen web-based engagement skyrocket to over 90% of support issues.   Finally, but no less important, we’ve see our Customer Satisfaction survey results increase from less than 90% to over 95% from 2014 to 2015.  

Company:  Comcast  Entry submitted by: Matt Verna (Analyst) Community: Comcast Help & Support Forums  Lithy category:  Excellence in Customer Satisfaction   Comcast Cable is one of the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build a sophisticated network that delivers the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings.    Our customer satisfaction initiatives    In 2015 Comcast’s Digital Care Team strove to:   Create and deploy NPS survey program Increase in-channel (social) resolution rates Deploy a Quality program for our team which focused on customer experience and the behaviors necessary to change customer perceptions & sentiments from negative to positive   Comcast’s Digital Care Team experienced significant growth in 2015. That growth drove a material increase in customer interactions making it necessary to employ tools that helped drive customer-centric behaviors across our multi-site organization. Our growth, while clearly good for our ability to meet more customers in the channel of their choosing, could have, without careful planning, resulted in the loss of the boutique, one-stop-shop customer experience we have worked to build. A primary tool in our effort to maintain the highest customer satisfaction levels possible is our newly deployed Quality program. The Quality program’s primary goal is to ensure a consistent, high quality customer experience for each and every interaction. With the technology in place to track conversation sentiment and newly allocated resources dedicated to ensuring its accuracy, Digital Care has been able to maintain and improve upon our ability to fully serve our broad customer base.   Along with assuring the quality of conversations, the quantity of conversations continued to increase, encouraging even more operational changes. Expanding the team into two divisions, Operations and Strategy, allowed our Operations team to focus on coaching, while letting our Strategy team focus on Quality, Reporting, Forecasting & Scheduling, Technology, Training and the Customer Experience. In 2015, the Digital Care team implemented an entirely ‘in-channel’ Net Promoter System (NPS) survey to its customers on Facebook and Twitter, sending more than one thousand surveys. In 2016 we’ve already sent out more than two thousand surveys. Keeping the customer in-channel from inception to completion was imperative to operational success and ultimately proven with NPS survey results that exceed industry averages and are among the highest for any group in the company.   The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via  Lithium implementation and what makes our approach to customer satisfaction a gold standard in the industry   The solutions that Lithium provides directly aligns with Digital Care’s key objective - building a better customer experience. To manage the increasing volume of incoming posts and facilitate a streamlined response process, Lithium’s robust tag and routing hierarchy allow Comcast’s social team to provide the highest quality conversations with its customers and eliminate as much room as possible for error. The newly integrated Quality program keeps these processes in check and also allows frontline specialists to participate in peer-to-peer review and approval processes for new employees. Combining the approval process, Quality program and the tag structure has created the necessary balance between technology and operation goals, which in turn has provided a better customer experience. To prove the success of this collaboration, the team’s NPS score places well above the industry average score and surveying the customer in the social channel they interacted in has resulted in a nearly 60% response rate. Our customers’ experience with us will always be the Digital Care Team’s number one priority but the accessibility of viable technology contributes to the successes of the team.    Our metrics   Our focus on the customer experience in 2015 and 2016 has had meaningful and tangible results for our customers.   We are no longer last resort support channel, customers are coming to us first Nearly 75% of customers that came in negative left neutral or positive Reduced non-social channel escalations per month from 4000 to 400 Higher than industry average NPS score, nearly 60% response rate to in-channel surveys In-channel resolution increase from 95 to 99% in 2015