Company: Autodesk Entry Submitted by: Brian Kling  Program Manager, Community & Social Media (bkling) Community: Autodesk Discussion Groups (http://forums.autodesk.com) Lithy Categories: Best Business ROI, Best Community Technical Implementation   Autodesk has actually had online “discussion groups” for more than 15 years – remember Compuserve?!  In June of 2010 we migrated to the Lithium platform.  Because we already have a well-established community, our focus has been on optimizing our Support and Service participation, getting our organization participate in a sustained manner and to evangelize to our internal business groups how much value this thriving community provides.   The Technology Integration Angle One of our major efforts achieved last year was to answer the question “how do you keep a community open to all customers, but yet provide an enhanced level of customer service to those customers that have paid for an annual Subscription Contract?”    Our solution was to integrate the Lithium platform with our CRM platform (Salesforce).    The key components are:   Identify Subscription Customers – this was achieved when we migrated, but using our own SSO and authenticating against our CRM for Subscription Entitlement.  Internally we can see who has an entitlement, and even what level they are on, and a proper role is auto-assigned.  This authentication occurs every time at login.   Offer enhanced service – this boiled down to four escalation methods:   Automated “No Reply” - A question authored by a Subscription Customer is monitored; if no first Reply is received after 24 hours, a linked case is created in Salesforce and routed to the appropriate support queue. Automated “No Solution” – A question authored by a Subscription Customer that has no further Replies for 48 hours and no Accepted Solutions marked will be escalated into Salesforce to determine if help is needed.  An email is sent to customer asking if they need our help, if yes, then case is routed to appropriate support queue. Manual by Author – Premium level Subscription customers have a “Need an Answer” button on any new question they author.  They can escalate prior to the automated options above. Manual by Autodesk - Autodesk staff can escalate any forum thread into Salesforce, for either internal collaboration, large file transfer, sensitive information, product defect tracking, Content Creation flagging, etc.   The ROI angle Proving some ROI to your executive staff is an important part of a Community Strategy.  Not all ROI’s are easy to measure, and every community really has multiple ROI’s, not just on cost, but also brand awareness, advocacy, etc.  This example is just one of the many possible facets.   Our communities are mostly based on technical support questions related to our many design products.  Customers paying for Subscription Contracts are welcome to come and participate in our online community, but they also have the right to come directly to our Support staff through Salesforce.  As you can imagine, the cost of a technical, 1:1 interaction is vastly higher than that of a peer-to-peer interaction in an online community.  For us, the calculated cost difference is 1000x – yes, one that’s one thousand!   Through SSO we can easily identify which customers posting in our online community have Subscription contracts.  We also regularly survey our customers and ask if their issue was resolved in the community.   For Subscription Customers, if they had a resolution, we then ask them if they would have turned to us for 1:1 support if they hadn’t found their answer in the community.  Here is a perfect opportunity to measure how many of these customers achieve a resolution to their issues without needing to come to us on a 1:1 interaction, which is a direct cost savings calculation.    For our community, in 2011 our calculated cost savings was $6.8M dollars.     This is not all about saving costs, because for lower severity issues that are common to many users, these questions are best served in a public forum where all can then find and benefit from the answers provided.  Further, typically answers come faster from this vast group of community experts, who also know our products better than we do; they use them in the trenches each and every day, in many ways we can’t anticipate or model!   For both angles At Autodesk we use Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a common indicator of customer perceived value in our interactions with them.  In Product Support, we measure this in our 1:1 transactions, online communities as well as customer interactions through our partners worldwide.    Our NPS score for online communities has reached or even at times surpassed the NPS for our Silver Subscription 1:1 transactions and our partner transactions, which proves that customers do assess a high value to their online experience.

Company: National Instruments Entry Submitted by: Jordan Groves (jgroves) Web Project Engineer Community: National Instruments Community  (forums.ni.com) Lithy Categories: Best Business ROI The National Instruments Idea Exchange, which was established in June 2009, provides a quick, excellent medium of direct communication between our customers and our R&D team. Here at National Instruments, we understand the importance of integrating co-innovation into the product design and development processes.  By giving our lead users the opportunity to provide valuable feedback on our products, not only do we develop better software, but we also demonstrate to our customers that we greatly value their input.   Before the Idea Exchange was born, we first needed to determine how to best incorporate our top users into our development processes.     In order to do so, we needed to learn more about our community members.  A survey of the user base returned the following information:   55% of our customers are "active" community users There is a direct correlation between how active a customer is on the forums and how loyal he/she is to the company. This data reaffirmed our assertion that it would be well worth the effort to pull customers into the NI software development process.       With the main focus being ease of use, National Instruments utilized the Lithium community platform and revealed the new Idea Exchange in the summer of 2009.  Since then, users have submitted over 3,700 ideas – each with candid explanations of why they posted.     Our Research and Development teams monitor the board and reply directly to the customers’ requests. Over the years, the Idea Exchange has expanded to encompass eight different product boards and has received:   Over 3,700 submitted ideas (our initial goal was 500) Over 73,600 votes on ideas 14,565 customer comments Over 56,000 unique visitors Additionally, the LabVIEW 2011 Beta release included 13 new features that were suggested on the Idea Exchange.   In the end, not only did the Idea Exchange alleviate many users’ frustrations by giving them a direct connection to our developers, but it also increased our productivity, as well.  Our engineers now have an exact picture of which new features are most important to our customers.     By placing co-innovation as a cornerstone of the product development cycle, we have been able to produce better products.

Company: Data.com  Entry Submitted by: Katie Chastek (ktc) Community Manager Community: Data.com (community.jigsaw.com) Lithy Categories: Best Business ROI The abundance and pace of changing business data has been a long-time issue for companies who struggle to manage and keep their data clean and actionable.   With the proliferation of social data, business data management has become an increasingly important and difficult objective.   After revolutionizing CRM a decade ago, Salesforce has a history of taking on challenging industry problems. Launched last August, Salesforce’s Data.com is setting out to transform the business data industry by making data accessible in the cloud and surrounding the data assets with a strong community to provide real-time intelligence.   The Result Data.com’s 4 million member strong community launched in August and is integral to the solution’s success.   Unlike other data providers that solely rely on an algorithm to update and maintain their data assets, Data.com’s community plays an active role in maintaining data accuracy and uploading new business accounts and contacts. Ultimately, the community not only benefits from Data.com’s solution through rewards and offline events, but it also puts customers in a position to succeed.   Just how much does the community contribute? Each month, members add over a million new contacts, allowing Data.com to grow and provide quality data to marketing and sales operations. The most dedicated community members are what Data.com labels Rainmakers and Data Defenders.   Rainmakers are Data.com’s most active users who volunteer to add and update over 500+ business data contacts. In The Corner, Rainmakers join other community members in using the community to contact other users worldwide or network to share ideas, exchange tips and best practices.   In addition to the forums, there is an Idea Exchange for members to add suggestions and ideas to improve their Data.com experience.   Data Defenders are a small group of people in the Data.com community and a part of a data quality protector program who clean records and evaluate data quality. Data Defenders are essentially the quality control leaders in the community. The group flags and graveyards stale or inaccurate data and then corrects the discrepancy – allowing Data.com to have the unique approach of combining algorithm technology with human business data smarts.   Community Collaboration = Customer Success An example of the instant success of Data.com is illustrated through Clairmail, an enterprise-wide mobile banking and payments solution that needed to target new prospects, create a better experience for current customers and reduce time spent on chasing inaccurate data. With Data.com, Clairmail has increased dial effectiveness by 15%, closed 20% more deals and attributed 32% of their overall revenue from business data sourced from Data.com.   What is unique about Data.com for Clairmail is that the community responds in real-time. Clairmail has an advantage over competition with the most up-to-date account and contact information that allows them to find the right people at the right companies at the right time.   Salesforce's Data.com is already accomplishing what it set out to do: build a strong community around business data that allows customers to deliver effective sales and marketing campaigns that grow their businesses. And with over 4 million community members and growing, Data.com has been a tremendous success since launching just six months ago.