Company: BRP Inc. Entry submitted by: Peggy Carrier (Peggy) After Sales Service & Community Manager Community: BRP Community (www.brp.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   BRP is the world leader in the design, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of motorized recreational vehicles and power sports engines. BRP products are distributed in over 100 countries by more than 3,500 dealers and distributors.   Our Community is a private community which has been active since February 2012. We are still relatively young and learning a lot on dealing with our Community, but how can we not be? For years we have supported our Dealer Network by picking up the phone and answering questions. Although 1:1 support continues to have its benefits, we realized over the years that the overall technical complexity of our products meant that Dealers needed to call us more often and therefore experience longer wait times on the phone. Our customer service support began to suffer. We needed a better way to support and communicate with our Dealers.     For us the Community meant a huge channel shift on how we support our Dealers, and we began to see benefits right from the start: Dealers answering Dealers, members answering or asking questions on evenings and weekends, videos and diagrams being shared on the community 24/7 and all of this across the globe in different languages. The fact that a post and subsequent solution can be read by our entire global Dealer and Distributor network has saved us many, many 1:1 encounters.   Our support process on the Community is structured as follows: Our Product Specialists are assigned to keep our Dealer Network informed with the latest technical information. They are also there to share best practices, tips and tricks as well as engage in any discussions they deem fit. They are the deepest technical resource for Dealer Technicians. Our Parts Specialist is there to ensure that information on estimated time of delivery, any transport issues or general parts questions are addressed. When we see a call driver, we immediately post the latest information on the community. We also have moderators, across the globe that monitor the site to ensure that guidelines are being followed. They escalate cases in times of need. We use the automated escalation email capability for posts that have not received replies after 24 to 48 hours depending on the product and season. These e-mails are sent to our Product Specialists who respond to the posts. We include community support (case escalation) in our daily roundtable meetings. Our community is a success today because everyone supports one another and both Dealers and BRP staff provide diverse solutions and fast resolutions to problems. The community has helped to increase communication within our company and with our global Dealer Network. We are able to share information globally so much faster than before. We do not go one day without speaking about our community here at our call center. We have never been more certain that supporting our Dealers through our online community is the way of the future. 1:1 support for complex situations will always be a part of our business strategy , but supporting hundreds and thousands of Dealers at one time through our online community definitely elevates the customer experience. Our young community is quickly maturing and we are excited for what the future holds!    

Company: YouSendIt Entry submitted by: Ashish Seth (ashcool) Cloudsquads CEO and Founder Community: YouSendIt Community (support.yousendit.com) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________   At YouSendIt, we’re very focused on finding the best and most cost effective way to manage all of our customers through social.  We have over 40 million customers, many of whom are free users, so we’re unable to provide the same services for them as we do our paid customers. Our support program uses social media to stay connected, but not incur high support costs.  We worked with Lithium partner, Cloudsquads to have a more integrated unified approach to engaging with customers.  Below are two examples of that integrated approach.    With our Lithium community we were able to put our blog and forum in one place.  Because of this, we get more visitors/readers to the blog. We leverage our knowledge base more and directly link the support questions coming through our community to the right answers and information.                                               Also, we offer multiple ways in which our customers can contact us (email, live chat, call, search knowledge base, open discussion thread).  This is all based on permissions (free, paid, enterprise).  It was important to serve up the right options based on the type of customer asking for support, so we needed to make the form smart - which required customization.  We now take the subject line as the user types up their support request and instantly serve up the right answers based on articles in our knowledgebase.                                     Customized contact us forms based on customer type                                             Dynamic search

Company: A1 Telekom Austria AG Entry submitted by: Claudia Religa (viktoria) Community Manager Community: A1 Support Community (a1.community.net) Lithy category: Best Social Support Program ________________________________________________   In a rather small country like Austria with a population of 8.4 million people, A1 is the unique leading telecommunication provider with 5.2 million mobile and 2.3 million fixed subscribers.   Since launch in November 2011, our A1 Support Community grew significantly: our real substitution ranks around 25 percent (= percentage of users which perceive the A1 Support Community as primary service channel) and the crowd ratio is located around 80 percent. When looking at the charts, we managed to create a vitally and steady growing Community – but what are the qualitative actions we set to engage with our users and to motivate them to participate in the way they do?   On the one hand, it is all about motivation factors, gaming mechanics and gratification approaches: Transferring online into offline events: within 2012 we started the initiative “Community events”. We organized a guided tour at the A1 Technical Department. The Super Users were accompanied by A1 Device managers and the A1 Social Media management team for a meet & greets and to gain exclusive background-infos. “Community photo tour” – we exclusively invited users to a phototour to the Viennese zoo and equipped them with Hero-device smartphones to review the quality of the photo-cameras.   Hero of the month Award: Super Users – the most active users in our Community – are rewarded monthly for their outstanding contributions within the Community. Super Users as moderators: to show the most active Super Users our respect and trust, we gave them moderator roles within the Community. Now they are able to contribute even more to the content and quality of the A1 Support Community.                                               Exclusive boards, badges, ratings and rankings for Super Users are a matter of course as they were part of the concept when creating our new Community. On the other hand, we deeply link our A1 Social Media channels and provide target-group oriented content:   It all started by integrating the A1 Support Community in our Facebook fanpage. By doing so, we opened the Community to our established fan base on Facebook.   When comparing to our competitors in the Austrian telecommunications market , we keep a facebook fan-share of 59% and are therefore at the pole position with around 238,000 Facebook fans. On Facebook, three A1 Social Support agents provide fast and exclusive support. Additionally, we spread offers, lotteries and product information for our Facebook target group. Twitter is our channel for distributing company news as well as servicing support requests.   The A1 Blog provides product information, device and App reviews, etc. and is deeply linked with the A1 Support Community. The A1 Community actively creates content for our A1 Blog, eg. device reviews from users. The recruiting of our authors takes place via A1 Support Community and Facebook.   We take Customer experience one step further:   Initiatives like the Ideas concept take the customer experience to another level, where users can participate in the development and beta testing of products and solutions.   For that reason, we integrated our A1 Community in the development of the new “My A1” customer self-service area. Firstly, we asked them for ideas which functions they would like to see in the new Customer Self-Service area. After reviewing them, we gave them feedback concerning their ideas and invited them to join a workshop with the “My A1”-project managers. In one last step, the A1 Community had the chance to evaluate the scribbles made for “My A1” and give their feedback to be incorporated into the self-service area.                                         Not only the facts and figures proof that we are one the right path – in 2012, our A1 Support Community and Social Media commitment stood out at national and international Social Media and Community Awards.   In Hamburg, Germany, we were rewarded for the “Best Social Media Strategy” in the DACH region at the Social Media Economy Days 2012. At the Digital Communication Award 2012 the A1 Support Community was honored as the Best Online Community within the European online PR and communications branch as well as with the German Award for Online Communications 2012 in Berlin, Germany. In Austria, one of our integrated Social Media campaigns was rewarded with the Award for the Best Online- and Social Media communication granted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth.  

Company: Time Warner Cable Entry submitted by: Phil Blum (TWC-PhilB) Social Media Customer Care Manager https://twitter.com/TWCableHelp Lithy category: Best Social Support Program _______________________________________________   Time Warner Cable is one of the largest providers of video, high-speed data and phone, supporting over 15 million customers in the United States.  In 2010, I was selected to lead the social media arm of TWC’s customer care operations.  Our mission was to provide high-quality service experience to customers on any channel for which they prefer to interact and we needed a solid social engagement and response platform that can help us manage the flow of service-related conversations and ensure that my team of social agents are able to address each and every customer need.   We launched Lithium Social Web in April 2012 to my team of 10 social customer care agents and we now have a streamlined platform to identify messages from Twitter and Facebook that need a response and provide timely resolutions.  Within 6 months, we have improved our social response rate by 30% and increased agent productivity by 57%.  This is driven by the integrated nature of the platform that allows my team to tackle cases more quickly and ability to respond without switching back and forth between different social tools. We were also very honored to be placed on the "Top 10 Socially Devoted Brand" list by AdWeek.   Our social support program proved critical in sustaining customer relationships during one of the worst storms in recent history.  As Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the East Coast in the fall of 2012, our customers were anxious to learn when their services would return.  Many of them turned to their only remaining avenue of contact: accessing Facebook and Twitter via their smartphones.  With the overwhelming increase in volume, my team was able to step up to the plate and even received kudos from grateful customers for their timely response.     Our social support strategy extends beyond this customer care team.  We will be launching a community soon because this is a critical way for us to provide support in a scalable way.  We also want to bring the conversations that are happening about us onto our own domain so we can engender goodwill, provide more transparency to our customers, and weigh in on those conversations where appropriate.  We’re excited to embark onto the next phase of our social support strategy!

Company: Autodesk, Inc. Entry submitted by: Katinka Sante, Strategic Social Programs Manager Community: Autodesk Expert Elite Lithy category: Best Social Support Program, Best Superfan Story or Insight, Best New Community ___________________________________________________________________   On November 28, 2012 at Autodesk University, Autodesk’s annual user conference, we announced our formal customer advocacy program: Autodesk Expert Elite. This program is designed to recognize community members who make extraordinary contributions to the company's online community. The program builds on, and is an evolution of the Autodesk Community rank and reputation model.   Members of the Expert Elite group are characterized by their regular and responsive participation in Autodesk's discussion forums, advanced knowledge of the company and its products, and leadership in the user community.   Individuals are selected after a detailed review of their Autodesk Community contributions, which include assisting other customers by sharing product knowledge and displaying engaging and positive styles of communication and collaboration. The goal of the Autodesk Expert Elite program is to deeply engage this important group of individuals and empower them to better assist their peers and support the Autodesk community. The program has a one year term and members are reviewed bi-annually.    As part of the Autodesk Expert Elite program, members receive a number of benefits including access Autodesk’s portfolio of design products, access to a private forum known as the Expert Elite Lounge. This Lounge is only available to our Autodesk Expert Elite members and is geared toward opening the lines of communication between Autodesk and its most valuable customers.   Expert Elites are also given additional administrative permissions within Lithium to help curate and highlight valuable forum content. For example, our Expert Elite members can accept solutions for their posts as well as posts authored by other customers. Additionally, Expert Elites have the ability to escalate their own posts into our CRM system for support assistance. We’ve also created an Expert Elite community badge for members to include in their forum profiles, which they are very proud of.   Today, Autodesk has 64 Expert Elite members from 11 different countries.  These 64 members represent 28% of all posts, 30% of all accepted solutions and 27% of our community kudos. Here are just a few of our Expert Elite members: - Adrianna Schneider - R.K. McSwain   Our Expert Elite members are a key group of stakeholders helping us shape our community programs, strategy and policy.   Watch this video to hear from some of our Expert Elite members as they talk about the importance of supporting our community http://youtu.be/xNsDzbZc58I