Social Customer

Online Customer Communities: Critical to Most Organizations

By Patty Seybold

There's a Catch-22 in deciding whether or not to invest in trying to nurture one or more online customer communities. The biggest issue in my mind is not, "will customers say bad things about us?" The answer to that question is, "Of course, some customers will be critical, but other customers will be complimentary. It's better to have at least some control over the conversation by hosting it, than it is to be at the mercy of the discussions customers are having elsewhere on the Internet."

The more important question, to my mind, is "will the community take hold?" Why would your customers or prospects want to converse with one another in and around your products or services? The answer is that they really don't want to talk about you or your products. They want to talk about themselves: What they are trying to do; what they care about; and, also many of them actually enjoy helping others who share similar jobs, interests and passions, it's kind of a quid pro quo. "I'll help/encourage you. You or someone else will help/encourage me."

What Kinds of Online Communities Are There?

There are many different kinds of online customer communities:

• Customer Support communities are typically the best place to start for any company that has technical products or for one that provides services to help people get things done.

When Communities Converge (or Collide)

By Ronni Marshak

For years, we’ve always advocated—nay, evangelized—that customers and employees/stakeholders should be on the same page, with access to the same information, so that everyone has a 360-degree view of what’s going on. Part of our advocacy was promoting the convergence of customer and employee communities. But, as Matthew Lees, our community and social media mastermind points out in his article, Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?, creating a comprehensive community to address customer issues and employee issues doesn’t really make sense.

Although employees have (or should have) the goal of providing a great experience and easy access to relevant information to customers, the information they need in a community is about stuff that customers, frankly, don’t care about—HR stuff like payroll, expense reimbursement, insurance issues, and the like. And, while specific employees—especially customer-facing employees—should know what’s going on in customer blogs, this is typically a small portion of the entire staff. Not everyone on your payroll needs to be involved in a customer support community, or an innovation community, or…whatever it is that customers want to “commune” about. Their jobs, while always in support of making customers happy, albeit often indirectly (good HR policies make employees happy; happy employees stick around longer and can provide better customer support, for example), are not intended to solve all customer problems. Most employees will not become more productive by knowing about a workaround for an absent feature in the product. Nor will customers become more loyal to your brand because you offer a dental plan.

The key to effective communities is to understand the goals of the community and decide who should participate. So, based on Matthew’s insights, we will get off the “everyone should know and participate in everything” soapbox and concede that instead of converging, disparate communities may just collide.

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Can a Single Social Technology Support Both Internal and External Communities?
By Matthew D. Lees, Senior Contributing Editor, May 13, 2010

Tweeting the Super Bowl

By Patty Seybold

On Sunday evening, February 7th, my husband and I got ready for the annual ritual of the American Super Bowl—the one football game each year that most Americans never miss. Tom was bemoaning the fact that we had neglected to invite friends over. I said, “We’ll have our own Super Bowl party,” as I got out the beer and the chips. But that’s not exactly what happened. I settled down to watch the game and the ads, with my laptop in front of me, fired up TweetDeck and began tweeting my take on both. I quickly noticed that most of the people I follow on Twitter were doing exactly the same thing. So I enjoyed myself immensely, sharing the experience with several hundred people.

One of the times that Twitter really excels is when there’s something happening in the world that draws peoples’ attention. Last month, I wrote about the way Twitter was being used to help rescue and relief efforts in Haiti. The earthquake in Haiti, an important Congressional hearing, the confab at Davos, the winter Olympics, an announcement by Apple or Google—these are all times when I head for Twitter to follow what’s going on (setting up a search to filter the topic I’m following) and to lend my voice. Humans are social animals. We want to share our celebrations, our passions, and our front row seats with other friends and fans.

I enjoyed the Super Bowl immensely, in part because I was able to hang out with lots of other people doing the same thing—many were friends and family members. Others were people I’ve “met” via Twitter. The game was thrilling. The Colts’ Peyton Manning is the best quarterback I’ve ever seen in action. Yet the underdogs won—the New Orleans Saints persevered in much the way that the people of New Orleans have persevered after the destruction of their beloved city by Hurricane Katrina. It was heartwarming.

The ads were disappointing. (For those of you who live outside the U.S., you may not be aware that the annual Super Bowl is also the biggest TV advertising competition. Audience reaction can make or break an ad agency.) Many of this year’s ads shared a common, bizarre, and belittling theme of emasculated, frustrated men breaking free. (Clearly uninspired group think on the part of the advertising community.)

The worst ads, in my opinion were from Careerbuilder.com (unattractive people in their underwear), Dockers, Dove, Kia, Denny’s chickens, Intel. A lot of people liked the eTrade ads, with the babies talking in grown-up voices, but I found that too derivative of Citibank’s identity theft ads which do it better. My votes for the best ads go to Doritos, in particular, the “house rules” ad: The kid saying to the new boyfriend, “Keep your hands off my Mama; Keep your hands off my Doritos.” Google’s Parisian romance ad, the Audi green police ad, the Cars.com amazing kid growing up ad, and the HomeAway.com (terrible hotel experience) ad. To pick your own faves, go to NFL Fanhouse to view and vote on this year’s Super Bowl ads.

It's a Small World Labs Platform, After All - Small World Labs Reconfigures Product Line

One of the smaller companies we follow, Small World Labs hasn't let its size deter it from landing some large clients, which include the American Heart Association, the Dallas Morning News, Office Depot, and Scottrade (see screen shot below). Over 150 other organizations across equally diverse industry segments also use its SaaS platform to support internal and/or external communities.

The company had has a good 2009 so far the year, adding 15 new clients during the first half of the year to its growing customer base and generating strong results for clients via its Community Management and Social Strategy Services. On the product development front, it also reconfigured its product line and released a variety of new features and enhancements in the latest version of its Small World Labs 2009 platform.

Small World Labs’ platform is a PHP-based, on-demand suite of communication and collaboration components, including discussion forums, blogs, member profiles, groups, ratings and reviews, and a reputation system (User Activity Points). The company releases product enhancements and upgrades twice a month.

Leverage Software Continues to Gain Traction with CommunityConnect Platform

This year has been a good one for Leverage Software. While the company didn’t land quite as many customers as in its gangbusters second half of 2008, its 52 new clients from 1H 2009 represent another solid couple of quarters. Leverage’s revenue percentage from services (versus that from software licensing) has increased steadily over the past year. The majority of Leverage’s revenue still comes from the licensing of its SaaS platform, as well it should. But the increase from services is a good sign that the company is adding value for clients via its domain expertise and not leaving dollars on the table that might otherwise go elsewhere.

Leverage’s marketing communications remains strong. In particular, we like how Leverage’s Web site lays out its use cases and solutions. (This is on its "What We Do" page.) Categorizing online communities is a challenging task. Leverage creates clear differentiation via the following phrasing: “Leverage Your Employees,” “Leverage Your Channel,” “Leverage Your Citizens,” and “Leverage Your Customers.” It’s a terrific breakdown that should help get prospective customers to the right Web pages and from there, ideally, into its sales pipeline.

This breakdown also illustrates an expansion in Leverage’s target market, as it is now looking to find a home for its CommunityConnect platform with governmental organizations and advocacy groups, as well as with corporations.

CommunityConnect is an on-demand platform that includes social networking, group forums, file-sharing, opinion polls, blogs, wikis, real-time chat, and many other applications. In August 2009, Leverage released Version 7.0, which included some strong new features and enhancements, such as:

Telligent Rebrands and Aims at "Platform" Status

Telligent Systems posted strong results during the first half of this year, landing about 200 new customers. This was particularly notable, as it came during a transitional period for the five-year old company. This past February, Telligent went through a 12 percent reduction in force; in May, it brought on board a new CEO; and in May, it rebranded its product line, including its flagship product, Community Server.

The May change in leadership saw founder Rob Howard handing over the reins to new CEO Patrick Brandt. Mr. Howard, now Chief Technology Officer, continues to focus on his expertise and passion, the vision and direction of Telligent’s products. (We don’t know if Intel Capital’s $20 million investment in 2008 had such transitional strings attached; it wouldn’t be unheard of.) Bringing in a more experienced CEO delineates a new and important phase in Telligent’s development as an organization.

In 1H 2009, Telligent also rebranded its product line. We like this decision as well, even though it’s never easy to give up any degree of brand equity. While Community Sever did make a name for itself over the years, renaming its flagship product as Telligent Community is a good move as the company continues making inroads into the corporate market. (Similarly Community Server Evolution is now known as Telligent Enterprise, and Harvest Reporting Server has been renamed Telligent Analytics.)

Telligent is one of the handful of companies on our watch list with a Vision (with a capital “V”) for itself and its product line. While we tend to use the word “platform” more or less interchangeably with the words “application” and “system,” Telligent is looking for its product to become a platform in the sense that the iPhone, Salesforce.com, and Plone are technology platforms. The company's goal is for Telligent’s products to be at the core of an ecosystem of add-on applications, extensions, and integrations developed, marketed, hosted, and implemented by partners.

The upside can be huge, but it takes focus, resources, technical skill, and business acumen (particularly in constructing mutually beneficial relationships with partners). Telligent is off to as good a start as any toward reaching this vision, as its partners have already built dozens of integrations and extensions, including ones for Facebook Connect, event registration, and more.

Awareness Supports 8 Social Media Use Cases with its Best Practice Communities

Awareness has had a good run so far in 2009, driven by healthy influx of new customers. The company has been adapting its go-to-market strategy, looking to rely more heavily on partnerships—largely with marketing and advertising agencies—to identify business opportunities. That’s a distribution channel used successfully by many of Awareness’s competitors, but it remains to be seen if agencies can drive enough new business when they are the primary sales channel.

We remain intrigued by the approach Awareness has taken in productizing eight common community use cases into eight pre-configured and relatively turnkey Best Practice Communities (BPCs) that run off its SaaS platform. Launched this past January, these BPCs are categorized as Innovation, Corporate Voice, UGC Campaign, Loyalty, Enthusiasts, Associations/Subscribers, Peer Support, and Events. We’ll leave it to the Awareness Web site to go into detail on the differences, but we find the naming scheme to be happily self-explanatory. The advantages of such “pre-packaged” communities are in their competitive pricing and quick time to launch—just make your BPC choice, do some graphical branding, define the community’s structure and navigation, and off you go. Of course, in practice there’s more to be done than that, but being able to deploy a community in two to four weeks has considerable appeal. (We should also mention that Awareness also builds communities separate from their BPC offerings. These custom communities will take a longer time and larger financial commitment, but will result in a community built to specification.)

Despite Challenges, LiveWorld Remains a Leader in Social Media for Major Brands

LiveWorld (OTC Pink Sheets: LVWD.PK) is the only publicly traded company on our watch list. So far, 2009 has been mixed for the San Jose-based business. At $2.6 million, its Q1 2009 revenue was down about 13 percent compared to that of the previous year. Q2 2009 revenue was only on the order of $2.2 million. But the company reports being cash-flow positive even amidst these declining revenues, no doubt due in part to last year’s reduction in force (only about 2 percent) and salary reductions. And, during 1H 2009, LiveWorld added five new accounts to its customer base of name brands, released an incremental version of its Community Center platform, and maintained organizational stability after navigating last year’s challenges.

LiveWorld's average deal size, which is at the top of the range of the companies we cover, has pretty much remained constant. We had expected it would have difficulty holding those numbers in this economy, but its clients are apparently finding good value in LiveWorld's platform and service. Partnering with interactive agencies, one of LiveWorld’s strengths, has continued to pay off, as it gives the company a seat at the strategy table and provides an effective channel for acquiring new clients. A new partnership with interactive agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky attests to the attention LiveWorld gives these partnership efforts.

LiveWorld’s attention to its product line has continued as well, with the release of Community Center 2.2 for both Pro and Enterprise Editions. In sync with today’s social media trends, Community Center 2.2 includes integrations for both Facebook Connect and Twitter. We very much like LiveWorld’s LiveBar application (Version 2.0 soon to be released), which cleanly overlays community content on top of any Web page. It’s a conceptual winner, as it keeps business content—say, a newspaper article—and user content in the same place; readers aren’t forced to another part of the site to have a conversation around that content. But LiveBar adoption to date has been disappointing. As the product has so far been in more of a pilot stage of development, we’ll look to see if traction increases with the coming of new releases.

A Good Stretch for Pluck - New Business, a Customer Conference, and the Launch of Pluck 4

It's been a good year so far for Pluck, with nearly 30 new customer accounts and several new partnership deals during the first half of the year, as well a rebranding of its SiteLife platform as Pluck 4 just last month. It has also been a smooth period organizationally, with few of the disruptions that many of its competitors dealt with earlier this year, such as reductions in force, hiring sprees, changes in the executive suite, corporate acquisitions, and so on. That has left Pluck to focus on its product, services, partners, and customers.

The company is solidifying its place as a leader in social media and online communities within the media and publishing industries (such as the Boston Globe reader community at Boston.com; see screen shot below). This is because the value proposition of its technology platform is strongest here, as it integrates particularly well with content-focused sites and more or less seamlessly allows for conversations and other social interactions directly with such content. But Pluck is making definite inroads into its other target markets, as well, including consumer brands and retail.

Lithium Technologies Rebrands Social CRM

The rough economic climate hasn’t slowed down Lithium, which posted a very strong first half of 2009. The California-based company acquired 25 new customers -- including LeapFrog (see screen shot below) -- during the first half of the year, in line with the 28 new accounts from the second half of 2008. Lithium reports over 80 percent new monthly recurring revenue growth for 1H-2009.

Looking to capitalize on competitors with smaller purse strings, Lithium continued to go after market share in the first half of the year. During this period, the company opened new offices in London and Zurich, added eight new agency partners, hired a new VP of Corporate Sales, held its second customer conference, and leveraged its new lower entry-level price point.

On the product side, Lithium has rebranded its on-demand platform as its Social CRM Suite. Lithium’s forums, blog, chat, and reputation systems were already at the forefront of the industry, but enhancements and new applications have resulted in its now being the most comprehensive customer community, collaboration, and peer-to-peer support plat-form on the market. Additions include an idea engine (Lithium Ideas), a collaborative document creation and management system (Tribal Knowledgebase), extensive integration points (for Sales-force.com, RightNow CRM, Twitter, and more), analytics (Lithium Insights and Community Health Index), and content discovery (June 2009 acquisition of Keibi Technologies).