Get Satisfaction

Social Studies Blog

Communities that mean business

Communities that mean business. Get yours today!

An Online Community is a Key Part of Enterprise SaaS Strategy

Cloud based software like Get SatisfactionOne of the important features of Kenandy’s cloud ERP service is the ability to collaborate, so building a community as part of our service seemed the natural thing to do. We considered many different solutions, and Get Satisfaction was a great fit for a number of reasons including:

  • It had all the features we wanted, including the different topic “channels.”

  • It allowed our company, Kenandy, to participate, and be identified as the host.

  • It allowed us to build one searchable “knowledge base” instead of having separate knowledge bases created by Kenandy and our clients.

  • It had the integration with Salesforce.

  • It allowed us to build a private community, accessible from Kenandy via single sign-on.

Our community has helped us in many ways. We’re building knowledge with our clients, and the knowledge is improving our service and helping us build better products. One of the primary benefits of communities is that they make users and the company more productive. Users become more productive in several ways:

  • They can build on and share product knowledge with their colleagues and the company. In the Kenandy Community, clients share tips and tricks on the best ways to use the product.

  • They can build on and share ideas with their colleagues about ways to improve the product, as well as best business practices.

  • If a client posts a bug and the company offers a resolution, other clients can benefit from the discussion.

  • Users benefit from having one central portal that contains all the information and resources they need in a searchable format.

Companies benefit from many of the same capabilities:

  • The shared product knowledge becomes part of the company’s domain. It can be included in the online Help and training, as well as in the marketing material. The knowledge can also be used to build user stories that support the development process.

  • Having one way of receiving bugs makes it much simpler for companies to prioritize and resolve them.

SaaS providers should realize the benefits of communities as part of their overall strategy. It’s a tool that makes all the participants winners, because everyone is empowered to be more effective.

Stewart Florsheim is the VP of Marketing at Kenandy 

Good Business Tools for Good Relationships

At Get Satisfaction, we believe good relationships make good business. This philosophy is woven through the design of our product, is a core value for our team, and is foundational to our growth as a company.

Our Company-Customer Pact (a document that has been guiding the company longer than I have!) says it best—“we, customers and companies alike, need to trust the people with whom we do business.”

Trust is at the heart of every human relationship, and loyal customer relationships have the same requirement.  Citrix Online Services understands the importance of building a business based on trust, which is one of the reasons we work together as a mutual customer and partner.

Their GoToMeeting product focuses on the human element, bringing people in different locations face-to-face for collaboration, removing the limitations of physical space. This gives us an immediate and flexible connection with customers, partners, and employees in remote offices, facilitating informal work sessions as well as formal presentations.

These conversations build trust, which then sets the stage for collaboration and mobility (two more values I hold dear).  After all, conversations are richer and more valuable when they factor in the perspectives of a variety of people. In today’s world, the people you want to include in your business conversations may not be in your physical space or even your time zone, but with tools like GoToMeeting, it’s easy to include them as if they were sitting in the same room.

Get Satisfaction is also a core tool for building collaboration and peer-to-peer connections. We help companies develop trust-based relationships with customers, prospects, and partners by giving them a direct line to people across their organization. This shows them that you value what they have to say, and gives you the benefit of their collective insight (as well as the analytic tools to make sense of it).

And we help build collaboration internally by breaking down the silos between product, support, marketing and sales to form a united front that revolves around the voice of the customer.

When your business is centered around people—and your processes, technologies, and systems support that focus—you can really build the trust-based relationships that allow companies to thrive.

Get Satisfaction and Citrix Online Services understand the importance of trust. It is at the core of our businesses and is something we strive to nurture within our organizations and with our customers. By trusting the people with whom we do business, good relationships are created and good business follows.

To learn how your company can nurture the trust necessary to succeed, check out the Meeting is Believing commercial featuring me, my dog, Casey, and members of our team!

~Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction

Creating a Champions Program

From the day we started our Get Satisfaction community, champions were part of the plan. The Get Satisfaction platform has built in functionality for designating Champions – it’s easy to appoint a champ, give them some responsibilities, and moderation tools. And the value is huge. Champs can lighten the load on your support team by assisting with questions and problems. They can help with the community mood in challenging times; sometimes a workaround is better received when it comes from another customer, rather than the support team. And overall, champions add to the health of the community – welcoming other customers and making them feel comfortable participating.

So how do you get customers to want to help out?

Give them a Reason to be Champions:

ALtru CHamps program

Let your customers know what a champion is (according to your definition), what a champion does, why they should want to be a champion (incentives), and how they can become one. We wrapped it up in one graphic. People often participate for two reasons – they either want to impress or help other members – and both reasons can produce great champions.

Keep Them Posted on Their Progress

Now that they know what you’re looking for, let them know publicly who is in the lead. We posted community updates and blogs to identify champion-esque behavior and stats. It created a little competition among our customers to see who could get the most stars, answer the most questions, and participate overall in the community.

Altru Champs 2

It won’t take long to see who is interested. And once you see who is interested, you can find the ones who are qualified.

 

About Kristen Gastaldo

Kristen Gastaldo is the Altru Community managerKristen Gastaldo joined the Altru team in March 2012, leaving behind the late nights of the music business. For the past eight years she’s been lucky enough to work in the music industry, managing venues in North and South Carolina. In 2010, she founded the Lowcountry Artist Market, a seasonal market that features local vendors selling handmade and vintage goods. Her background in event management, marketing and ticketing in the arts and cultural community led her to pursue a career with Blackbaud, as Altru’s Community Manager. She  connects users with information, each other, and helps foster a sense of community.

 

Mobile First, Second, and Third

Get Satisfaction mobile app is so easy a baby can use it!I don’t have to tell you that the world is changing. While you probably remember the days when most objects had a single function, you’ve also likely noticed that your cell phone performs most of them now (wallet, watch, camera, check!).

We’ve noticed too. The adoption of mobile everything has been so sudden and all-encompassing that mobile visits to our communities have almost doubled over the past year!  So, with your mobile experience in mind, we have given our mobile app a complete overhaul.

Now, everyone who comes to one of our communities (yes, even free communities) on an iPhone, iPod, or Android device will arrive at a mobile optimized website, so it’s still just as easy for them to find the content they’re looking for. For more information on the responsive design and other features we’ve implemented, check out our Product Blog. Otherwise, just head over to your favorite community on your cell phone to check out all the cool features!

 

*Image courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

  • Last Tweets

    sportscardalbumsportscardalbum: @allformykids2 On PC or phone? What phone model/carrier/iOS are you on? Log the issue on getsatisfaction and we will check it out asap
    18 hours ago from Twitter for iPhone
    districtbelledistrictbelle: 3 Critical Skills Community Managers Can Learn from “Whose Line Is It Anyway”? http://t.co/lgB5bogvEj via @TheCMgr | @getsatisfaction
    23 hours ago from Osfoora for iOS
    ilse8ilse8: RT @mcockell1: Building Online Communities “@ilse8: @DaveKerpen digital marketing blog: http://t.co/lWPOyIbn0s" @SOCAP @getsatisfaction @SocialHerd
    1 day ago from Twitter for iPhone
    mcockell1mcockell1: Building Online Communities “@ilse8: @DaveKerpen digital marketing blog: http://t.co/lWPOyIbn0s" @SOCAP @getsatisfaction @SocialHerd
    1 day ago from LinkedIn
    julie_boddyjulie_boddy: RT @alleywatch: Community Management Must Be Considered a Strategic Imperative #CMAD infographic by @getsatisfaction http://t.co/d48SfRz2Mx
    1 day ago from Flipboard
  • Archives