How customer community support works in the real world our there...

1. Widgetbox provides casual content
publishers self-service tools to create highly
engaging Web widgets, Facebook Fan
Pages, and mobile Web sites. Providing
both free and subscription-based solutions,
Widgetbox strives to make it fun and easy to
distribute your content across the Web,
leading social networks, and mobile
devices. Since 2006, Widgetbox has helped
millions of people create and share their
Widgetbox: Seamlessly content, reach new users, and drive traffic.
Integrating Community into
From the outset, Widgetbox knew that
Their Support Mix customer service would be at the center of
With Dave Rhea, Manager of Quality Assurance their business. They knew they needed a
and Customer Support at Widgetbox true customer service strategy, preferably
one that could scale with an exponentially
growing installed base. Without building an
army of support staff, Widgetbox is able to
Executive Summary support their 1.5 million active users and
increase customer interaction, while
Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years lowering their support volume by half.
to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin Here’s how they do it:
it. If you think about that, you’ll do things
differently.” However, what’s radically
different today is that social media platforms • Communicate support strategies
give companies the tools to interact with through site design.
their customers and establish a strong • Create a customer-centered internal
reputation much more quickly than 20 years culture.
of brand building. What hasn’t changed is • Choose support mechanisms that play
that companies must put their customers nice together.
atw the center of their business to maintain • Make user experience the #1 priority.
a good reputation.
• Focus on the business. Let the experts
This case study highlights the experiences help with support.
of Dave Rhea, Manager of Quality • Cultivate a long-term view about
Assurance and Customer Support at support systems.
Widgetbox, who uses Get Satisfaction to
provide customers with a highly social
support experience, as well as ZenDesk for
internal workflow and ticket tracking. He will Best Practice: Integrate Customer
coach us through some best practices to Community into Support Mix
seamlessly integrate community into their
support mix, while dramatically improving
customer satisfaction and lowering costs. Integrating community into your support mix
requires a considerable amount of strategic
planning. Widgetbox had the courage to
Situation: Widgetbox uses community- scratch an existing support system and
based social media (Get Satisfaction) and build a truly integrated one — one that could
an integrated help-desk system (Zendesk) deliver the business customer experience
to keep their customers satisfied. they desired. Their experience is very
applicable to companies who are looking to
enhance existing support with social media.

2. Figure 1: Encouraging customer-to-customer problem solving.
COMMUNICATE SUPPORT STRATEGIES CREATE A CUSTOMER-CENTERED
THROUGH SITE DESIGN INTERNAL CULTURE
Widgetbox limits their support to two To foster a customer-centered culture,
channels. They offer traditional help-desk Widgetbox started by getting everyone in
email support through a ticketing system, the company involved in their Get
Zendesk, and they rely on Get Satisfaction Satisfaction community. Now, when a new
for community-based support. Their goal is topic is posted, everyone receives an email.
to empower their users to find answers Widgetbox believes that the responsibility of
through the community first. Therefore, the responsive support should not be assigned
majority of the links on their site encourages to a small group of people in the company.
people to visit Get Satisfaction. Users can Engineering and business departments
search and find answers to their questions need to participate and pay attention to
without opening a help-desk ticket. If users questions and issues so they can discuss
can’t find an answer, they can post a topic them throughout the day.
themselves, and other users can quickly
When it comes to active management,
jump in to help. Or, an employee can
Widgetbox has set up filters in their Get
respond on Get Satisfaction, either by
Satisfaction Management View to identify
replying to the post or by pulling it directly
the most recent questions and most recent
into their Zendesk system. One key to their
replies. And, Dave regularly monitors the
success in using these two systems is the
community to make sure issues are
way they have — via their site’s design —
resolved.
set the right expectations for customers
about how to contact them. This consistent
site design has paid off.

3. CHOOSE SUPPORT MECHANISMS THAT FOCUS ON THE BUSINESS. LET THE
PLAY NICE TOGETHER EXPERTS HELP WITH SUPPORT
Widgetbox switched to using Zendesk as There are other forums and solutions out
their ticket-tracking system partly because there that incorporate community. After
of its seamless integration with Get researching his options extensively, Dave
Satisfaction. They wanted their external chose Get Satisfaction because he
facing aspect of support and their internal ultimately wanted Widgetbox’s resources to
system to effortlessly complement each be focused on building widgets and not
other. With their support strategy of putting building a community site. They came to the
community first, Widgetbox then uses conclusion that other options might require
a full-time person to maintain the site and
Zendesk to pull in topics that require
that it might take a lot to get set up. The big
digging into personal and private
pluses that Widgetbox gets from using Get
information, or that simply need more
Satisfaction are the software-as-a-service
attention or might require a high touch. (SaaS) model and the ease of having Get
Zendesk gives them just the right amount Satisfaction host the site.
of features to manage conversations that
need to take place off-site. As Dave notes, A lot of questions Widgetbox had about the
“We don’t want users to see that we are mechanics of how to “do” community-based
using two separate support systems.” With support — “How should we interact when
the smooth Get Satisfaction integration, the someone asks a question? How will
final Zendesk resolution can easily be customers know when the question is
pushed back to the community to share, if answered” — were already clearly spelled
desired. out by Get Satisfaction. By relying on Get
Satisfaction as the expert in community
support, Widgetbox was able to turn their
MAKE USER EXPERIENCE #1 PRIORITY focus on building the world’s best widget
platform. It just made business sense.
“Single sign-on is huge for us. Anytime you
are taking a registered user, who obviously
CONCLUSION
has enough of an issue to interact with
support, to another site — if they then have
to create and manage another login that The Get Satisfaction + Zendesk integration
could be a showstopper for them to actually was an easy decision for Widgetbox from
talk to us. We want as many people the perspective of both costs and benefits.
interacting with us about their issues as A SaaS-based community and help-desk
possible.” Widgetbox realized early on that solution freed them up from long-term
user experience, even on their support site, maintenance costs. At the same time, they
is critical to the overall impression enable a support strategy that can scale as
customers have of the company. You have the business grows — more customers
to make it easy for customers to talk to you. translates to more topics and more
Widgetbox saw an increase as soon as the customers helping each other. Add Zendesk
Single Sign-On feature was implemented. for ticket tracking and internal workflow,
Users became more willing to post on Get and you have a killer app for crowd-sourced
Satisfaction instead of getting frustrated. customer support.
About Get Satisfaction
Get Satisfaction is revolutionizing customer service by applying the principles of crowd-sourcing and community to the
customer-service experience. Companies who use the Get Satisfaction social CRM platform achieve significant reductions
in support costs while at the same time increasing customer retention and loyalty by providing an authentic, engaged,
and thriving customer support community. Join the conversation at http://getsatisfaction.com.