The FT Word – July 2003
The FT Word
The FT Word is a free monthly newsletter with support management tips. To subscribe, send us email with your email address. The subscription list is absolutely confidential; we never sell, rent, or give information about our subscribers. Here’s a sample.
Welcome
Welcome to the July 2003 issue of the FT Word. Please forward it to colleagues you think may enjoy it.
In this month’s issue:
· Ideas for successful customer discussion forums
· The continuation of the summer reading program
Customer Discussion Forums
With the popularity of self-service, isn’t it great to know that there is a way to marry the low cost of self-service with the high-touch of personal service? Customer discussion forums, which go under many other names including forums, discussion groups, bulletin boards, discussion threads, etc., have the potential to offer the best of both worlds by allowing customers to dialog freely amongst themselves.
Truly successful forums require just a little attention, as described in the 8 steps below.
1. Monitor access
There is no one way to manage access to the forums: you need to define the access rules that are right for you and for your customer base. Pick the method that works for you and stick with it.
If you’re working with consumer, free access is probably the way to go, but it’s still a good idea to ask forum users to register before posting to the forums (browsing the forums is usually open to all in consumer settings). Anonymous participation is usually allowed for consumers through screen names or nicknames. Make the registration process as painless and speedy as you can, although you will want to use the information to learn more about your customers and to conduct marketing campaigns, so you will have to balance your marketing goals against the ease of registration.
If you’re working with business customers, gated access is the norm. Customers are expected to register before using what is a valuable service, and you probably wish to protect confidentiality in what can be very candid discussions of your products and services. Anonymity is usually not an issue on business forums, partly because access is gated to begin with. Because forums are low-cost, the norm is to allow unlimited numbers of individuals to participate in the forums even if you limit the number of technical support contacts.
Think through the requirements of registering and maintaining forum logins and IDs. If you allow everyone and anyone to participate, a completely self-service registration process is fine. Otherwise, someone will need to sift through the requests to determine who gets in.
2. Develop rules of conduct
For legal reasons if nothing else, it’s a good idea to develop a code of conduct for forum users. Typically, this includes restrictions on offensive language. Post the rules of conduct and allow customers to see them during the registration process.
You need to monitor the postings (more on that later) to ensure that users are abiding by the rules and to remove postings that do not conform to the code of conduct. This is rarely an issue with business customers, but can be a challenge with consumers.
3. Organize the discussions in logical subsets
Busy forums generate so many postings that they should be divided into logical categories to make browsing and posting easier. Unsurprisingly, the same categories you use for the knowledge base or case tracking are useful for forums too, at least as a starting point.
If you are just starting out, don’t create too many categories. Ten categories with a couple of postings in each make for a dead-looking forum, while ten or twenty postings in one big category seem intriguingly busy. Add categories as the forum grows with the goal of having each category be human-scaled, with new postings (today’s or this week’s) visible on just one screen.
4. Make it easy to find the latest postings
Frequent users should be able to find the latest postings within seconds. Highlight new and unread threads. If possible, allow users to subscribe to particular categories so they are alerted to new postings. Users who find what they need quickly are more likely to come back to the forums and to contribute to them.
5. Cultivate forum advisors
Yes, forums are self-service, but a bit of personal touch and ownership makes for a much better experience for the user, and therefore more return visits. The best way to accomplish that is by appointing advisors to own the various categories. The advisors monitor the postings and provide answers and tips. And the best part is that the advisors can usually be found within the customer base and will do the job as a matter or pride and glory. Recognize them by displaying their names, pictures, and bios. A few small tokens of appreciation such a mugs and the like are always appreciated.
6. Use commercial ASP or licensed software (or find an open-source solution)
Don’t write your own solution when they are many good ones out there. Surprisingly, support-tracking tools rarely offer forum capabilities, which may be one of the reasons why companies with business customers rarely offer customer forums. In any case, it’s easy enough to find standalone forum solutions, whether you want an open-source (free) solution or a commercial one.
7. Integrate the forums with other self-service and fee-based offerings
Since forum solutions are separate from support-tracking solutions, chances are that you will need to implement some type of integration between the forums and the other online support features. Start with unified logins (if the forum has gated access): customers should not have to go through separate login steps for the forums and the other features. And look into unified searches that consider both the knowledge base and the forums, as well as more sophisticated items such as escalating a thread to personal support.
8. Mine the forums for technical tips
Well-attended forums are full of good information that may deserve posting in the official knowledge base, and that also gives insight on what customers are doing and thinking about. Plan to review and extract information on a regular basis. In busy forums, watching for particularly popular threads is a good way to get started. Otherwise, old-fashioned skimming is the way to go.
Don’t’ forget forums when thinking about expanding your online offerings. You may be pleasantly surprised of how well they meet customers’ needs — with just a little TLC from your part to get them going.
FT Works in the News
SSPAnews published an article I wrote entitled Is your customer survey working? You can read it at http://www.thesspa.com/sspanews/062403/article1.asp
The Association for Support Professionals presented the winners of their “Ten Best Web Support Sites” contest, for which I was a judge. They include BEA, one of my clients (and no, I did not evaluate their entry, no conflict of interest here). Congratulations to BEA and all the other winners.
I have two webinars scheduled over the summer: one for SearchCRM on “What do you want from CRM” (about defining CRM requirements) on 7/23 and one for Soffront on “Best Practices for Support Tools” scheduled for 8/5.
Summer Reading
This summer, make time for an FT Works book or booklet and get inspired to change your support center for the better. There are 11 titles available today.
Making money & saving money
The 10 Commandments of Support Pricing
20+ Ways to Cut Support Costs
Best Practices in Support Metrics
Successful Outsourcing
Hiring and keeping great staff
The Complete Guide to Hiring Great Support Reps
The Complete Guide to Hiring Great Support Managers
Best Practices for Quality Monitoring
Providing better support
The Art of Software Support (full-length book)
Just Enough CRM (full-length book)
Best Practices in Self Service Support
Managing Escalations
Complete descriptions and order information can be found here
Curious about something? Send me your suggestions for topics and your name will appear in future newsletters. I’m thinking of doing a compilation of “tips and tricks about support metrics” in the coming months so if you have favorites, horror stories, or questions about metrics, please don’t be shy.
Regards,
Françoise Tourniaire
FT Works
www.ftworks.com
650 559 9826
