social solutions for user support and communication

STC Webinar: Social Solutions for User Support and

CommunicationsAugust 11, 2010

Agenda

Introduction

Background and context

Case 1: Support wiki for worldwide CMS

Case 2: Editorial project communications for marketing and content managers

What we learned

Future plans and takeaways

Questions

Introduction

Ken EftaCo-founder and Principal Consultant, Allyis, Inc.

Twitter: @kenefta

Background

Some Background: does this sound familiar?

Background

Our client: – Large software and services firm

– Central marketing/sales management global field offices

– Case 1: Globalized Web Content Management (WCM)

– Case 2: Marketing Campaign Strategy and Execution

Internal, enterprise-only (not consumer-facing)

Background

Didn’t set out to build a social solution

Thought of our solutions as “provisional applications” to solve problems

Background

Very little budget for travel, in-person training

Field productivity was key Leveraged SharePoint 2007

(and SharePoint 2010)

Background

Cultural issues Resource constraints in the

field

Support Wiki for Web Content ManagementProblem: • Central publishing support team

running custom WCM system AND supporting the field users

• Migration onto globalized WCM platform from disparate WMC platforms

• Complex WCM content inheritance and localization models

• Varying levels of content and technical expertise

• Lack of knowledge sharing between field offices

• Word-based documentation

• Geographically distributed

• Language and cultural barriers

Goals: • Save $$

• Save time

• Get field sites on-boarded

• Communicate WCM features that would best help field be productive

• Better engagement and communication with field

Support Wiki for Web Content Management

Solution Description: Support Wiki for Web Content Management

Results: Highlighted key design issues and pain points with WCM

onboarding; mitigated some field perceptions and frustrations Gained insight into best practices and workarounds innovated by

the field; leveraged these field-based successes Reduced support and onboarding costs: helped users help

themselves Justified budget for process and tool improvements

• Moved operations and training materials from Word doc in a SharePoint Library to a SharePoint 2007 wiki

• Documented all FAQs, learnings, and workarounds on wiki• Paired in-person training and conference calls to evangelize wiki as

a place to get training, post questions, and share field insights

Solution Description: Support Wiki for Web Content Management

Support Wiki for Web Content Management

Support Wiki for Web Content Management

Editorial Project Communications

Problem: • PMO received several content and

campaign questions each day from stakeholders and the field

• Data was there, but “locked” in a system that required a special tool

• Large time commitment to track down comprehensive status

• Difficultly in helping the field prioritize and localize content

• Geographically distributed

Goals: • Save $$

• Save time

• Create transparency into content strategy

• Create traceability into management of site and campaign assets

• Assist field in prioritizing their localization investments

Editorial Project Communications

Solution Description: Editorial Project Communications

Results: Dramatic drop-off in number of questions to PMO Increase in field productivity due to better visibility, prioritization Additional investment in data entry allowed for quicker production

of campaign kits used by the field Help to identify unused and low value content (~2000 pages of

content ~300)

• Leveraged an import utility to migrate all transactional task and project data into set of SharePoint lists

• Created custom list views showing editorial best bets, in-flight campaigns, and project status

• Required some additional data entry from publishing team to ensure that all publishing assets could be traced back to a given campaign

Editorial Project Communications

Editorial Project Communications

Editorial Project Communications

Editorial Project Communications

What We Learned

Removing barriers to information

Helping two-way, network-based communications

Automating processes

Key Social Concepts

P = PeopleO = ObjectivesS = StrategyT = Technology

Groundswell Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff

Key Social Concepts

Weak Social vs.

Strong Social

“The Strength of Weak Ties” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Granovetter

Key Social Concepts

Nielsen’s Participation Inequality: 1:9:90

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

Future State

Better reporting to monitor usage and take action/outreach

Greatly improved wiki functionality in SharePoint 2010

Social Features (Commenting, Rating, Tagging, Status/Activity Feeds)

Experiments with Microblogging

Business Connectivity Services

Questions