The original goal of our community was to have a digital experience that cultivates relationships, conversations, and expertise in the community.
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Company: NetApp
Entry submitted by: Amy Lewis, Director of Influence Marketing at NetApp, and Alissa Lockwood, Community Manager
Community: NetApp Community
Lithy category: Social Support Champion
Leading organizations worldwide count on NetApp for software, systems and services to manage and store data. We help customers capitalize on the value of their data in the hybrid cloud through our Data Fabric strategy, data management expertise, portfolio and ecosystem. To learn more, visit www.netapp.com
Our organization’s social customer service initiatives in 2016-2017
NetApp is a pioneer in online communities. We launched an online community years ago to support customers from all around the world. The original goal of our community was to have a digital experience that cultivates relationships, conversations, and expertise in the community.
In September 2014, we decided to take a bold step in order to stay true to that goal. We thought carefully about long-term community goals, analyzed the data, and realized we needed a new platform to support our marketing excellence strategy and customer-centric approach. We migrated to a Lithium-powered community and transformed our entire digital customer experience for the better.
The ultimate goal was to transform the NetApp community experience to enable customer success and drive preference and loyalty for NetApp.
The most important customer issue we were looking to solve via our digital technology
In 2016/2017, the NetApp Community took on new methods – from traditional marketing to community building. Based on that, 1 in 3 non-NetApp members use the community to build relationships.
The top 3 reasons people visit the community are:
- Troubleshoot issues
- New product information research
- Technical and product updates
The NetApp Community value framework is directly aligned to executive priorities. Marketing and sales won opportunities having 100+ community touches. We receive annual support savings with self-support and our CSAT goal is continuously met. In terms of ongoing measurement, we look at:
- Attribution & pipeline
- Actionable intelligence
- Value of re-usable solutions
Our results
The NetApp Community has existed for around 8 years, with a technology platform switch to Lithium in 2012. Since then, the number of registered members has grown from 13,000 to 42,000. Community site regularly receives an average of half a million visits per month – around half of the total visits to the netapp.com domain.
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