Diving into Social Media and building a community forumNHH Social Media Marketing / International MSc studentsTrym SteneWeb Development Manager

@trymstene

Once upon a time ..

• Telenor looked into support-forums early (2001)

• The market wasn’t mature

• Customers not as connected as today

• Difficult to launch something of this size without thorough analysis on return of investment

• Other big priorities

@trymstene

2009The beginning of a golden age within social media

business-engagement

At this time many companies worldwide have gotten an interest for social media marketing

@trymstene

Called up customers and helped them

No official Twitter profile

• How would the customers react?

• Positive feedback from customers

• 1 employee

Tracked customers mentioning Telenor on Twitter by using an

internally developed web application

@trymstene

First customer helped by Telenor

Erik_nufsaid: #telenorfail Ordered iPhone from telenor. Promised delivery in 5 working days. 12 days without a phone. Customer service hangs up on me

Erik_nufsaid: because #telenor subcontractor claims to have sent a text message I never received, must wait another 5 days for phone. epic servicefail

Erik_nufsaid: #telenor just called after reading the tweet about my lack of iphone. promised to fix instantly. school example of turning unhappy customer to a fan

Customer Service calls Erik

@trymstene

Official Telenor-account on

TwitterFocused on customer service

Set an expectation to users that we are present, listen and

respond

1 employee

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Results of Twitter-support6 500 messages that referred to Telenor

50 solved customer cases monthly

92 % of customers happy when called back

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2010Launched Telenor Facebook page

• Spesific opening hours

• Focus on customer service

• Customers could send private messages

• 3 employees

• Established a core team

@trymstene

Market trends

• Strong trend and expectation in the market that one should be present in social media

• Major Norwegian brands in commerce and service on social media

• Within the Norwegian telecom universe all our competitors are on Facebook and / or Twitter. But no forum.

• Many large telecom-companies in Europe engages their customers through a support forum

@trymstene

Whats happening in Norway?

.

Well integrated forum

• Uses different methods to make customers help

themselves

• Encourages to discuss

Have a special forum just for

its Bipper service.

  - little activity  - well hidden

Customers have seen the need for a forum related to

NextGenTel, and have made one out of own initiative. As

NextGenTel doesn’t have forums.

European telecom-companies are well established with own support-forums

Communicates very clear that the forums

are there for customers helping

eachother

• 98% of all questions answered by customers

Have many employees answering the

customers.

Makes it clear that the forums are there for customers to help

eachother

• Say they can choose to interfere, but does not let the customers

have those expectations

@trymstene

Why establish a telecom support-forum?

• Give the customers a natural place to interact and help eachother

• Increase self service– Reduce cost– Increase customer satisfaction

• Make a difference• Strenghten the social media

platform• Create an arena where our

customers can talk about and with us, and we can listen and learn.

@trymstene

THE CONCEPT

@trymstene

Customers help customers

Customers help customers

Set clear expectations that this is an arena for the customers to help eachother

Heavy quality control and make the customers feel like home

Focus on customer service(No marketing or sales-pushing)

To make customers enjoy their stay, we need to:

Engage Reward activity and quality

Create superfans

Ble spørsmålet besvart?

@trymstene

Customers wants to be entertained

@trymstene

Seth PriebatschBuilding the game layer on top of the world

@trymstene

Give the customers the tools they need to reward good and informative information.

Ble spørsmålet besvart?

When customers have received the answer to their question they can mark their question as solved.

When other customers experiencing the same problem visits the forum, the answer is already there.

@trymstene

Superfans

Answered over 5,000 questions

Thanked by 1,800 people

Rewarded with own blog @ Future Shop

Verizon superfan

Justin McMurryuses up to 20 hours a week helping other verizon customers

We do not wish to reward our users with gifts or money

Example: Recognition / cred, pilot participation, participation in events organized by Telenor, and more.

@trymstene

Example of operating model

• We already have a social media team, they can handle a support forum

• Employees in Social media-team can moderate the forum when needed.

• Hire a community manager to take full ownership of the support forum

@trymstene

Needs to be a part of the Telenor social universe

• There must be a consistent experience, and we must have a good customer journey for the customer

• We need to analyse how the callcentre, social media-teams and help pages on telenor.no will interact with a forum on our website

@trymstene

QUESTIONS?

@trymstene