community support case study: microsoft developers

A Case Study: Microsoft Community Support

Dustin JohnsonPrincipal at Ant’s Eye View

Our Story Begins in the Summer of 2006 with a Realization…

90% of the investment helped 1% of the customers

Also, Developers Don’t Want to Use the Phone…

…But They Love the Forums

So, What Did We Do?

#1: We Dove In and Learned on the Fly

#2: We Created a Brand New Team

Photo Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shanghai_Pudong.jpg

#3: We Kept The MVPs Happy

Photo Credit: www.flickr.com/people/vividbreeze/

#4: We Sold, and Resold, and Resold

Photo Credit: www.flickr.com/people/obo-bobolina/

What Was The Impact?

+ 10M Page views+ 1M New Users+ 10k Answers+ 44% Answer Rate+ 100% Answers from Community

International English

Simplified Chinese

Expansion!

What does this all mean to you?

Customers Are Here

Companies Have Invested In Contact Centers

Knowledge Base

+

Integrating the Cloud is 10% Technology, 90% People and Processes

Knowledge Base

1. Agility2. Resources3. Vision4. Operations

Knowledge Base

Exec Measure

Ideal Exec Goal

Theme

Community Behavior

Awareness

Unique Visitors

20% of Potential Audience Visit The Community

Phase One: 12-18 Months

Consumption

• Content Seeding• SME Participation

Participation

Community Posts

1% of Unique Visitors Post

Phase Two: 12-18 Months

Contribution

• Reputation System• Product Integration

Maturity

Success Rate

50% Success Rate

Phase Three: 12-18 Months

Champion

• Influencer Outreach and Engagement• Broad Integration

Levers

Opportunity!

Maturity Model

• Knowledge of social web norms is helpful and hard to teach

• Ego is an incredibly powerful motivator• Traditional support tone is not as

effective as conversational tone• Business success is tied to customer

participation, so play nice

If Only I Had Known…

Thank You!

Dustin Johnsondustin@antseyeview.com

Twitter: @dustinjo