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Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! How a

Tech Pubs Team Took Ownership

of the User Support Forums

Michael Torok

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! How a Tech

Pubs Team Took Ownership of the User

Support Forums Michael Torok

Who am I?

Mine Mine Mine Mine - Slide 3 -

Michael Torok [email protected]

@MickTorok

Director of Community at Solarwinds

formerly and not so long ago

Director of Information Development

Why is community important to me?

» Helps the business

» Helps your department

» Helps you do your job

» Helps you grow and expand

» Helps you gain experience that can only help you

secure another position when necessary

mailto:[email protected]

Where does ID fit in the post life cycle?


Problem or Idea

Reach out to

Community

Moderated and

Reviewed by ID

Internal and External

Help Found by ID

Customer’s idea

heard/problem solved

Who needs to be on board?

Support

Product Management

Development

Sales

Your Management, if you aren’t the lead or

manager


Support needs to be on board

Your biggest advocate, initially, will probably be

the Support org.

» Why?

• They are on the hook, whether directly or indirectly, for

supporting questions in the forums.

• Support, in almost every company I’ve been in, does not

refer as often as they could to the documentation.

• Our release schedule requires constant support training

• They are rarely staffed any better than ID departments

» Working with Support, you can show both your own

business impact and cost savings. We will get to that

in a later slide, but this is very important both as a

motivation and a justification.


Product Management needs to be on board

Product management

» At SolarWinds, the Product Management team uses

our community site to more fully engage with the

needs and wants of our varied customer base.

» PM will need to trust your judgment and your

interaction level.

• You may well find yourself proving this for a while. We

did.

• Double team with the PMs on their own threads.

Ensure you are over checking, rather than under

notifying about posts that seem important.



There are forum threads specifically targeted at

pulling feedback from customers and to

communicate development’s next steps back to

them.

» These threads are included in the regular user forums,

and you can imagine how some inquisitive, angry, or

helpful customers don’t self-edit.

http://tinyurl.com/7vrq2pa & http://tinyurl.com/8xmmo3h

» Posts can be found all over the forums that lead to PM

interaction. Does the product do XYZ? When will the

product do XYZ?

» Why make them search? We help them find and identify

these posts, then we help move posts to the appropriate

places.


http://tinyurl.com/7vrq2pa

http://tinyurl.com/8xmmo3h


What do we gain?

» We see where the product is heading and why.

» We can become better user advocates for features.

» We can also see what might have been missed in

documentation by monitoring the “Does the product

do xyz” posts.

» We can get input into the product roadmap as the

trust in our interaction and knowledge of customer

wants/needs grows.


Development needs to be on board

Development

» When things get out of your depth on the boards, you

will need someone to contact.

» Dev is key to successful engagement on the boards,

they lend you the ability to get the right answers from

the technical source.

» Dev must be on board, as there will be many

questions that you cannot answer.


Development needs to be on board

What do we gain?

» Become the facilitator for the community.

» Strengthen the bond between yourself and your

audiences, both dev and the end user.

» We gain knowledge and can possibly answer the

same question next time without dev help.

You continue to provide a buffer between dev

and the end user.

» Though, in the best case scenario, this wall begins to

crumble.

» We have numerous developers now that are active in

the community, directly interacting with customers.


Sales/Technical Sales needs to be on board

Sales Engineers

» Maybe they are not called SEs in other businesses,

but these are the technical sales people.

» When a person is running into a licensing limit or if

the person is pre-sales and testing a product out,

these are your go-to folks.

» Yes, if the sale is big enough, this might warrant post

sales development involvement, but usually you start

here with a technical sales person.

» These may also be the people you reach out to

instead of support in the case of pre-sales.


Sales/Technical Sales needs to be on board

What we gain

» Valuable insight into the way a product might be

used or is going to be used in someone’s

environment.

» Are we documenting to the situation customers are

trying to put the product to use in? Offering

everything we can? http://tinyurl.com/7n4thmq

» Scenarios, use-case based doc… SEs are a

panacea of information about the users and uses of

your products. How is the software used in highly

restricted networks? How is your online help made

available? Is your web console being made publically

available? Was it made to be?


http://tinyurl.com/7n4thmq

http://tinyurl.com/7n4thmq

What is the role of Information Development?


Why be involved?


Community is a huge influence generator

» You can drive customer engagement

» You can drive customer satisfaction

» You can add another avenue to your education

routes, documentation, videos, training, and

knowledge base.

ID teams can only gain from what they invest

Real interaction with a large cross section of

your customer base

Why be involved?


Metric answered questions as support ticket

avoidance

» Metric incoming How To tickets against forum

interaction/posts

Customer interaction allows for ID teams to learn

what it really is like in the field without having to

engage in costly customer visits.

What can you expect from the community?


Feedback

» You will hear whether you are doing a good job or

not

» You can expect criticism to be immediate and, at

times, abrupt – be wary of verifying versus

suggesting answers

» You will also be surprised by how many people, if

you have a healthy community, defend your brand.

http://tinyurl.com/7cbxtdo

Issues will be found. No quality assurance team

can do the job and cover the many different

ways in which your product will be used.



What can you expect from the community?


If you are responsive, they will be also

I have found the SW Community incredibly

responsive to calls for polls or requests for

opinions.

» They drive many of the features added to our

products.

» The community can lend you opinions and credibility

around other changes: should doc be online only?

Do you need more videos or graphics or

walkthroughs? Where can you get scenarios?

What do you have to know?


You need to understand what you are trying to

do in and with your community

» Is it a marketing initiative?

» Is it primarily a support alternative?

» Are you raising brand awareness and creating

advocates?

You need to know your material and have a

clear escalation path.

What do you have to know?


You need to have guidelines. If you do not have

a community manager or director, you may well

help create these.

» What is considered offensive behavior? There is a

difference between criticism, even harsh criticism,

and being a bully or threatening.

» Need to have clear rules about language and SPAM.

» Need to make it clear that certain behaviors will have

repercussions. We have a zero tolerance rule for

SPAM. It is deleted and the user account is also

deleted.

» Even some of our MVPs on the SWI Community site

have had to be reminded about professionalism.

Who are your customers?


This is one of the most important things you

learn. You will find you have many and your role

will expand.

All of the people you need to enlist for

escalation/help/advice are also your customers.

» End users

» Development

» Support

» QA

» Product management

» Sales

» Usability/Ux/UI Design

What do your customers gain?


End users gain a vocal advocate in your

company.

Development will want to see the feedback you

are seeing about features and what is or is not

working.

Support will want to know when they are being

called out on the boards and will hopefully work

to defuse some of those posts.

QA needs the same information as

development. They may see scenarios they

never thought of writing test cases for. They

may get the backing to hire to fill testing gaps.

What do your customers gain?


Product management will definitely want to

engage with customers wanting more from your

products.

Sales will want to know of people having demo

issues or requesting demonstrations.

Usability/Ux can use the community as a place

to easily recruit customers for walkthroughs.

You can make the bridge between feature

requestors and new feature wireframe and

paper testing.

What do you gain?


Job growth

Job satisfaction

Defense against “nobody reads the doc”

A group of people you can call on for feedback

and help

You gain another avenue through which your

skills and knowledge help others to succeed.

What do you gain?


You gain a solid role in a growing area of

interaction for many companies. One that is not

going away and can only expand.

You can expand your own knowledge of how the

audience uses your product or services which

can only help you succeed in writing to them or

designing documentation sets for them.

You gain visibility in your company.

How do you take control?


Take the initiative.

Split your team up and have them spend time in

the boards.

Start posting answers or referring people to

your other materials.

Become a recognized knowledge source within

the community. (http://tinyurl.com/7y6mrq7)

Don’t just give people doc links. Engage with

them and make sure that you circle back after

providing information. Close the loop.

http://tinyurl.com/7y6mrq7

http://tinyurl.com/7y6mrq7

How do you take control?


Help the community change product plans,

become an advocate for your users and show

management that the community can help with

difficult decisions and priorities.

Help your community feel like they influence

your decisions as a company.

ROI


Incoming support case drop

Knowledge base case increase

One group that acts as the grand filter and

knows the boards very well

One group that becomes well known both

internally and externally for both knowledge and

interaction (something we are not always good

at conveying)

ROI


Really become a user advocate with the data and proof to back up the claim.

Track posts your ID team interacts on.

Track the number of posts that avoided support calls (answer provided and customer happy).

Track customer suggestions

Track features driven from community

Technology

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