Presentation done by John Ragsdale at the meetup for Bay Area Executives: http://www.meetup.com/BayAreaExecutives/ Social media are fast-tracking to becoming important channels for customer support. In fact, our data shows that 57% of technology companies have a customer discussion forum, and 36% already embrace Twitter as a method for starting conversations with customers. Join us for an interactive lunch presentation to hear John Ragsdale, VP of technology research at Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), share the advantages and risks of embracing social media for support, as well as data from TSIA’s social media survey.

1. Effectively Leveraging Social Media
as a Support Channel
John Ragsdale
Vice President of Technology Research

2. Since 1975 Since 1989 Since 2005
2

3. TSIA Member Profiles
320+ Corporate members across all areas of enterprise and consumer technology
Company Revenue Geography
15% 10% 8%
10%
13% 20%
52%
6% 30%
7%
30%
<$25M $25-$100M Global (NA, EMEA, APAC)
$100-$500M $500M-$1B NA Only
$1-5B $5-10B EMEA Only
>$10B APAC Only

4. Social Support Defined
 Service and support offerings in which voluntary
customer actions meaningfully change the customer
experience, for those and other customers–either in
support, or indirectly in the rest of the whole product.
 The range of applications for social support includes:
 Peer support (forums, third-party blogs)
 Customer-generated content (visible feedback, customer
edited docs / KB)
 Ratings and reputation (for people and content)
 Social networks as a channel (e.g., updates via Twitter,
company blogs)
 Voice of the Customer (ideation, product ratings, “CGM”
analysis)
Proposed Definition from David Kay, DB Kay & Associates

5. Social Network Adoption Precedes
Best Practices
Do you offer a discussion • Everyone asks:
forum for customers? – How do you attract
customers?
– How do you encourage peer-
2007 36% to-peer support?
– What moderation resources
are required?
2008 49% – How can we search forum and
KB content?
– What emerging channels
should be leveraged?
2009 57% – How do you calculate ROI?
– What vendors are most
commonly used?
0% 20% 40% 60%
Source: TSIA Member Technology Survey

6. Social Media for Support: Blessing or
a Curse?
• Positive • Negative
– Great opportunity to – Trendy channels come
dazzle customers and go
– High visibility can lead – High visibility can lead
to positive media to embarrassment
attention – Emerging channels do
– Embracing customer not always lend
channels of choice themselves to tech
– Boosts company’s support
“cool” factor – Most volatile
customers

7. How long has your company been
using social media?
2-3 years+ 26%
1-2 years 22%
< 1 year 29%
Don't use 21%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

8. Top Installed Customer Community
Platforms
Home Grown 37%
Lithium 20%
Other 17%
Jive 6%
Consona CRM 4%
Small World Labs 3%
Leverage Software 2%
Drupal 2%
Parature 2%
Telligent 1%
Joomla 1%
phpBB 1%
InQuira 1%
RightNow 1%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Source: TSIA Member Technology Survey

9. TSIA Member “Pacesetter” Examples
• Cisco Consumer • HP Consumer Forums
Community – Over 2 million customers
– Over 200k registered users, visit each month
significant increases month – 140,000+ registered
over month members
– 10-15M page views monthly – 20 million page views per
– 1M+ user sessions covering month
all Cisco Consumer products – 33 Super Users worldwide,
– Currently serving 500,000+ so far contributing 24,000+
“Accepted Solutions” and posts, averaging 25 hours
climbing a week in the Forum
– Global communities
supporting 6 international
languages

10. What Department Is Primarily
Responsible for Social Media?
50%
44%
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
14%
15%
9% 8% 8% 8%
10% 5% 4%
5%
0%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

11. Staffing for Social Media
• Challenges for social FTEs dedicated to
media staffing: social service
– What is the role of forum 2% 6%
7% 19%
moderator and how many
do I need?
– Should we use customer or
employee moderators? 21%
– Should employee
moderators pretend to be
45%
customers?
– What skills or profiles are
As needed 0
required for successful
1-3 4-6
moderators?
7-9 10+
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey 11

12. Online Tools Used to Provide
Service Or Support to Customers
Forums 72%
Blogs 54%
Listservs 49%
RSS feeds 46%
Video (YouTube) 44%
Microblog (Twitter) 36%
Wiki (Wikipedia) 35%
Social networks (Facebook) 25%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

13. Supporting Social Media Channels:
Go Where Your Customers Are
LinkedIn Facebook 2009 Member
38% Distribution by Age
40% 27% 31%
20% 55+ 194%
1% 3% 2%
0% 276%
35-54 17%
0-12 13-17 18-34 35-49 50+
25-34 102%
27%
Twitter 21%
18-24 41%
60% 45%
40% 24% Under 17 30%
13% 14% 13%
20% 4%
0% 0% 100% 200% 300%
0-12 13-17 18-34 35-49 50+
Growth Rate % of Users

14. Collaborative Content Development
• Content creation has
become more transparent SSPA Members Offering
• New challenges for KM Customer Wiki
processes 35% 32%
– Customers as authors 30%
25%
– Customers as editors 25%
– Audit trails and security 20%
concerns
15%
• 27% of members
10%
reported plans to invest in
wikis in 2010-11 5%
0%
2008 2009

15. The ROI Challenge
Are you receiving ROI • Barriers to accurate ROI
for your social service tracking:
investments? – Few companies have
4%
13% enough cross-channel data
45% 12% to identify traffic
fluctuations
3% – 35% of members using
home-grown forum solution
23%
with limited reporting
Full ROI received capabilities
Some ROI received
– How to measure number of
No measurable ROI
resolutions
Don't expect ROI
– Soft metrics critical, but
Unable to measure ROI
hard to quantify
Don't know
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

16. Most Likely Barriers for Broad
Adoption of Social Media
Unable to measure ROI 16%
Low priority project 13%
Security/legal concerns 12%
More 'personal' than 'business' 11%
Insufficient internal resources 10%
Internal resistance to change 8%
No perceived benefits 7%
No customer demand 7%
No exec sponsorship 5%
Brand risk/reputation 4%
Negative impact on productivity 3%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

17. Social Media Efforts Lacking
Discipline, Process
• Only 17% of members have
integrated social media
channels into the corporate
website
• Only 8% of members have
integrated the new channels into
their CRM/incident management
system
• Only 8% of members include
social media channels in
performance dashboards
• Only 3% of members address
social media channels in SLAs

18. How important is it to combine social and enterprise
content together in a centralized repository?
Not At All
Not Important Important
10% 4% Extremely
Important
31%
Neutral
24%
Important
31%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey

19. Typical Knowledge Ecosystem
Product Diagnostic Customer Training Community Web
Information Information Information Information Information Information
Account Product
Product Knowledge- Peer to Peer Third Party
Information Training
Manuals base Support KBs
(CRM) Modules
Forum
Installation Incident Integration External
Bug Database Questions/
Guides History /SDKs Forums
Answers
Release Product Warranties/ Video Expert Blog
Industry Blogs
Notes Diagnostics SLAs Tutorials Posts
Tech Sites,
Upgrade Customer Log Multi-channel Administrator Developer
Online
Procedures Files history Guides Access
Research

20. Three Search Markets Converge to
Create Intelligent Search
KB-Centric Search
Concept based, finds
one right answer
Intelligent
Search Enterprise
Social Search
Search
Factors in user
ratings, links and Search data in any
page views format, structured
or unstructured

21. From Popular to Effective: Mining
Forum Content
• Emerging “social search”
platforms enable:
– Dynamic, personalized
FAQ lists
– Dynamic recommended
links on content
– Pre-filtered search results
based on social elements
– Customer “folksonomies”
eliminate manual tagging

22. 120
Percent of Customer Issues by Channel
100
80
Social Media
Community
60 Self-Service
Web Chat
40 Email
Phone
20
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Source: TSIA Benchmark and TSIA Social Media Survey data

23. Merging of Social Service and Self-
Service
• Intelligent search is bridging
the gap between
knowledgebase and
community content
• Social search is leveraging
“voice of the customer” across
communities, social media
channels and self-service
• Call deflection is key metric,
all unassisted channels
counted

24. 120
Percent of Customer Issues by Channel
100
80 Self and Social Service
Social Media
Community Merging
60
Self-Service
Web Chat
40 Email
Phone
20
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Source: TSIA Benchmark and TSIA Social Media Survey data

25. TSIA Recommends: Start With Basic
Support Processes
• Monitor
– Create notification rules for
conversations about your
company and products
• Engage
– Encourage customers to move
conversation to an auditable
channel
• Record
– Capture interaction so it
remains part of customer history
• Share
– Close out the loop in the social
media channel with results

26. Looking Ahead….
 Social media will
continue to add
channels and content
 Be cautious of over
investing in trendy
channels
 Increased mobility in
both B2B and B2C
drives expectations and
lowers patience