How do you grow your Superuser Program to the next maturity level?

Lena H.
Rank
Userlevel 1

Hi together,

there is quite some material here in the community on how to start and spot users for a superuser program. Building upon this, I’d like to open the discussion on how to scale and grow the superuser programs with our communities. Do you have experience or good resources that you could share? 

A few of the questions that I am currently thinking about: 

  • What is a healthy size of a superuser program compared to the total size of the community?
    I would like to hit the sweet spot, that the superusers are feeling seen, have a personal network among each other, and we can still organize it easily. We currently have 1 Superuser per 1000 members and right now it feels good. They are quite fresh in the bigger program, so far the feedback is good. What about you?
    (Given the point we have enough good potential in the Community and would not have to miss on quality.)
     
  • Does anyone have a 2 tier superuser Program, or do you know someone else? What are your experiences?
    It is the first time that we have a 2 tier superuser program. Tier 1 for the more mature users and the ones that started like a rocket, and Tier 2 for newer members and users with potential.
    We have started it 2 Months ago, as I took over the program newly, I’d like to exchange with people who are in charge of such a program for a bit. ? 
     
  • In which cadence do you open the application/nomination? Do you have a set cadence or is the application always open?
    Also here, I’d like to hit the sweet spot on being flexible for us and the members, as well as offering the opportunity to build a solid closer network, getting fresh perspectives and being transparent to our members.
    So far we were having a half year cadence. In the beginning to build the program it felt right to my colleague. As the program grew much more, I am wondering if this is still a good approach to recruit so often.
     
  • How do you evaluate the fit for the program on a continuous basis for superusers? Do you have hard KPIs which the Members in the Program have to reach, in order to stay in the Program or reach the next tier level?
    For us, so far our Superusers were staying in the program, and it was mostly only growing. Unless they weren’t able to be that active or their job has changed so that they wouldn’t be able to use our community anymore. In those cases, they resigned from the program. In the past, this choice mostly came from their side. I’d like to give this a more set condition, so that members know what is expected from them, particularly as we have the tier model now.
     
  • What other Tips or experiences do you have in terms of growing superuser programs? 


Other materials I took a look at and which are helpful in order to get first insights is this webinar and attached resources from @Julian and @Ditte. Thanks for sharing your experiences! 


I am looking forward to exchange with you. ?
Best, 
Lena

6 replies

DannyPancratz
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +7

Great topic, Lena. 

I don’t know that I have answers to all your questions, but I’ll share that our Super user program is about 4% of our active users (likely closer to 1% of total users, but I mostly focus on active). I don’t know that I’d slow our program down until it gets closer to 10%; our superusers drive the majority of our engagement so the more the merrier imo, and the less volatility in engagement if an individual’s  priorities/bandwidth. 

I recently revamped our program a bit. I did not introduce a second tier, but instead brought in standards for maintaining their status. We saw too high of a percentage of super users drop off their engagement after they achieved the initial status; that is counter to what the program is all about. So now they have criteria to earn the status initially, and then a one year term with certain criteria to maintain it. WIth this comes additional and/or annual benefits as their tenure continues. This is an approach I learned in a decade+ at my previous job working for a volunteer-powered tech user group. Our volunteers had one year terms that came with certain expectations and annual benefits/perks. 

In terms of cadence, ours is a rolling cadence where we check progress and onboard monthly. Therefore their 1 year terms begins when they’re onboard and expires a year later. 

One tip I’ll add is that if you set expectations to maintain, you should make it a priority to help them benchmark their performance against those expectations. You don’t want the address the issue at the end of their term; you should focus on setting them up for success with clear expectations and regular progress updates. Something I do is a monthly progress email (ours is points-based within a year) that I was able to automate with Zapier: 

  1. I update a google sheet monthly (trigger)
  2. Insided API checks their points within their term (dates in the sheet)
  3. Zapier does some calculations on % to earning another year
  4. Gmail sends them an email from me
    1. Points previous month
    2. Points within their term
    3. % to earning another term
    4. Links to expectations and reminders of ways they can fulfill them (earn points)
anirbandutta
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +2

In our case… we’ve never really had an application based ‘Community’ Super User program per-say, rather formed programs around our Super Users giving them more reasons to stay and contribute.

We have a cohort based program that sought user nomination from the Community, by the Community, the criteria of which looked at influence, engagement level and overall goodwill (not just on the Community but from the other channels as well) to finalize the participants.

InSided has some cool Ranks based automated permissions that can be granted that we haven’t explored yet.

These closed programs create energy and rich engagement within the Community, in turn creating more super users who we recognize via:

  • Profile badges
  • Featuring on newsletters, blog posts, events
  • Special feature/roundtables during our conferences

This has primarily been our model.

 

It's an opportunity for engagement
Lena H.
Rank
Userlevel 1

Thanks so much, you two! Really helpful. 😍 

So far, I shortly thought about a tenure based program and had difficulties imagining it, so I threw the thought away. 😄
But I love your approach @DannyPancratz it seems well-thought-out! Also super cool, how you automized the process in keeping them up to date with their data. I can imagine that it is super motivating for them to get the details on a regular basis!

Regarding the Cohorts, @anirbandutta do you have the whole community organized in cohorts, or are they particularly for the most engaged users? 
 

One other thought that came up as I was thinking about personalized reporting:
Do you work with the normal Leaderboard with your superusers/cohorts, as you do with all user? Or do you have the superusers excluded there? 

Best,
Lena

bjoern_schulze
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Badge

We established a two-tier power user program a few years ago in order to optimize our approach to identifying and mentoring super user prospects. Our prospects don’t have additional permissions, but are more visible on the community (via an icon) and we invite them to a private group that is limited to them and the community management team. This gives them more access to us and vice versa.

A seat on our super user program is valid for one year, i.e. once they are part of the program, they stay for a year, before we revisit their status.
We explicitly don’t use any hard KPIs and benchmarks, which makes the whole process a lot more complex and time-consuming. On the other hand, we are able to let other factors - such as character, attitude (towards other users and us) or overall fit for our super user group - play a bigger role.
Also, our super user program aims to cover all different kinds of added value users can bring into the community, which is impossible to press into a formula or a set of criteria everyone needs to fulfil. For example, we have users in our super user program who only provide solutions to questions but never take part in feedback projects, whereas other super users have never provided a solution before but regularly publish product reviews or are very valuable when it comes to giving feedback to our products.

We don’t condition the size of our two power user programs on the size of the community. For us, it is about the best size of the group in itself - based on the goals we want to achieve. Our super user group for example will most likely never exceed 25 people (even though we have 750.000 registered users), as more people are harder to take care of with a consistent quality and intensity AND it’s harder to build meaningful inter-personal connections in larger groups.

anirbandutta
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +2

Regarding the Cohorts, @anirbandutta do you have the whole community organized in cohorts, or are they particularly for the most engaged users? 
 

Cohorts for the most engaged.

Super users are like sharks.. you have to keep creating mission oriented programs for them to keep swimming, keep finding new fish :)

I’m planning on offering a Super-user program cluster that helps us unlock synergies between the programs which could be a game-changer (quoting Brian Oblinger) .

One other thought that came up as I was thinking about personalized reporting:
Do you work with the normal Leaderboard with your superusers/cohorts, as you do with all user? Or do you have the superusers excluded there? 

OOTB Leaderboards have some catching up to do

but I’m sure @DannyPancratz who’s at #Pulse23 currently would have managed to engineer some magic to break through this :D 

The only exclusion we do is between Gainsight employees and everyone else.

It's an opportunity for engagement
DannyPancratz
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +7

I haven’t fully cracked the leaderboard thing yeet, @anirbandutta! Lol

@Lena H. I do keep super users in our leaderboard. I think it’s an important motivator for them to move up the all-time leaderboard and, for the most competitive ones, weekly visibility to check their points and compete for the top spot. 

Without other custom leaderboards, I publish a top 10 in a monthly community update blog. And we give badges for the top 3 earners (you can win the badge multiple times over). This has been running for about 9 months and has been effective. And I started publishing a year-to-date leaderboard for an annual spin on the same thing (top earners in 2023). 

I see superusers and non-superusers in those monthly and annual leaderboards. 

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