Hi Tomas,





Thanks and no problem, happy to answer them here!





1) I do have an estimate of the number of calls deflected. It follow out of the formula used in the presentation:


Amount of visits x %Q1 x %Q2 x %Q3 = estimated amount of calls deflected.





Where the % come out of the survey results:


Q1: Did you come to the forum because you had a question?


Q2: Did you find the answer to your question?


Q3: Would you otherwise have contacted us?





2) It depends on how you define an 'active user'. A rule of thumb we use is anybody who posts or likes more than 10 times in a month, which you can gather from user reports.


However I know that some companies actually consider anybody who logs in to the forum in a given period an active user (obvously a much larger figure), so it really all depends on your definition.





3) Not necessarily, however when you go over 20 or something superusers your program might become hard to manage. A good solution we found was to use a tier system in the superuser program so you have different 'levels' of superusers.





4) In my opinion every 1 to 1 issue you solve on a community automatically becomes 1 to many due to the public nature of the community. Even if it's a personal customer issue, given a public follow-up informing the community in the topic that the issue has been solved already gives another customer an indication that the issue can be solved here (albeit with the help of webcare).





5) I don't really see any disadvantages, just challenges :-)


Like the challenge to keep information in topics up to date and keep to the content 'searchable', this can be tricky due to the sheer amount of content created on a large volumes community.

---

Thanks a lot @Thomas!





Regarding the 1 to 1 issues, do you solve them on your community? If so, how do you organize your team? Meaning, beside the moderation team, do you have any dedicated team in customer support to see through your cases?


At NOS we only solve the 1 to many cases. Otherwise, we may be seen as a new “call center” channel, what would implicate higher costs.

---

Yes we try to solve every customer request on the community, we avoid redirecting or 'playing pong' with our customers and offer support on the channel they chose.





Our moderation team falls in the customer service department so they have access to all backoffice channels they need, however they are responsible for the cases on the community and the communication in them.





As for becoming a new 'call center', I'm not sure that's a bad thing persé. Like I mentioned before most 1 to 1 issues still hold some relevance to other users, making the cost of that contact lower than the cost of a call in most cases due to the re-usable nature of the content.


Besides, a customer who had their issue solved on the community once, is more likely to use that channel again and may be able to use the self-service content next time, lowering repeat calls.

---

I see your point. Great insights. Just one more question:


- For some cases, you will need the client´s ID. How do you ask for them? Publicly ou via private message?

---

Any personal information is exchanged privately ofcourse. We do try to keep the rest of the conversation public as much as possible though.

---