CRM - June 2008 - (Page 43)

LINKSYS GETS SHAKEN, A COMMUNITY IS STIRRED Credit Lithium Technologies’ online community-based CRM solution for saving some users’ holiday seasons: When an earthquake struck the South Pacific on Christmas Eve 2006 and brought down contact centers for Linksys (a Cisco Systems unit), customers turned to the new online support community for answers. Linksys soon saw the benefit of customers helping customers. Philip Soffer, Lithium’s vice president of product development, says that community-site “super users” provide serious customer service value. Friendly Web surfers— employed neither by Lithium nor Linksys—serve as knowledge sources, answering questions about Linksys products on message boards and forums. “There’s this whole world of people who are doing this stuff for free,” Soffer says. “If you know how to engage them and make them feel rewarded, everyone wins.” Users got continual, live, peer-based support; Linksys improved CRM with an inexpensive solution; and Lithium got named one of Beagle Research’s WizKids of 2008, an award given to innovative CRM upstarts. The support during the Christmas crunch was as real as any hard-number ROI. And, thanks to the community response, Linksys could discontinue email support. The site now has about 100,000 registered users and more than 7 million views a month, according to Beagle. Soffer says the two most important aspects of successful communities are generating traffic and rewarding users. Recognizing contributions and “super user” status are often all it takes to make users happy and keep the posts coming. “It’s really interesting to see what these people will do,” Soffer says. “Some of these people are saving customers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.” —Lauren McKay “There’s this whole world of people who are doing this stuff for free.” SO HOT IT’S COOL Ice Energy pumps up sales with the heat of email marketing ce Energy, a provider of ground- you actually looked under the hood, the source heat pumps in the United engine…was incredibly powerful.” He sent a message asking the original Kingdom, aims to deliver its products for the best value. Still, heat subscribers about their heat-pump needs pumps aren’t exactly an impulse buy, and if they were still interested in receiving ranging from the equivalent of $10,000 emails. Out of 6,000 customers, 750 said to $30,000 per unit. According to David they were either interested or ready to buy Hutchinson, the firm’s marketing man- immediately; only 250 requested removal. ager, it can take up to 18 months of atten- The response, he says, was “phenomenal”—enough sales within the tion before customers—homeowners, developers, housing as- “No other medium first 24 hours to cover 10 years of JangoMail’s cost. sociations—make a purchase. can give you that Ice Energy’s list now has The firm’s marketing efforts more than 15,000 people, and include Google AdWords, mag- immediate action Hutchinson says the database azine ads, and direct mail. Email, and reaction.” grows by 10 percent each usually the most convenient channel, turned out to be the biggest bur- month, with only 50 or 60 opt-outs. On den. In April 2006, Hutchinson began average, 20 percent to 30 percent of recipusing Mailloop on his desktop to manage ients access the Web site; some response 6,000 subscribers. Each campaign took 10 rates reach as high as 80 percent. Once the hours—and stalled the entire office net- recipient clicks a link in the email, Ice Enwork. Worse, he adds, updates—opt-ins ergy tracks her behavior through Google and opt-outs, for example—had to be Analytics, incorporating that information handled manually. By 2007, Hutchinson into future, more-targeted campaigns. The emails are simple, addressed indisays, Ice Energy realized it might be betvidually, and sent personally from Hutchter off cutting its email efforts entirely. Instead, Hutchinson set out to find bet- inson. “I go to exhibitions and people ter resources. By September 2007, Ohio- come up and shake my hand as though based email marketing provider JangoMail I’m a long-lost friend,” he says. “They’ve had come out the winner.“Maybe it didn’t been communicating with me for such a have the best graphics,” he says,“but when long time.” Whether notifying consumers CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JUNE 2008 I www.destinationCRM.com 43 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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