Pitney Bowes User Forum

Matt BroderVP External CommunicationsPitney Bowes Inc.B2B Social Communications ConferenceSeptember 16, 2009Matthew.broder@pb.comTwitter: @ctwordsmith

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Pitney Bowes User Forumforums.pb.com

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Pitney Bowes User ForumConversation “Threads”

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Pitney Bowes User ForumMessage posts and replies

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Users are rewarded by their peers for useful answers through “Kudos” and “Accepted Solution” tags.

Users build reputation through a system of ranks and roles.

Pitney Bowes User ForumReputation and Feedback encourage participation

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ROI

We launched the Forum in April 2008 with an initial goal of Rate Change Support call deflection

In 2007, we had had 417,000 phone support calls just related to rate change.

Typical support call costs $10 or more

Pitney Bowes staffs up temporary call centers to support Rate Change.

2008 Rate Change: A Case Study

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Drove traffic to forum from all rate change related pages on PB.com and from email

Volume on May 12, the day RC took effect was > 10 times our average daily volume.

Moderators from Rate Change group and CSR handled questions

Customers answered many questions

ROI: 2008 Rate Change

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Specific answer posting

20% deflection*

ROI: 2008 Rate Change

* Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research, 2008

39,065 views

7,817 saved calls

$78K savings

General info posting

5% deflection*

500,000 total views

25,000 saved calls

$250K savings

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Call deflection savings for Rate Change issues during May 2008 alone were more than $300K, or 2-3 times our annual cost for the forum.

This was one month after the Forum was launched.

ROI: 2008 Rate Change

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Pitney Bowes User Forum“Ask the Expert” events Think Tank pilot program

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Goal of Special Events

Keeping users engaged between rate changes

Rate change

Ask Expert

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Community Drives SuccessAnd “Superusers” drive the community…

The 90-9-1 Rule: 90% only browse 9% post rarely 1% provide most

of the content

Dell has more than 100 users who each spend more than 40 hours a week on the forum!

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“Karios” – our rising superuser

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Views of Karios' Messages over Time

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

Age of Message - 1 week to 1 year

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Online longer than 6 mos.

“Karios” – our rising superuser

Posts that have been online longer than 6 months have been viewed, on average, more than 2,000 times.

Call deflection value to PB of each post is ~$2,000

Each post continues to collect views over time:

Total value of Karios’ 53 posts so far: $106,000

A user who posted one answer a day would be worth $520,000 in call deflection each year

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How Do We Get There?

1. Build Traffic

2. Nurture Superusers

3. Repeat

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ZDNet Article, 6/25/09

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PR-Customer Interaction