We held our first-ever webinar yesterday with one of our customers, OpenAir. Brian Martin, their VP of Client Management, did an awesome job describing why and how they created their customer forum using GroupSwim. Some of the highlights were:
- Customers demanded the forum
- OpenAir (OA) uses it for marketing and education, gathering customer feedback and document storage including training materials and FAQs
- Robust search and email notifications were the top features requested by the customers surveyed
- OA selected GroupSwim based on our company culture, price, functionality and usability
- Spent 20 hours collectively preparing the site and seeding it with content before the initial roll-out
- Rolled-out to 100 users and formally launched at user conference late last year
- Initial groups in community were Knowledge Base, OpenAir Functionality, Training Documents, and Other – more followed
- Minimal effort to maintain now that they are going
- Regular activities include processing invitation requests, answering questions and adding new content
- Sales and prospects request access regularly
- Results: support volume dropping, site registrations increasing, getting new product ideas, helping with sales
- Lessons learned: Form and functionality matter, keep content fresh, marketing is key, community will be self-sustaining in time
It was a great session and we had lots of questions. Please click here for a full recording of the session if you are interested. Thanks again Brian and Buckley for your help. You were both awesome!
Tags: Community, customer, Forum, GroupSwim, Online, OpenAir, Webinar
