bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

I have discussed somewhat about building a community to enhance customer engagement (amongst many other benefits).

Given recent conversations I’ve had there appears to be a bit of a stigma around the labour investment in building a community.

So I wanted to highlight a recent example from Vodafone New Zealand.

They launched an online forum at forum.vodafone.co.nz August 1st 2008.

Investment was:

• $150 for forum license
• 3 people engaged over a month, checking in every now and again to keep an eye on it
• Link under Help on Vodafone website and a mention on Geekzone

Results:

• 250,000 visits with an average time of just under 4 minutes.
• That’s a whooping 1 million minutes/ month.  Or the equivalent of 697 days (back to back) of attention.
• 356 registered members and ~3000 posts (till Sept 17th)

From other forum’s Vodafone has run, they have found only 1 out of 5 questions requires an official response.

Over time the forum will build a repository of information that will provide answers to users without ANY extra work by Vodafone.

Isn’t this brilliant? What a fantastic way to help your customers.  I hope this makes others stand up and give it another look.

Oh and….

If your trying to figure the ROI on that.  Compare the attention time on the forum vs the equivalent cost of having them dealing with front line staff OR cost of getting that amount of attention OR measure impact on brand loyalty OR measure the value of the feedback you receive.

You can see your return comes in many forms.  Measure what is important.

Great to see Vodafone trying new methods to help their customers, keep up the good work!

Over the last few years we have seen the merging of convenience stores and petrol stations.  A way of value adding given shrinking margins on fuel for vendors.  Sweet.

However this combination slows down your service.  Pull into a gas station between 7.30am and 9.30am.  Chances are it won’t be a fast service.

How about this:

• You pull in and an attendant is waiting on you to fill your car.
• Once your car is filled you pay for your gas. Via credit card at the pump (handled by attendant).
• Charge $2 extra for this service.

Done under 2 minutes flat. (could even guarantee service time like McDonalds)

Easily cover cost of extra attendant per pump.  Help your customers out.

One step further.

• Charge $5 and give them a coffee / muffin at the same time.  You have probably saved your customer 20 minutes. 10 minutes filling up & another 10 minutes getting a coffee once they get to work.

Looking to differentiate? look at how you can ‘help’ your customers.  They will love it.