Building Exceptional Product Help Communities

Building Exceptional Help Communities

@roebot that’s me on Twitter; pssst…you should follow me.

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Product Help

• Should be more exceptional than marketing materials

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help 1.0

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Social Impacts All Markets

• Reinvigorating tired and even declining markets

• Requires exceptional experiences

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help 2.0

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MindTouch makes the world's most respected social knowledge base. We power purpose-built help 2.0 communities that connect companies with their customers.

Millions use our software every day.

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Help 2.0 Bridges Traditional Tools with Social and Analytics

Desktop Authoringand Traditional Support Tools

People and Social Tools

Analytics

Providing a bridge for social/community capabilities and analytics

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The Help 2.0 Revolution Will Be Documented, Socially.

• Lower support costso Ticket deflection, call time

• Improve quality of support• Actionable insights into

oCustomers and users oHelp effectivenesso Product, Marketing, Sales

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Personalized

• Help

• Marketing

• Sales

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Strategies for Global Audience But how does “social” impact HELP when we have a Global audience?

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Machine Translation Machine Translation

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Machine Translation Machine Translation

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Empower translation Empower your community.

They expect it.

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Cultural Accuracy comes from community (em)powered translation

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Machine Translation • Crowd Source Translation

• Combine Machine and Crowd Source

• …when appropriate

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Polyglot:Search Polyglotism

• Relate articles by language

• Stub articles and machine translate, but notify users

• Change UI to user preferences

• Language specific search

• Tell users when articles are available in other languages

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Pivot About Product/Language/Release

Root

Product A

English

Version 1

Articles Articles …

Version 2 …

Japanese

Version 1

Product B

English

…

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Community Junctions

Root

Product A

English

Version 1

Articles Articles …

Version 2 …

Japanese

Version 1

Product B

English

…

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Autodesk screen shot here

3 Community Principles

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Ladder of participation Provide a ladder of participation

Ease and encourage participation

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Loosely coupled layers

Less risk

Better experience

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Context

What’s clear to you is likely not to others in a diverse community

Prevent context switching—control the experience to deliver an exceptional one

5 Community Rules of Engagement

LAWS1. Encourage user generated content2. Establish a social contract3. Recruit community members4. Content is king5. Analyze, measure and change

COMMUNITYTHE BIRTH OF A

Requires a constitution

LAW #1

Identify the early adopters – Ask them to contribute, provide feedback

Badges, social recognition, leaderboards

ENCOURAGE USER GENERATED CONTENT

Organize leaderboards pivot points

These are community junctions

Community JunctionsRoot

Product A

English

Version 1

Articles Articles …

Version 2 …

Japanese

Version 1

Product B

English

…

• Ladder – Make it easy to

contribute• OK with losing

some control• Participate in

discussion• Let the community

decide

• Recognize your top contributors

• Badges work• Allows you to

focus on top contributors

LAW #2

The Customer/Company Pact

Enforce your rules

Lead By Example

ESTABLISH A SOCIAL CONTRACT

• Define your community guidelines in plain English (and all other languages )

You’re the conductor – ENFORCE your own rules

• Lead by example • Practice what

you preach

LAW #3

Go where your customers are already engaged, confused, or having trouble

Advertise it in product

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn channels

RECRUIT COMMUNITY MEMBERS

& VAR’S

• Promote community in your software products

FIND THEM ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

LAW #4

Great content drives traffic

Tutorials, videos, how to guides

Curate user generated content back to community

CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT

Example of engaging

contentCommunity

• Tutorials and guides drive a ton of traffic

• Also reduce support costs

• Act as due diligence and/or product research

Content ContentCurators

Brand Website

Tagging

Rating

Comm

entingCont

extu

aliz

ing

editing

Search

CuratedContent Brand

Audience

digital content to provide more relevant audience experience

curate

LAW #5

Derive intelligence and meaning from how content is being consumed

Create Key Community Metrics

ANALYZE, MEASURE & CHANGE

Are the support

articles meeting

our customer’s

needs?

SEARCHAGINGQUALITY

RATINGS

How old is our content across

the site?

What are people searching for and not finding?

Allow content to be rated by

users

Know what’s

RELEVANTto your Community

Use Content Analytics to quickly understand the

Watch

ACCURACY, QUALITY, AND AGING of the site’s content.

CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR through search patterns.

EXAMPLE

Deliver a quality experience

AND WATCH AS THE COMMUNITY REDUCES YOUR SUPPORT COSTS

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• Subtitle for F1 section to start

F1

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Ladder of participation Provide a ladder of participation

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Loosely coupled layers

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Context

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Social Knowledge

Base

Forums

Support ticketing

Other web properties

Existing community

tools

Contextual In product

help

One source—used everywhere

Gradual ladder of participation

Layered

In context

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A Social Knowledge Base

• Wiki-style collaborative authoring

• Content moderation and workflows

• Community scoring and feedback

• Content Curation Analytics

• Adaptive Search

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Code name: F1

• An embed away

• Button (or page fold)

• Stylized hyperlink

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Code name: F1

• Contextual social help

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Code name: F1

• Quora X Digg

• I have a question, or answer

• I know where there is relevant content on this topic

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Code name: F1

• Content recommendation

• Based on behavior

• Based on social insights

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Code name: F1

• Spotlight tour

• Based on dictionary of terms

• Based on a modified web UI

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Badging

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Questing

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This is portability!

This is reuse.

This is multi-channel

(CALIT2 TOPSAN protein structures shown in virtual reality)

Building Exceptional Help Communities

@roebot that’s me on Twitter. Pssst…you should follow me.