Success flywheels

Knowledge sharing and Q&A

Communities need active knowledge sharing to provide value across members. Companies need help with "ticket deflection." The best communities create flywheels that encourage and reward members to answer questions, share workflows, and curate knowledge.

Example flywheel motion

  1. Product user Conrad comes to community with a question
  2. Question is answered by community member Kathryn
  3. Kathryn is given positive signal from the core team
  4. Conrad remains in community (when presented with additional value)
  5. Quentin asks a question in the community, Conrad answers
  6. Conrad is given positive signal from the core team

Metrics to watch

  • Questions answered by community
  • Top community member Q&A contributions
  • Time to community answer
  • Total ticket deflection (number of tickets asked and answered vs. official support tickets)

Monitor the health of champions

Successful customers can become active champions in the community. Community champions are members that regularly promote, interact, and engage with the community. When a champion's community activity drops, it's important to follow up and figure out a reason.

Not every activity drop constitutes an inflection point in a member's community journey. Sometimes life gets in the way; jobs change; priorities change. When activity drops, however, it's important for a community builder to check in and see if there's with which they can help.

Example flywheel motion

  1. Champion Peggy attends a 2-3 community events a month
  2. Peggy's attendance and activity drops
  3. Community Builder Buzz reaches out to Peggy
  4. Peggy let's Buzz know she's just busy with a big project (back to step 1) OR
  5. Peggy expresses concerns to Buzz (product feedback, internal politics, community trouble)
  6. Buzz works to help Peggy with feedback (product advocacy), clearing internal blockers, or helping with community problems

Metrics to watch

  • 30-day activity count for members of the Champion role
  • Average activity weight for members of the Champion role
  • Champion feedback actioned by product team

Create champions in key accounts

The customer success champion is an individual with deep and growing knowledge of a product. This champion is bolstered by both the customer success team and the community at large. For each key account, the CX team identifies specific, high-value team members and provides them with individualized care and value. They also invite them into the community and help foster knowledge share providing additional value. When the key account expands, that team member is prepared to be the internal champion to educate both new users as well as the community.

Example flywheel motion

  1. Identify users in key accounts
  2. Provide Customer success value to account
  3. Invite users to the community
  4. Provide value in the community
  5. Provide in-depth tutorials, 1:1s, use cases to bolster that user's Knowledge
  6. Invite to programs like Beta users to keep knowledge fresh
  7. Champion creates internal value around tool and provides step 2 and 3 to new team members

Metrics to watch

  • Key members in key accounts
  • Feedback from champions