February 28, 2021 32:03 E48

Episode 048 -Part One New B2B SaaS Communities - Common Questions Asked By An Organization

Summary

In this podcast, we decided to do something a little different. Chris presented the community strategy to his organization through an all hands meeting they had that week. During that presentation he answered over 20 questions from the organization. These are really good questions and we decided on this podcast that we would answer three of them together. Questions asked and answered during the podcast: 1. In a new Branded Community, who are the experts that should help answer customer and partner questions? 2. When you open up a new B2B Community, How do you address the the lifecycle of the customer. For example, if they are in implementation stage, do you allow them on the community? Do you have content to help them? 3. How do Brands gain Brand awareness with B2B online communities?

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Transcript:

hello and welcome to another episode of

peers over beers i'm one of your hosts

michael sandoval

and i'm Chris Detzel

hello chris i hope

you're doing well

yeah man i'm doing really well how about

you oh excellent i'm doing pretty good

uh it's late in the day and i uh

i i am not enjoying a nice cool

adult beverage as you are you truly are

having a pier a beer

yes i was hoping that you would have a

beer but i figured you wouldn't even

know you knew you were coming to tears

of course yeah

nobody has to know that exactly

you're you're definitely in a different

time zone so it's all right

yeah for me it's fine you know so i'm

drinking a it's called two-hearted ale

uh i guess this is an american ipa

it doesn't probably tells me somewhere

where it's uh made but

it's a bells company or something so no

bells yeah

oh my gosh someone's going to kill me

that i don't know this but i want to say

bells is

uh like michigan or something like that

i don't know why that comes to my head

michigan

yeah that could be i'll have to google

that later

yeah exactly uh now i feel like i have

to do it

uh in real time anyway but um

oh my gosh kalamazoo kalamazoo okay yeah

it is michigan

yeah um all right so

we were just about ready to talk about

something very

interesting that happened to you whilst

you were

i think having an all hands meeting

about community

at uh royalty right yeah that's right

you said it right that's awesome really

i'll see i just corrected what i thought

i said it right so

yes so that's so funny so

um we had an all hands meeting

meaning just the whole company meeting

monday through thursday for four to five

hours

every single day to kind of go over the

product roadmap to the vision

and everything else and on monday so

today's friday but on monday

i had the opportunity to present for an

hour uh

to the entire company i think two or

three hundred people were on there i

don't remember but

um about community and

it's funny because i knew it

it always happens is that there's tons

of questions at the end

um i mean a lot of questions yeah

everybody's quiet until somebody says

it's until something breaks well what i

did what well yeah well

there it's it's crazy because people

want to know all about community they

they don't

they they kind of get it but they want

to understand who's moderating what

who's going to help who's going to do

this

what does this even mean what's the

strategy i mean there's all kinds of

great questions you know from people

within the organization

the other day it's about me trying to

get them to help me

build it you know and so that's really

the message is

is so basically i i had an hour i only

spent 30 minutes or less

on content you know just hey this is

um this is the vision of the company

this is

community this is how community relates

to the vision and

and goes well with the vision of the

company um

and then here's you know talk a little

bit about you know the goal of community.

what we're trying to accomplish

and what's and then i had a slide

actually of

nine questions uh from

people before the so i already had this

only nine questions from the audience or

not even the audience but um

beforehand so beforehand there was an

email that went out okay oh i was gonna

ask how you did okay

okay email went out and said hey these

are the sessions

uh and they made people ask a question

around community so what are some of

your questions i got several of them but

i only put nine of the i don't know uh

20 or 30 questions that were asked but

so what i did was

so there's 30 minutes left or more and i

answered every one of those questions

um and then then there was tons more in

the chat because

then i had like i think i answered those

in 10 or 12 minutes

but then there was question after

question after question after question

after

and i was like oh my god i was so tired

afterwards really

it was awesome it was like people loved

it you know and so

um what i thought we would do what do

you think they loved about it

they're excited because their customers

and their partners

for lto have been asking for community

for a long time

okay that's why i was curious about the

one and then

two is they're excited that they have

somebody full time to actually

do this you know and three is they're

excited that

i know how to do it i think i do anyways

no i do

yeah i know you have yes you definitely

have some experience under your belt

yeah yeah and so i think there's just

excitement and

you know i i feel like that's one of my

strengths is getting people pumped and

excited and actually doing some stuff

you know and so that's

that's that you know i mean uh so i

thought today

we would just bring up those questions

uh maybe i give you

five and depending on how long this goes

but and uh you give me five

i know you're looking at some now and

and and maybe i'll relate it to the bank

if i if all possible and you can relate

it to b2b i mean i

i sent you the questions beforehand and

i related it all to b2b sas

so you know but but i don't know what do

you think

no i think it's good i like it or you

know maybe we can even do just one

question and i can have my view and you

can have your view

uh i like it let's try it that way um

in fact do you have it up i do i have

the questions that is

um do you want to read the first one

yeah so let's go with the first one and

i'll have you answer this question and

and then you know maybe i'll answer it

uh so in a branded community who are the

experts that contribute or purely rely

or should they purely rely on everybody

to contribute uh

their fair share of content or answers

to questions

yeah so this is interesting i think

we've almost had a discussion about this

so i'll tell you my take if you don't

mind and then i'm curious to see how you

answered um so this is where i go into

my discussion about

what it takes to start a community and

how content

gets developed the time it takes for us

to go up front and have to develop that

and then we'll get people to come

attract

and then eventually over time you'll see

the inflection point

of contributions outside versus

contributions inside

right then that kind of goes so my

upfront would be hey you know at the

beginning of this

yes we are going to be the experts we're

the one that's going to be

providing all that upfront content there

will be an effort that allow us to do

this but the value that it'll pay for us

long term is a vibrant community in

which you'll have

increased loyalty increased customer

satisfaction

self-service help rabbit fans that are

going to be answering

are probably questions faster than we

can right and that's a

value uh that can be monitored not

monetized but you can actually

quantify this in savings to the company

no that's a good answer and the way i

kind of described it was

um i will need your help uh

and and the reason i need your help is

because it's kind of like this

realtio will have to push content out

answer questions when customers

and partners come to ask a question you

know they

they they expect an answer and they

expect one somewhat

quickly nobody wants to go to a party

that no one's at

it's the same thing if people post a

question customers and partners post a

question

and there's no answer you know that's

that's a problem they want to leave

and they won't come back now in the

beginning i have my hands up and so

i by the way we have a youtube channel

michael you probably don't even know it

but it's called peers over beers youtube

but i put my hands up

[Laughter]

it's funny and it hurts all the same

time yeah

anyway it's a little jab it's not really

a job it's just like michael does it

cool it's a good one yeah it's a good

one the way i kind of

look at it is you know realty i will

have to push content out at first we'll

have to answer questions that customers

come

you know when they come and ask and and

at first

what it does is you know customers and

partners don't they don't trust

at first it takes time you know they

want to make sure that there's they're

getting answers they want to make sure

that this is

trusting they want to make sure that

they can rely on this thing and

over time what happens is real tale will

do less of the answering of the

questions

and customers and partners will come and

then start answering those things

as they trust as they're recognized as

maybe they're rewarded at some with

badges and things like that

so i think so so the answer is yes

you will have to do we'll have to do all

of our fair share but mostly reltio will

have to answer

those questions uh in the beginning and

then

you know uh customers and partners will

then trust

kind of how i would answer that yeah

well let me ask you a question because i

said the word

uh i think at the first part of the

sentence it says who are the

experts to contribute in your in your

past

uh view or in your past recent

in your recent um company you just left

and now did you have a badge that would

note these as

employees or experts in some way

yeah that's a good point yeah i did i

would say employ so in the beginning

what i did was

i created these expert badges that said

specifically what they were

experts in it didn't really work out

didn't really help but what did help was

it did say employee or uh

imperbian or something like that we'll

have

employee badges so that will help uh do

that

and then i was thinking about partner

badges for reltio and

you know to identify who the partners

are versus the customers versus

you know something like that yeah i've

always well you know my my view about

that right uh

identifying population segments helps

one

either gauge the response and

it's trust if that makes sense so if i

see

an employee time in and i see it's part

of their

we'll call it badge that they're an

expert in

xyz technology then i'm probably gonna

have a higher value of that

answer or the discussion point but you

know what your partners

have the same value too right they have

integration um

expertise uh market expertise you know

so there's always some value in the

oh it's huge man i've been talking to

some of our partners like deloitte and

some others that

uh accenture i'll be talking to you next

week

to you so let's this is funny because

you you'll laugh at me you remember that

um presentation that we did about uh

at rexell around suppliers and

you know kind of activate and be a

partner

and just kind of like throw it into that

yeah good one

yeah so that's exactly what i did

i stole that i was like you leveraged

and probably took

a lot of the ideas right yeah it's the

same

thing you know there's no reason to

recreate something that doesn't need to

be recreated

no i agree it's it's your knowledge that

came into it it's the same

it's the same thesis it's the same

thought process uh

why you wanting i presented that today

michael is you know

when i was talking to a partner i said

hey look there's different ways you can

engage

one is by one create an account you know

kind of look at what's being posted and

feel free to kind of go in there and

you know reply if you'd like or even ask

a question because maybe you don't know

everything because

i remember at imperva you did have

partners asking questions and

customers answering those partner

questions and then custom

partners answering customers and then

employees answered partners and

employees answering

it was crazy it was awesome um but then

there was like three levels for partners

and that

i wanted to try to get i kind of

presented that today and said hey look

um the last level is what i call

partnership you know and the way that

works with us

could be uh you know i wanted to say

their response they seem to be

interested but

is is you know i can give you uh

face-to-face or online training you know

where you have training with me directly

uh to help you understand how to post a

blog how to post a

um you know question whatever whatever

you need to do and if you were to do

that and you were to commit

like once a month to post a blog or a

how-to video or

if you're if you do a webinar on

going deep into the product and how to

do certain things

and having it live and bringing our

customers and other partners in

you know we'll put a badge on your um on

your profile that says

you know platinum partner i don't know

whatever

i don't know what that is but and they

seem very interested they're like hey we

have 40 or 50 people that do these

things

at deloitte you know i mean i mean

deloitte should know that this is kind

of a standard practice

it it it can be very valuable if done

right and it really does depend on the

um

on the partner you know i was going to

mention that if so deloitte would be out

outside of this scope of what i'm going

to say but

uh we had when i was at ti texas

instruments

we had all types of partners we had very

small

very small like yep a guy

in his you know two engineers in the

back right

uh developing products that are

third-party products but very robust

sought-after but uh small

companies versus these huge companies

right so in the small companies where

they didn't have

a marketing team or department or

whatever and they were so involved in

their business model was really wrapped

around the company

we would say hey would you like to

moderate

your own community in a way

because they don't have the resources

but we do and that was good for us

because it allowed us to

you know have their space on our space

we would you know

they would be a contributor and it was

it was a pretty good

deal i don't know if it's still there

doing that anymore but it was pretty

good uh little

venture for a while so they'd have their

own space

yeah a couple ways we would engage with

uh

first i think in the way we did that's

powerful presentation one was like

there's ways to engage yeah that's one

of the ones that we didn't

do which was i can create a separate

community just on your

company and that community you would

manage moderate it whatever you want to

do

and it would allow you to be an

expert of your product on our space and

of course we would share content we

would

it would be able to tag each other

hey this has been discussed but it's on

the so and so side or so-and-so side of

the community whatever that may be

and it would allow them to have a space

and so

there's a win-win right one is for them

this is a overhead that they don't have

to

yeah cost out right they just need

people and that's what you need is

content

then they get the benefit of the seo too

because you have a

two-link validation and then for us from

a company's perspective

it's just more content leading to the

site and more help

you know uh it's probably the best

podcast i've ever heard

so far

i should totally i should totally

subscribe yeah

i'm subscribing to this one because this

is awesome

well i like that idea of having um

potentially partners or

even customers or uh to be able to have

their own community

uh through me so the cool thing about

that is like

i own or i own i use higher logic as a

platform right so

the cool thing is i also have what they

call um

different sites so i can i have 25

different uh

sites that i can crack so i have a

higher logic community.reltio.com

but i have microsites that i can build

and and and make the look and feel

different and everything else and so if

i want to create a

i don't know a banking community

site you know like community dot

whatever your bank is tftu or whatever

it is

dot com i could have it you know and you

can manage your community there

uh it could still be all things master

data

anyways the point is is there's

opportunity there right

to to really think about how we might

do stuff like that yep so you would

create essentially a group

or whatever you can customize a group i

forget what the parlance is probably in

higher logic but

yeah you can create micro communities

well there's two different there's

two different ways to do it probably

more but one is on the main community of

community.reltio.com

you can create multiple many communities

private public whatever

but you can also create a microsite that

looks

and feels differently that's a different

url and everything else it's exactly

what we did

at uh rexell when you but they didn't

have the microsites for free

for telegens right so you know we just

had

jeff had to do some crazy weird things

to do

like a general developer a friend of

ours

yeah so rexella dot or community dot or

i don't know for excel usa or whatever

the it was yeah

but and then you know the the de site

and whatever but

this just comes with it you can make it

look it's

you know different anyways all right so

i think we that that's

i really like that that was a great

conversation around that let's do one

more

so yeah for only 20 minutes i'll read

this one so it says uh

what is the plan to open up community

for customers currently in

implementation

to see progress and status updates

chris take it away yeah so what that

means

this question didn't make complete sense

but what it

what they mean is so for customers that

had

our product that has our product that's

in the stages of implementation

you know what is the the role of

community

basically can they join can they not

join my answer to that is

ah okay got it okay

so the answer to that was pretty easy

because we have an open community and

anybody can join

right so um partners

potential customers and customers can

join our potential

uh partners can join the community and

employees um

and so now there'll be some moderation

and things like that but

um they can join before and take

advantage of

starting to connect to peers i don't

care where they are

within the life cycle of uh engagement

with reltio

i just will allow them to come in and

either surf or

start adding you know content if they'd

like and then they can start

engaging right away that was the answer

to that that's pretty easy well

it's a very interesting question because

in my head my

brain started to do all sorts of

things you mentioned it which was

customer life cycle

if there was a way to match your

customers

needs based on their life cycle the

community could be pretty powerful

for example um if

if you're in this this implementation

stage

the questions you're going to ask are

going to be different

so maybe as part of your profile build

or something

uh you can tell the stage that you're in

i'm an implementation and it'll

surface different types of discussions

like

you know how do you you know how do you

do a rollout plan

what's your communication plan how do

you you know what are

the top 10 things it needs to know about

this what's your

um uh

you know yeah migration i think i said

migration plan but so that's different

from say

run and maintenance you know long term

uh

which will be different things uh

versus like uh upgrades like if you're

moving up

uh moving up a version yeah if you're

upgrading the version and things like

that it would be interesting to see

these phases in some of your customers

then you can help

customize it even on the pre-sale you

can it could be a sales tool

uh as part of somebody going out there

you know we have one of the most vibrant

computers out there

you know get your customers you can

actually join now and participate in the

you know the you know the i don't know

we'll call it the

realtio um users group

so you can see the conversations that

are going on you know that kind of fun

yeah that this is great man this is

like i said one of the best uh podcasts

we've done so far

again we've only got two questions so i

know well you know kind of

we did when i was a tia we did something

again some kind of similar

uh where we would use uh

your design in cycle design in cycle is

how an engineer

evaluates first searches for evaluates

designs you in that's a big thing so it

means you they put your

chip in a design that they're doing and

then production

and each of those has different needs so

when you were in the oh and one more

piece was software was becoming a big

deal so

software was a big piece so when

customers were evaluating

our devices the software engineers were

in the software forums

listening and reading and understanding

because that was part of their

evaluation process so in other words

yes it's robust the questions are pretty

well answered

there was a good warm feeling that you

know that they had some resources and

experts

as part of it so they knew if they chose

they could

they would feel comfortable in doing

this those things so the software

community became

part of the designing cycle of a chip

because the software was such a big deal

and

depending upon the role you played if

you were a hardware engineer or a

software engineer

allowed you to have different slices of

the community

so it was it was interesting so in other

words it was personalized in some way

yeah the personalization is is uh very

interesting i i like that

and there's opportunity to do that

because you could you could put on kind

of the registration process of

where are you in the life cycle of your

engagement with reltio you know and then

maybe have a drop down that says

one two three i don't know whatever it

is but oh i mean if you

depending on how you design it your

single sign-on should be able to do it

right so it could take some data

from your crm and say

you know whether your existing client

whether you have

a if there's some stage you know

maybe you're like uh we used to call

them

we had a thing where you know we all

striate our customers right

small to big and we would call them

hicks bix and six so they're

all important customers but some are

very important customers

and somebody do not spend yeah and some

are small important customers but at the

end of the day they're all important

customers right so

you we would kind of use that striation

to help

how we want to and it sounds bad but

it's just about it's about uh

division of resources right

so if you were didn't buy in to say the

software support or it didn't buy into

some of these kind of higher end

software support or support

modules that would come into the

community and

community would now be your primary way

of doing self-support

right so it it helped so then and what

we would do is okay

we have to service more information they

don't have somebody to talk to

let's get them more involved they became

important to us so that makes sense on

the community side because it allows

at least they can get their help through

the community side there's a bunch of

stuff you can do just by pulling in some

information

that's good we have time let's do one

more question michael all right because

let's see i know we're 25 minutes but

it's okay oh but i think the next one is

going to be a big one

it says yeah how can we oh wait oh yeah

how can we help drive engagements in the

community

it's a big one maybe we should do that

on another uh

maybe there's another one hold on uh

let's see how do customers

ah well we could probably just how does

the brand gain

brand awareness with communities

i like that it's kind of a short it

could be a short answer or a long answer

i'm going to let you answer that i'm

very curious to know i've got my

thoughts but

well you do first yeah so i have very

good data

about how a community can actually

increase one's brand value

and brand awareness right so on the

brand awareness side i'll cover that

first

it's about reach and there are many

moments in which a customer

can be looking for your product at

various moments in their cycle

it could be in the pre-sale sale

or even on the post-sale process in any

way the first thing you do when you have

a question you're going to go to google

and you're going to just put it in so as

google calls it zmod

which is the zero moment of truth that

is your moment of truth in which you get

to

be the one with the answer now you know

i've heard this i've said this phrase

before right uh

he or she who answers first wins and

your ability to climb at the very top

and be that person to help is the

beginning of that trust

cycle and if you click on it and you're

the one with the answer real to your

original

it's like wow this brand is this company

constantly comes up and

they're answering my question and if

you're and you're on the pre-sale side

even on the on the back side that

loyalty curve to kind of

come back in they're always answering my

questions they're always

knowledgeable their employees are

experts

they have a good handle of the content

they are they are definitely uh

uh quick to answer that all creates

goodness that's a very goodness thing

and that only

increases one's brand value i'm sorry

brand value

uh the awareness side is on the google

side i will i have data

that shows that a

a a community that is well run

very well received as ways to measure

those

high nps scores uh actually increases

the value of the community as that's a

valuable dollar

figure you can put a dollar figure

around that um a study that i did when i

was over at uh

at freescale we did something like that

um so no i can tell you that it does

increase

brand value and awareness

yeah i somewhat similar no i don't give

such an elegant response but

you know my response to that is is that

you know today whenever you you know if

we

kind of look at reltio um custom

i've said this a lot maybe i said this

at the beginning but when customers

partners whoever you know searches for

you

on google for example because 92 percent

of people look at google to

for answers unless you're in china um

and they don't find i think they have

something else

but and they and they look for your

product or have something around master

data management or your area

we don't come up guess what we lose we

should have the answer to every single

product question

that they that customers or at least

something close to that question and

should have an answer to it

when they search digitally because 92

percent of people

search on google not they don't the last

thing they want to do is create a case

the last thing they want to do is you

know the point is

is it comes up master data management or

you know whatever that topic is that

you know a company focuses in on

community talks about that thing a lot

and so we should be on the first page of

google every single time

when especially if we have a customer

has a question about our product

you know and if we don't we lose

and if we do then we don't win

it's just expected you know and

just to kind of go into what you said is

over time there's that trust factor

it's kind of what i mentioned earlier is

you know

when customers don't just engage right

off they don't

do a bunch of things i mean it takes

time to really build a community but

once that's humming along

you know and you know when when they do

that search and they're looking

every time you have that answer every

time you come up it's like

wow you know reltio is like always

coming up on master data management

anything

you know and and so they're going to go

in to your community they might even

join they might even

you know kind of look around and

eventually maybe they'll you know

contribute

you know and so i agree yeah and so i

know we're kind of

cutting down on this one but this brings

up the whole idea of

um share of voice sov right share of

voice

so within your market space um

you can physically measure this on

google where you can take your

competitors and yourself

and show how much either the search of

your percentage of searches on any

particular amount of

words or even your brand and see how

much of that comes to you

and that's your share of voice right and

and the only way you can increase your

share of voice by the way share voice is

pretty much market market pace market

space which is what you just mentioned

which is if i'm bringing an mdm and your

competitor is always

75 of the voice 75 of the time your

competitor is going to be the one

who's going to get that click yeah so

our bit your ability our ability to

drive that share of voice higher

which is the equivalent of what our

mentor uses hey

shelf space in the old school walking in

you want to be

eye level shelf space and

there's two ways to do it one is to

drive to first page

one two or three and then to have a

catalog which is your share voice in

other words

it's with the percentage of the number

of of

searches that are being done that you

fall for that you fall into

should be high so those are kind of some

that's a

brand awareness tactic that's great

stuff yeah that is good man

that was really good i really liked this

episode

we have literally like you know 50 more

let's say 50

15 more questions we could ask

we have there's a few podcasts in these

questions

well with that how about we just end

this one and we'll carry on to the next

one and uh

thank you very much chris for another

great podcast this is uh one of your

hosts michael sandoval

and i'm chris tetzel all right thanks

chris talk to you later all right

Creators and Guests

Chris Detzel

Chris is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He has owned community vision, strategy, and execution. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs, creating compelling content for customer communities and acts as the voice of the customer. He believes that data should drive decisions as it is the key element of any long-term successful strategy.