The First Year of Zendesk's User Group Program: Key Learnings and Insights

Nicole explains that Zendesk's user group program started about a year ago based on feedback from customers wanting more opportunities to connect with each other. The goal is to drive customer retention by building meaningful relationships.

The user groups are primarily organized by interests and roles rather than geographic locations, which wasn't initially expected. Some of the most popular groups are for specific roles like developers, administrators, community managers.

To recruit chapter leaders, they look for intrinsically motivated people already actively participating in other Zendesk community activities. Leaders go through an onboarding process and get provided resources like presentation templates, guides, and access to a private Slack space.

In the first meetups, usually only a few people join but it grows over time. Setting a regular cadence is important for continuity. The largest group now gets about 150 registrations per meetup.

Ongoing challenges include sharing insights from user groups with customer-facing teams like account managers, and automating qualitative data. This is where Nicole hopes technologies like AI could help in the future.

After one year, the user group program has seen exciting growth. But there are still many opportunities ahead to scale the program, invite more participants, and continue improving the overall customer experience.

Nicole reflects on key learnings like starting small and letting groups grow organically, transitioning leaders from active community members, and the importance of regular meetup cadence