Making the Internet fast, reliable and secure Customer Engagement in Today s Digital Age Julie Cardinali Brancik Sr Technical Program Manager
Agenda Who is Akamai Technologies Akamai Community Journey Akamai s Project Approach Internal Aloha Community Overview Q & A
As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. $2.2B 2015 Revenue 6,000+ Employees 5,000+ Customers 1,400+ Networks AKAM S&P 500 110+ Countries
AKAMAI SOLUTIONS LUNA + {OPEN} and SERVICES & SUPPORT WEB PERFORMANCE MEDIA DELIVERY CLOUD SECURITY CLOUD NETWORKING NETWORK OPERATOR Deliver fast responsive web and mobile sites Deliver high-quality streaming video at broadcast scale Protect against DDoS, web application & other Internet threats AKAMAI INTELLIGENT PLATFORM Optimize, scale & secure the enterprise network Embed CDN into carrier & mobile networks 2016 AKAMAI FASTER FORWARD TM
EMPOWERING OUR CUSTOMERS TO INNOVATE 2016 AKAMAI FASTER FORWARD TM
External Customer Community The Akamai Community is where our customers go to get answers to their questions about Akamai products, search our knowledge base, read our research reports and whitepapers, and connect with our thought leaders.
Akamai Community Journey 2014 Feb RFP Akamai Community 2014 May Purchase JIVE X selected for its security features, ease of operation and use, and support of rich content & features 2014 Oct Launch @Akamai Edge Customer Conference Must Login to view any content 2015 April Open To Guests and Prospects Most content open to the internet and google able 2016 Feb Jive Cloud Upgrade and Content Migration New functionality UI/UX Redesign No more upgrades! Increase consistency of brand experience Align and integrate with existing support processes Foster peer collaboration support Thought leadership to create opportunities and engagement Align with marketing, social listening, analytics, and other programs Provide customers with avenue for self service
Akamai s Project Approach The Akamai Community Strategy
Akamai Community Strategic Framework What will make the community an indispensable resource? Key Business Drivers / Objectives Overall Business Goal Stakeholder Value: Statements of Delight Audience Needs and Objectives Business Objectives (What/ Who) How can community better support the desired user experience? Community Objectives / Key Use Cases
Business Objectives Business Goal : Build a unified online community to foster communication among the company s globally dispersed customers, partners and staff, establishing a destination for peer to peer assistance and interactive self service. Business Objectives Reduced (optimize) Volume of Support Cases Increase Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Foster Customer Acquisition and Retention Better Communication with Customers, Partners, and Employees Reduce Support Case Submissions Reduce call volume deflect calls to self service Channels More quickly locate resources and find answers to questions Satisfy customers and partners request for more selfservice Provide enhanced customer support experience Address top customerprovided opportunities for improvement: Responsiveness to requests Improved knowledge system Better connect resources (peer to peer, and with appropriate Akamai resources) Provide easy access to knowledge articles, white papers, research reports and other information Obtain direct feedback from customers enhance products and overall value proposition Provide a platform for thought leadership (blogs), company announcements, product news, and feedback
Target Audience Segments Key Audiences Member Segment Customers Akamai Staff Partners Guests/Prospects Statements of Delight I have a consistent central experience I am able to quickly locate resources and find answers to questions I have the ability to network and connect with other professionals I am able to give feedback and feel involved I can manage my costs while getting the support I need I have a single location for providing customers information and documentation I am able to gain insight into the questions asked and the information needed I have a direct connection to customers and their product ideas, feedback and requests that can feed into the product team I am able to collaborate with my account team and store account data in one place I stay informed about Partnering opportunities (on roadmap) I have a consistent central experience to access materials and resources (on roadmap) I have easy access to information such as sales collaterals and information about our products/services (on roadmap) I know who to talk to at Akamai about various topics I can participate in open discussions with Customers Iam able to collaborate privately with Akamai I am able to understand Akamai s offerings I have the ability to network and connect with other professionals I have insight in how Akamai works with its customers
Member Needs Designing the community with What s in it for them as our primary guide. Member Segment (who) End Users (Customers) Akamai Staff Subject Matter Experts (both internal, partners and external) Prospects & Guest I Want (what) To avoid having to pay for Support by being able to self service support Easy centralized access to the Akamai information To ask questions and get support / answers to my questions To reduce clicks / hunting for what I need Aclear place where I can post and view future feature requests To network and connect with peers Collaborate with my colleagues and implementation project team To reduce redundancy and be able to refer to a central repository of info Access to a central good tool to support customers To familiarize and enable customers To help drive satisfaction, loyalty and competitive differentiation among clients To be efficient in supporting, communicating and collaborating with clients Gain insight into Customer requests and questions To be recognized for my solutions, expertise and contributions To gain insight in how Akamai works with its customers To see partnership for support and assistance To ask for references To ask product questions How this will be accomplished in Jive (how) Single site for documentation and questions Robust Search and Easy navigation Posting questions to the Community based on Modules Watching Places / blogs Featured Partners, SMEs and access to experts Rich product Content and documentation (How To s and FAQs) User Groups (per conference or regional) Private Account Groups for services projects Capture questions asked for reuse Provide a link to documents/info/content for customers Access to rich content and tools (docs, blogs, videos) Able to point clients to the community for FAQs and other documentation Manage / collaborate in a private account group Browse community Association with good content Points for answering questions Be personally, or as a team, highlighted and recognized Starting discussions Browsing content
Internal Alignment What did we need? Key Internal Resources What? Who? Community Program Managers 2 FTE Heads Details Ambassadors ~100 volunteers across about 20 topics Akamai Account Team Leads Over 300 private groups created for account team collaboration Budget! Support platform development Growing community team UI/UX design Strategy Sessions
Activation Thought Starters Content Addressed in content plan (seeded and user generated content) Activation And Adoption Launch Ongoing Engagement Roles/Accountabilities Roles and Responsibilities / Governance Training Identifying Ambassadors / advocates / influencers per business area (work with Product Community Mgrs.) Assure resource availability of key roles (designate but rotate) Establishing / providing appropriate governance End users Advocates / Champions / Leadership Business Area Community Management Communications Targeted communications to specific topics Build awareness of new platform (ongoing reports) Highlight/ feature benefits generate excitement Motivators Incentives and reinforcement (tied to current recognition programs for internal users) Incorporate reputation scoring/ gamification concepts Recognition programs
Community Results
Akamai Community Results Improved self service helps customers get answers and information quickly. Community members are answering each other s questions, turning everyone into a support agent. Leads to stronger relationships with and among customers and partners, resulting in improved customer satisfaction, customer retention, shorter sales cycles and technology adoption. Launching our community has been that rarest of IT project outcomes: a win win win. It makes our customers happier because they can find the information they need in their own time. It makes our services and support teams scale better as customers are able to help themselves. And it makes our sales teams excited to see their customers getting connected to the customer base and learn best practices from each other and become happier customers.i don t know how we managed so long without it! Jennie Leigh VP of Service Enablement, Akamai
Akamai Community By the Numbers Community is ~1 ½ Years Old 13,000+ registered members globally 8,300+ pieces of content 1,100+ Thought Leadership Blog Posts 90,000+ Pageviews per Month 22,000+ Visitors Per Month Geographic traffic split: 50% Americas, 20% EMEA, 30% Asia Pacific 300+ Groups and Spaces 95% of questions have responses
Customer Support in the Community Online Technical Support Solutions 95% of questions asked have responses Exceeding our goals! 60% average of online questions are answered by Akamai Experts Resolved by Customer Resolved by Akamai Expert Resolved by Other Goal
Customer Community Member Breakdown Member Breakdown Geographic Traffic Employees 31% EMEA, 30% Americas, 50% Customers 58% Guests 3% Partners 8% Asia Pacific, 20%
They said, Save money! Move to Cloud! So we did. Cuz we like to save money.
Upgrade from Single Tenant to Multi Tenant Cloud March 2016 Business Justification No upgrade costs (Approx. $40K per major upgrade 12 18 months) No additional significant time from IT for both minor & major upgrades Single User Experience for login / registration with mixed mode authentication No Customizations Keeps environment simple & requests limited Always have the latest and greatest product features & enhancements Challenge! Preparing for new features 3 4 times a year
Transform Customer Support In order to transform customer support for our customers and partners we focused and implemented the following: 1. Thought Leadership Blogs 2. Collaboration & Self Service Discussions, Question & Answer, Ideas & Polls 3. Knowledge Sharing CRM Connector for Knowledge Articles from Salesforce 4. Dual Authentication Mixed Mode Authentication (Allows SSO and Jive Guest Registration) 5. 2016 Goals Click to Case, Implement a Content Strategy, Integrate with Akamai Advocate Program, and Gamification
Internal Employee Community Aloha Community is Akamai s internal employee community where we go to get work done and work out loud. Collaborative content created through Aloha is published to the Akamai Customer Community.
Aloha Community Journey Employees Only 2014 Dec Purchase JIVE N 2015 May New Hire! Experienced Enterprise Community Manager hired to launch the new community 2015 Aug Launch Supposed to be Soft launch, but Everyone wanted In! EOY 2016 Full, thoughtful, reorganized migration of static intranet content to Jive
Aloha Community (Employees Ony) In order to best support the hyper connected world outside of Akamai, we need to foster a hyper connected world within Akamai. Collaboration drives us Faster Forward The Aloha Community provides a single source for accessing Akamai s collective knowledge base, allowing associates around the globe to collaborate within teams and across functions to unleash innovation and move Faster Forward. It is Our standard, universal collaboration platform The next generation social intranet The place where associates go to get informed, connected, and inspired
Evolving Towards an Interactive Intranet Goal: Standard, universal set of productivity tools Unified Communications on the spot conversations and knowledge sharing Social Collaboration fluid conversations and knowledge management Email one time communications PLUS Additional tools you need to get YOUR job done BUT Getting rid of redundant systems and disparate solutions Timeline: Full, thoughtful, reorganized migration of static intranet content to Jive by End of 2016
Embodying Faster Forward Quick success at Soft Launch 6000+ employees... ~2000 visitors in 24 hours 5207 active in 1 month 89% adoption in 4 months Steady growth Solid increase In participation and contribution I have always followed the model of work with the fish already swimming in the right direction and the rest will naturally follow. Essentially, we worked to steer the current by raising up the early adopters. At Akamai, the majority of the company started to swim in the right direction rather quickly, with early adopters swimming slightly ahead. As a result, the usual struggle for adoption and buy in was replaced by the new struggle of keeping up with our own current. Kirsten Laaspere, Enterprise Community Manager
Questions?
Thank you! Join us at: https://community.akamai.com