Connie Bensen

This post is dedicated to my sister (who was dumbfounded yesterday to hear that we bought costumes). To explain – we are very conservative. But on Sunday when our daughter went back to college, she really pressed for a costume dinner tonite to celebrate Halloween.

So for all of you with little ones, take note of the influence children have on their parents! On Monday night we went shopping. We invited my husband’s partner & his wife, but they didn’t show up in costume, so they took photos & had a good laugh!

Below – Achmed (daughter’s boyfriend), Willy Wonka (daughter), yours truly wearing daughter’s wig, my husband in his dredlocks (which weren’t safe to cook in!), daughter’s friend & her boyfriend. I sewed those two capes  a few years ago.

Wouldn’t Martha Stewart be proud? Nothing like some organs for a Halloween party!

My journey in the past few months has been influenced by so many people! Three months ago Dan Schawbel commented on a couple of blog posts & soon after asked me to help edit his magazine.

I purchased the first edition & was totally impressed with the depth of the information. It also provided much guidance as I formulated my personal brand that you see here (and everywhere you interact with me). One intuitively realizes the importance of branding but doesn’t necessarily realize the various facets of it. Dan is a leader in the area of branding & has now became EMC’s first Social Media person.

The second edition will be available on November 1st. After proofing it, I can say that it’s filled with many thought provoking articles. My article is about getting off your blog… yes! I spend a fair amount of time at Facebook & Twitter too.

You can find subscription information here. And from what I’ve heard, Dan has some great interviews lined up for the third edition! 

A friend who’s doing consulting work asked me “Everyone’s asking about the ROI on community building. At your work at ACDSee, your work in building a community, does your management require some sort of justification or lead generation goals etc?”.

The answer to the question is that no one has asked me to justify my proposed work with specific numbers but I do need to provide a needs assessment & analysis for my proposals. My first project is based on the expectation of a considerable ROI, but I haven’t quantified it.

About my project: Our goal is to maximize communication with our customers in all ways that we interact with them (website, forums, blog, from within the app’s, tech support, etc). The expectation of ROI is that by making all the points of contact relevant can only increase customer satisfaction. My prediction for our ROI is:

• Less demand on Customer Service & Tech Support as people more easily self serve themselves. My sister & I found that to be true at our site.
• Marketing will have more information as we place polls in the forums.
• Product development will have direct feedback thru betas.
• Our blog has already proven an excellent place to teach how to use our products utilizing multimedia options.

My project includes benchmarking where we’re at now & monitoring the results on a regular basis. This will be imperative for me to show the growth of my efforts in a qualitative way & report on the progress.

To answer the question I’m going to draw on some resources others have gathered.

Will Pate presents these facts about online community ROI:

• Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
• 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
• Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)
• Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)

Sean O’Driscoll built on that post & listed out specifics for Support, Sales & Marketing & Product/Program Dev’t.

So, stop pitching community and start pitching the ROI benefits!! Online success rate!! Satisfaction!! Cost model improvements! Product improvement!

As I mentioned, we’re aiming for Customer Satisfaction at ACDSee. I had read Sean’s post when it was first published & it’s interesting that upon rereading it now, that the word ‘localization’ jumped out at me. When I was at the ACDSee offices localization was added to my vocabulary. We offer software in 4 languages & I’m now aware of the implications of that.

This was a good exercise because I can use some of these facts in my proposal. Do you have other helpful sources on ROI for Community Building?

Do you have traditions in your family? Sunday dinner has become important to us ever since my daughter started dating. She’s a freshman in college now, so it’s even more important. I enjoy cooking a big dinner & then relaxing with everyone. This morning was impromptu in that we invited her boyfriend’s family to join us. I had a big turkey, my hubby made mashed potatoes & we had wild rice stuffing (yes, practicing for Thanksgiving, maybe).

We bought this table last Christmas & I love extending it to it’s 110". Our first table was a wedding gift from my parents 21 years ago! It’s downstairs now and fragile. Our daughter liked to dance on it when she was a toddler.

I really took a break from work this weekend. Yesterday I spent 3 hrs getting organized. There’s an Evernote beta & it includes synching by device. I may just pay the $50 to have internet synching between my personal & work pc’s. Last night my sister was playing with GoToMeeting. She asked me to show her how I use Copernic. She was impressed with it’s power. It’s loaded on my work laptop now. I’m intrigued to try Utterz. Chris has been using it, but Jeremiah’s overview makes it look way easy! Maybe I’ll surprise you?!

Yesterday I talked with both my sister & sister-in-law by phone. It’s hard to live with out the voice connection. Both of them read my blogs, but it’s nice to connect on the phone.

I booked flights for my next trip to my offices and it will coincide with the staff Christmas party, My husband is going with me. We’re flying from Fargo to Chicago, then to Vancouver & on to Victoria. And yes – Chicago is the WRONG direction! After a week in Victoria we’re flying from Victoria thru Vancouver to Seattle for the Facebook Conference. (United has some odd flight connections). I’m starting to arrange a blogger meet-up dinner for Tues evening. The conference is Wed, & I’m speaking on Thurs morning. Then we’ll fly home on the red eye (thru Chicago again to get back to North Dakota). I’m really looking forward to showing Seattle to my husband! I was there in 2004 & the food & sites were awesome!

Our daughter is bringing a friend home for Halloween & their boyfriends are coming over. She’s pressing for a costume dinner. We may have to surprise her by joining in. It would be very uncharacteristic of us, but maybe it’s time for a new tradition?!