Forrester Groundswell Awards

Past Winners

2008 Winners

2007 Winners

Groundswell Awards Rules

View Larger Image

Linksys by Cisco Community

By Linksys by Cisco

Linksys by Cisco is a leading provider of home networking and networked entertainment products and services. Linksys by Cisco has long held a reputation for excellent technical support and has developed a number of innovative approaches - including use of social technologies - to contain support costs while still offering responsive service. One key initiative was the introduction of an online customer support community, powered by Lithium Technologies.

Linksys by Cisco encourages community use through a hands-on strategy. While it hopes that users themselves will answer many of the questions on the community (and they do), a dedicated staff monitors the community and ensures that most questions are answered within 24 hours. Interestingly, the group of moderators has not expanded since the birth of the community: while traffic has increased tremendously, the number of unanswered questions that need answers from moderators has not increased proportionally.

Linksys by Cisco has realized significant benefits from its support community, including:

*Direct and Indirect Call Deflection: Linksys by Cisco estimates that the community deflects over 1,000 support cases monthly, and indirectly deflects (where a user finds an answer in the community without having to post a question) more than 120,000 cases per month.

*Discontinuation of Email Support: A year after Linksys by Cisco deployed its support community the company was able to discontinue e-mail support, with no negative reaction from customers or increase in phone calls.

*Back-up Business Continuity: During Christmas 2006 (a typically busy season for Linksys by Cisco), call center operations were interrupted due to an earthquake in the Asia Pacific region. Traffic on the Linksys by Cisco community went up 50 percent overnight, not only compensating for the loss of the call center and minimizing the effects of the natural disaster, but also saving Christmas for many consumers!

June 2006 to present