The News: Customer engagement software provider Khoros announced the next-generation version of its Khoros Communities solution. The enhancements will enable companies to build online, brand-owned communities more quickly and easily. Other improvements include new health and engagement dashboards and widgets, advanced moderation, and a more modernized web application framework. The full announcement can be found on the Khoros website.
Khoros Communities Enhanced With Usability and Advanced Insights
Analyst Take: Customer engagement software provider Khoros recently announced a revamped version of its online community solution. Khoros Communities now offers more ease-of-use features, with simpler setup capabilities and drag-and-drop designs for customization. There are also other improved functionalities with moderation, insights, and end-user experience.
Communities are important tools in providing a solid customer experience and can be used by customers for self-service, education on products and services, and building connections with other users. It offers another touchpoint for companies to engage their customers, deepening loyalty, and potentially growing business.
I recently spoke with Nick Hill, General Manager of Khoros Communities, to get more detail on the enhanced Khoros Communities solutions as well as discuss the company’s well established community base.
“The scale and size of our online communities is pretty impressive and flies a bit under the radar as most are branded under customer names. Our communities see about 4.5 billion page views a year and our top 25 communities see about 500 million unique people hit them every year,” says Hill.
Ease of Use + Personalization + Enhanced Moderation = Less Effort for a Better Experience
One of the pain points this new product version hopes to smooth over is that it can be unwieldy to set up communities and they often lack opportunity for deep personalization and ties to company branding.
“We looked at this and really wanted to put some work into better enabling personalization as well as allowing the day to day community managers to tailor the experience themselves without needing costly development resources,” says Hill.
Khoros Communities now includes a robust set of preconfigured templates combined with drag-and-drop design. The theming tools allow for everything from custom fonts and color palettes in addition to the ability to tailor it down to making sure buttons and text look the same throughout the site. None of these actions require customer coding.
Additionally, moderation has been enhanced with improved workflow automation and filters that use AI to sift through content.
Measuring for Business Impact
The latest version of Khoros Communities also includes a redesigned analytics app with more powerful insights into analytics APIs and health and engagement metrics.
“We have tried to build our metrics to really align with what we know best practices are and to help community managers better monitor the success of their communities. And we are tracking not just page views and how people land on the community site, but important metrics like how long it may take someone to get a response in a forum, which is an indicator of the vitality on the platform,” says Hill.
The platform also offers real-time monitor walls and dashboards, and benchmarking where customers can be put into cohort groups to see how the health of their community is doing in comparison to others.
The enhanced metrics make for a better feed of data and proof points up the chain as the cost/benefit of community investments are reviewed.
Evolution of Communities
“I would say many companies often start with communities with the support use case as it’s the easiest to get going and provides a solid ROI to showcase. And that is certainly important,” says Hill. “However, for Khoros, our focus is not so much on being reactive in communities, but in using it as a touchpoint for proactive customer care and providing a strong network and access to relevant information that questions don’t turn into support issues.”
Hill pointed to benefits such as leveraging communities for onboarding, learning and enablement, crowdsourcing of ideas and strategies, as well as assisting the journey of new/beginner users to becoming an expert and advocate for a product or brand.
Viessmann, a commercial and residential heating and renewable energy systems provider, worked to create an online community that would serve as a “home turf” for customers, or potential customers. The hub evolved into a place where community members could get fast digital service, background information, and solutions and advice on issues. Viessmann elected to implement not only Khoros Community, but Khoros Care and Khoros Marketing to create a holistic solution. The company has seen solid success with its community:
- 118% growth in first replies/topics in the community
- 41% growth in community registrations
- 78% in total visit and organic growth
- Number of repetitive questions asked went down significantly
Communities should be a tool that every CX practitioner supporting B2B and B2C considers. Important to keep in mind is that its success depends on fresh and engaging content, good moderation, personalization, strong ties to overall brand, and the ability to move beyond a channel for issues and complaints. It is when communities hit those targets, that their true value shines.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Driving Customer Success Through an Open, Transparent Zapier Community
Driving Customer Utilization and Engagement with Communities
Customer Care Questions Drive Significant Engagement with Social Media Platforms
Khoros Announces Trustpilot Integration and Cerby Partnership
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
