Telligent Community 7.0 empowers companies to evolve customer service from a cost center into a revenue driver

DALLAS, TX – September 19, 2012 – Telligent, one of the pioneers in social software for the enterprise, today introduced Telligent Community 7.0, its newest version of online community software designed to elevate customer experience through social customer service. Telligent Community 7.0 gives companies the most comprehensive solution for social customer service that engages business decision makers before, during, and after the sale. The newest product release addresses the needs of customer care while creating opportunities for product development, sales and marketing, creating a 360-degree view into the customer experience.

“Online communities have long been championed as channels to reduce costs through online self-service and peer-to-peer support,” said Rob Howard, Founder and CTO of Telligent. “While there is tremendous value in social tools helping businesses scale their support offerings and lower the burden on customer service agents, we have extended this view to achieve so much more. Social customer service is social support plus one; it has the power to influence purchasing decisions that drive revenue.”

According to a recent report by Forrester Research, Inc., “Seventy percent of online consumers expect businesses to try harder to provide superior online customer service.”[1] And, the bottom-line impact of using online communities for social customer service is more than just cost savings; it influences buying decisions. Findings from a recent survey by Forrester Research indicate that “tech buyers who are in the purchase process use web and community resources to find 70% of the information they need before they engage with a sales resource.”[2]

Telligent Community 7.0 was designed to help businesses increase customer satisfaction while at the same time boost their bottom lines. Key elements of Telligent’s new solution for social customer service include:

Social self-service: Providing self-service through peer-to-peer support forums and online FAQs saves you money but it also saves your customers time. Telligent Community 7.0 dynamically scores community content and only surfaces the most relevant information, delivering your customers the right answers in real-time.

Expert discovery: Current customers and potential buyers seek expertise to make business decisions. Telligent Community 7.0 recognizes and rewards people who contribute high quality content and showcases their expertise where others can find it with ease.

Knowledge sharing: Online resources like discussion forums, product documentation and how-to videos help customers find solutions and solve problems. Telligent Community 7.0 makes it easy for people to discover and share interesting content with familiar social networking tools such as activity streams, #hashtags, likes and @mentions.

Crowdsourcing new ideas: Online communities link customers, partners, potential buyers and your employees together. Telligent Community 7.0 makes it possible for you to source new ideas and get feedback for product improvements from the entire community through forums, ratings and reviews, polls and even private groups for trials and beta testing.

Mobile community: Exceptional customer service knows no boundaries. Telligent Community 7.0 makes activity streams, documents, support forums, polls, videos and more accessible and from any mobile device.

Empowering your sales force: With Telligent Community 7.0, your marketing and sales teams can listen and respond to community conversations to gain a better understanding of your customers’ business needs while at the same time gain access to qualified buyers.

Leveraging your data: Community analytics for Telligent Community 7.0 are available directly within your online community as well as from a dashboard for role-based viewing by customer care, product management, sales and marketing team members. Key metrics deliver insights into community health and vitality, service responsiveness, content effectiveness and networking strength – the essential indicators that your social customer service community is achieving business objectives.

Making social portable: Community isn’t just a destination; it’s a social engagement path that connects you with customers in the places that matter most to your business. With Telligent Community 7.0, you can add social engagement – ratings and reviews, comments, likes and @mentions – to your online content and create community wherever your customers are.

Scaling and managing reputation: One of Telligent’s most innovative and most important enhancements is the added reputation management system. It is a differentiator and game changer for social customer service communities. Reputation dynamically scores content, and the people who author content, so that community members gain quick access to only the highest quality, most relevant information. The system also highlights community members through recognition and rewards such as leaderboards and badges.

By delivering more efficient self-service and collaborative support, reputation helps reduce volume to expensive, agent-driven channels and builds brand loyalty that directly impacts customer lifetime value.

Dell relies on Telligent for its TechCenter community where it connects customers and employees to share knowledge, best practices and information about Dell products and installations. A global community that serves enterprise customers throughout the United States, China, Japan and Germany, Dell TechCenter helps IT decision makers find information, make educated decisions about technology purchases, and then use this knowledge to perform their jobs better using Dell products.

“Dell TechCenter’s community members are highly technical IT administrators who want to learn more about Dell directly from our engineers,” said Jeff Sullivan, Senior Marketing Manager, Communities and Social Media at Dell. “We create a bridge between our engineers, prospects and customers to share knowledge and helpful information. The community shows that we are personal, social and helpful to our customers.”

The entire Dell TechCenter success story can be found by visiting http://telligent.com/customers/m/success_stories/1353581.aspx.

Telligent Community 7.0 is available now. For more information, please visit http://telligent.com/landing-pages/p/telligent-community-7-0.aspx.

Today’s announcement coincides with Telligent’s introduction of Telligent Enterprise 4.0, enterprise social software designed to advance sales enablement and internal support through employee social engagement.

Telligent Enterprise 4.0 is available now. For more information, please visit http://telligent.com/landing-pages/p/telligent-enterprise-4-0.aspx.

[1] The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012, Forrester Research, Inc., July 11, 2012.
[2] Your Community Upgrade: From Experiment to Strategic Approach, Forrester Research, Inc., July 12, 2012.