Bloghound

What motivates people to help other people in online communities?  Personal satisfaction, recognition, peer respect, and being treated as “insiders.”

Yesterday’s New York Times has a good article about Justin McMurry who volunteers 20 hours a week in Verizon’s online community, helping customers with technical questions. (“Customer Serivice? Ask a Volunteer”)

The secret to success, says Verizon’s director of e-commerce Mark Studness, is creating an online environment that attracts the “super-users” who are the people who so actively post and help other people, answering thousands of questions that Verizon would otherwise have to pay its people to answer. The right environment, says Studness, “is where the magic happens.”

Lyle Fong, founder of Lithium Technologies, a community technology platform, believes that super-users  in customer communities are like online gamers. This is why Lithium offers rating systems for the contributors with rankings, badges and ‘kudo counts.’

“That alone is addictive,” said Fong. “They are revered by their peers.”

In addition to reducing call center costs Verizon has found that the online customer communities have providing new product and service ideas and created a large searchable knowledge base.

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