I've started this page as a way of kicking off a conversation internally at DML about what the Community could/should do. It's on the Staging area, so no-one apart from DML internal personnel can see it.

- MAH

What's on this page

This page starts with some examples of work the dmCommunity department could be doing, based on a Rob/Mary brainstorm.

Then, to put the cat among the pigeons, I've included (anonymised) quotes from DML staff members, giving their views on what the job of dmCommunity is.I've deliberately picked some strong views, to get the discussion going.

Please read and comment

Add your comments. Write questions. Make suggestions. Use the box at the bottom of the page...

Menu

Things a community might do

This is short-term (weeks or months) as it is intense, high participation/low membership and expensive in man hours.

• Ideas
• Testing new products

Types of user

Basic (general sort of people)

• What button do I press to make it go?
• Mostly passive massive who want simple, easily accessible content

Advanced (more skilled super-users)

• How do I programme a button that makes it only go once every 3.5 minutes?
• May be more likely to respond/converse if they have a query
• Query: do these groups use same or different structurse?

Technically advanced (hackers)

• less than 10 dealers are like this we value them
• What code base do you use and how do I modify it?
• How do I link my super-shopping system to your EDI link?

Lifestyle super-users (specific/applied needs)

• Im in financial services, how do I manage call recording so Im FSA compliant?
• Were not sure how many of these be good to get some numbers
• RGD: also consider how many latent people we have who might be revealed by release of more sophisticated products

Includes

• User guides
• How tos (including examples)
• FAQs

• Industry updates
• New products/services

• Newsletters
• Website announcements
  

• User feedback on a new product
• Collate FAQs and post useful help
• Collate feature requests and feed back to prod mgmt

• Statement of culture (were not a faceless telco)
• Way of listening to dealers and customers
• MAH: how open are we able to be? Are there matters that an open company would be happy to answer that we want to keep private?

• Eg: getting the best out of a CRM system
• Our customers will be more expert at getting results out of the system than we will
• Example: XX has been using Salesforce and has moved to Sugar; he has some clever ideas on emailing customers who havent renewed a maintenance subscription. He might wish to compare notes with others on how to do this the most effective way.

• Customers
• Dealers
• Support
• Community management
• Product management
• Consultants

• "Why hire a community manager if you already have dealer and customer support managers?
• "Not quite sure what the community is for, apart from bringing out a regular newsletter - and hopefully sorting out dmNotes."
• "It'd be great to have a wiki for internal discussion and knowledge sharing. For example we could use it for managing update requests for documents, whether internal or dmNotes. But I think we need to get proper paper systems in place before we try anything like that, or no-one will use it."

• "By community, do you mean forum? If so, I don't think there's any benefit to starting a community right now. What we should be doing is improving our existing communications systems - especially dmNotes."
• "I'm not sure what our customers would use a forum for. I mean, how much is there to say about dmConnect?
• "If you are going to start online discussion, the best place to kick off is with the dealers. There's only a small number of very committed dealers, but they've got something to gain from a two-way conversation."
• "I cant foresee from a customer perspective what they might discuss if not technical issues and then its a support forum."

• "Someone needs to start managing dmNotes properly."
• "Top of my wish list for change has got to be dmNotes. "Theres so much work that needs to be done with dmNotes theres no instructions for half the products we use, no guidelines or theyre very technical, and need to be translated into what is needed for the customer."
• "dmNotes is a management problem, not a writing one."
• "dmNotes is, frankly, embarrassing. Apart from the embedded notes, I don't think customers ever use it. Most of them wouldn't even know where to find it."
  

• "The newsletter is great - just regular contact with customers is a great step forward."
• "It's fine, though I don't think it's going to set the world on fire yet."
• "A community/communications review should include the language we use when talking to customers. At the moment it's a bit technical, and lots of people find that offputting."
• "When I heard DML was hiring a Community person, I hoped it'd be to help with copy - newsletters, dmNotes, website copy. There's lots of work to be done there, I'm not so fussed about online communities."

• "If your job is communications in general - not just online community - then it'd be great to review the Cerberus templates, some of them are very out of date."