{"id":254439,"date":"2023-04-28T16:09:59","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T20:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/?p=254439"},"modified":"2026-01-15T12:34:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:34:40","slug":"social-metrics-for-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/blog\/social-metrics-for-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Metrics for Support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-lead\">As Support develops community channels it must consider how to measure the impact of these strategies. This article introduces a few metrics to consider.<\/p>\n<h2>Community Metrics for Support<\/h2>\n<p>Here are the community measurement practices for Support<\/p>\n<h4>Active Forums and Channels<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The number of distinct sites where your products and service-related issues are discussed in an active and ongoing way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>May include social planforms, your own discussion forums, or those hosted by third parties (e.g. product user groups, professional associations, publications, etc.).<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Thread Density<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The proportion of discussion threads that include topics directly related to your products or services. <em>Density may be as high as 100% if an active forum is dedicated to your product. <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Customer Engagement<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The percent of the customer base that actively uses the community.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>This indicates the extent to which the entire installed base for a specific product line or brand uses a community (e.g. if individuals from 100 companies out of a total installed base of 1,000 companies use a forum the Customer Engagement rate is 10%).<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Entitlement<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The percent of community users that are entitled to access assisted support (e.g. they are covered by an active support contract).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>This is the percent of the \u201cengaged customers\u201d that are entitled to request assisted support.\u00a0 How many &#8220;social&#8221; users can you identify that also have access to receive assisted support from your team.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>High Severity<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The extent to which topics of high\/critical severity are discussed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>High Severity of 5% indicates that at least 5 percent of the discussions about your products relate to issues that impeded the user\u2019s ability to successfully use a key product feature and\/or to use the product to support a critical business function.\u00a0 You can align this metric with your own severity level definitions.\u00a0 Note: Social channels are typically not great channels for getting support for high severity issues.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Deflection<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The rate that existing threads successfully resolve customer issues to the point where issues are resolved without engaging assisted support resources.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>For a definition of deflection see the article titled: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/measure-deflection\/\">How to Define and Measure Deflection<\/a><\/p>\n<h4>New vs. Known<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The rate that new topics related to your products are being discussed but have not been previously reported to Support.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>If 20% of issues discussed through the community are unfamiliar and no solution has been developed the \u201cNew Rate&#8221; is 20%.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>If the remaining 80% of issues are familiar, or known, the &#8220;Known Rate is 80%.&#8221; A high known Rate indicates that you have a greater opportunity to resolve these issues through self-help channels.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Topic Coverage<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The rate that topics discussed within the community are fully documented by a \u201cknown\u201d answer (KB article, instructional video, prior discussion thread, etc.).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>If 30% of issues discussed through the community can be resolved by a previously documented answer to an issue from the knowledge base or other discussion thread, then the \u201cTopic Coverage Rate\u201d rate is 30%.\u00a0 Ideally most of not all of these topics will be resolved by previously documented and shared knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Knowledge Gap<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The extent to which topics discussed within the community are not addressed within the knowledge base or by other shared knowledge resources.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>The \u201cNew Rate\u201d indicates the rate that issues discussed within the community or social channels cannot be answered by existing knowledge base articles.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Sentiment<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The general tone of the active forum as it relates to customer \/ user feelings about your products and services.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>A sentiment score is typically calculated by using a text analytics tool designed to extract customer \u201cfeelings\u201d from the text of a community post.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">To learn more about measuring customer sentiment and satisfaction check out\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/blog\/best-practices-for-developing-customer-insights\/\">Best Practices for Developing Customer Insights<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout-box callout-box--light-grey\">\n<h2>How to Measure the Impact of Digital Channels<\/h2>\n<p>If you want greater insights about the use and effectiveness of your shared knowledge assets, community and other social resources check out:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/blog\/reach-delivered-answered\/\">Measure the Impact of Support Knowledge: The Relationship Between Support Reach, Answers Delivered, and Answers Accepted<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Support develops social channels it must consider how to measure the impact of these strategies. This article introduces a few metrics to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":252466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[385],"tags":[59,387,80,129,91,108,33,62,48,140],"class_list":["post-254439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metrics","tag-adoption","tag-customer-engagement","tag-customer-health","tag-effectiveness","tag-efficiency","tag-expand","tag-metrics","tag-outcomes","tag-retention","tag-success","post_outcome-adopt-best-practices","post_outcome-benchmark-performance","post_outcome-grow-revenue","post_outcome-retain-customers","post_outcome-success","post_activity-adoption","post_activity-expansion-sales","post_activity-onboarding","post_activity-renewal","post_activity-success-planning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254439"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254875,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254439\/revisions\/254875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}