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EXECUTI VE SUMMARY
When Lenovo acquired the IBM PC Computing division, it saw that customers were talking about its
products in third-party forums like notebookreview.com and thinkpads.com, and it worried that it was
being lef out of these important conversations. Lenovo took ownership of the challenge and launched
its own community. Using a peer-to-peer support community, Lenovo garnered critical worldwide views
of the customer experience for the corporate-oriented LenovoTink and the more consumer-oriented
Lenovo Idea brands. Te results have been stellar: By owning the initiative, Lenovo customer service
professionals ascertained how to align marketing, sales, service, and other departments to enhance
the customer experience. Tis alignment resulted in a 20% reduction in laptop support call rates, an
increase in agent productivity, a shortened problem resolution cycle, and an increase in Net Promoter
Scores. Tis has led to better products and a reduction in support costs.
SITUATION: LENOVO STRIVES TO REDUCE CUSTOMER SERVICE COSTS
Te cost of supporting digital lifestyle products like computers and routers is on the rise. As margins on
these products decrease and the support requirements become more complex, companies are struggling
to reduce customer service costs costs that are eating away at already-thin margins.
1
Lenovos goal
in deploying a customer service community was to reduce customer support costs while increasing the
quality of the customer experience.
2

In addition, Lenovo wanted to learn, from the customers point of view, opinions on its products the
top issues, including product features, functions, and shipment delays from a global perspective.
Conducting one focus group a year was insufcient; instead, Lenovo needed to have an ongoing
customer feedback process. To learn more about the companys high level of commitment to customer
experience and customer service, we spoke with executives at Lenovo.
BEST PRACTICE: TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THE INITIATIVE
IBM had deployed forums in the 1990s. Te mantra of if you build it, [they] will come was pervasive
then. But the lack of Web 2.0-type technology, which allows richer customer/company interactions, led
to the fzzle and demise of these early IBM forums. Using lessons learned, Lenovo changed its criteria
for success. An unstafed, underfunded, improperly deployed and managed community leads to disaster,
especially since the world of social customers, critics, and advocates has drastically changed. In taking
charge of its social media customer service initiative, Lenovo used the following best practices to ensure
its success:
August 14, 2009
Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social
Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
Best Practices In Customer Service Social Media
by Natalie L. Petouho, Ph.D.
with William Band and Andrew Magarie
2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 14, 2009
2 Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
For Business Process & Applications Professionals
Decide to own the social media initiative. Lenovo began by listening and monitoring various
online venues to understand what was being said about the company and its products. Eighty
percent of the interactions were happening in just a few communities. Tis shed light on how
Lenovos own customer service community would be a strategic play. Lenovo wanted to reduce
support costs and improve its products and services. While a 2% to 3% reduction in calls would
more than ofset the expense of the community, Lenovo aimed for 15%. Te company decided it
wasnt looking to dodge customers calls or press them to use an alternative channel; the goal was
to be in real-time, honest, direct communication with customers. Tis would reduce the time to
detect, understand, and resolve issues that would otherwise afect multiple customers. Solving
problems upfront meant fewer frustrated customers and fewer calls asking, How do I fx this?
Taking ownership also meant developing a strong set of community participation rules to
ensure that the content on the site was moderated in other words, Lenovo regulates what
is and isnt allowed on the site. Lenovo publishes this information as part of the communitys
welcome package (see Figure 1). Part of the welcome process is to be clear about posting policies.
Dealing with negative comments requires a delicate balance its important to allow negative
comments to remain on the site, especially if they are true, but Lenovo found that posts that
violate posting policies should be moderated through edits, or in the worst case, pulled from
public view and held on an archive board for review. Moderators then annotate comments that
need to be archived, and then customers are coached around the sites posting policies. In many
cases, modifcations are made to allow some or all the content to be restored to public view.
Determine all the stakeholders and invite them to participate. Lenovos community
executives invited the legal department to participate from the very beginning of the
initiative. Te legal group helped determine the terms of service for the community, and the
team reviewed the rules of engagement and moderation policies as well as the management
principles of the community. Legal also provided disclaimers for the liability of the information
posted to the site. Community executives collaborated with public relations and corporate
communications to align all communications strategies.
Recognize behavior patterns and mitigate brewing situations. Using the tools in the
community platform, Lenovo identifed/studied other stakeholders, i.e., discussion leaders/
critics, to learn their infuence in other community sites, especially third-party sites. Lenovo
determined a course of action to convert critics if not to advocate status, then at least to
a place that reduces their efect on other customers. Lenovo also learned how it important is
it to reach out to experts, the owners and the leaders in other communities that discuss your
company, and invite them to participate in your community. Without doing this, the launch
of your new community looks to them like a competitive community and can meet with some
resistance and even hostility.
2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 14, 2009
3 Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
For Business Process & Applications Professionals
Create powerful partnerships with marketing, sales, product development, and engineering.
Lenovo made interdepartmental collaboration the way we do business around here. In most
companies, the contact center, eCommerce (or eService), sales, and marketing are separate,
siloed departments. However, Lenovos executive management guided the partnership between
marketing and customer service. Marketing owned the sales part of the Web site and the
corporate blogs. Te WW Services organization owned the technical support Web site and the
new customer service community. All departments were: 1) considered internal customers
of the community, and 2) expected to provide insights into how their respective departments
operations afected the customer experience.
Companies born on the Internet (as opposed to a brick-and-mortar business) may have
an easier time understanding the level of genuine transparency required for online success.
Customers can quickly detect corporate speak and inauthentic answers this drives customers
away from communities faster than anything. Lenovo made the decision to be interested
in its customers opinions, even if they were negative. It prepared the company for a direct
relationship with the customer, and all departments were on call to develop a timely and
coherent response to customers and to take action to solve customer issues.
NEXT STEPS: LENOVOS PLANS FOR ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE COMMUNITIES
As Lenovo launched a global community efort, it noticed that the business results were dependent
on the amount of content and the level of participation. Statistics showed that the English-speaking
countries had more activity than Europe or Asia, where communities were in English only. In the
future, Lenovo will:
Enhance customer activity. To gain the same advantages in Europe and Asia, Lenovo is
considering launching instances of the community into languages native to these countries.
Repurpose community content to other customer interaction channels. Te technology
platform can allow Lenovo to repurpose the content from the community to other interaction
channels, and it is considering doing so to make cross-channel interactions more consistent.
Deploy advanced community site analytics. Customers can fnd a community in two ways: 1)
simply do a Google search, or 2) if a customer already knows about the community, he would
go there directly. Looking to the future, Lenovo will use its vendors (Lithium) advanced metrics
around content weighted by member and guest viewership to measure its success.
2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 14, 2009
4 Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
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Figure 1 The Lenovo Customer Service Community Site
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 54318
Source: Lenovo
BEST PRACTICE RESULTS: LENOVO REDUCES CUSTOMER SERVICE COSTS
Te benefts Lenovo realized from its customer service social media deployment include:
Reduction in calls to the contact center. Within a year, with just the US operations, Lenovo
experienced an approximate 20% reduction in laptop call rates due to direct and indirect call
defection.
3
In addition, the community content afected engineering. A community answer
might be considered by some as just one answer, but community answers beneft the customer
and Lenovo by addressing a root cause that, when engineering fxes it, means fewer issues down
the road for all.
2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 14, 2009
5 Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
For Business Process & Applications Professionals
Increased agent productivity. Agents, both in sales and service, access the community content
regularly. When assisting a customer, an agent will ofen provide a URL corresponding to
a community answer. Tis saves the agent from having to repeat the answers to the same
questions over and over, and it trains the customer to use the community instead of picking
up the phone. And when customers come to know that their issues are going to be directly
addressed in the community, quickly and precisely, they go there frst.
Leveraging the entire installed base, Lenovo routinely examines the top issues. When an issue has
been viewed ~12,000 times, the company knows that its a burning issue. In the past, without an
online community in place, it would have taken weeks or months for enough customers to call
with about a particular problem for the contact center business analysts to track and resolve it.
Improved problem-solving processes. Te traditional problem diagnosis cycle time from
frst-detected to resolved to qualify an issue before its brought to engineering or the
quality department is shortened by the community interaction. For Lenovo, it meant that
changes would be introduced faster into manufacturing, further improving the quality in
the feld, reducing warranty expense, reducing support calls, and enhancing the customer
experience of the product. Prior to the launch of the community, call center agents would take a
series of calls and revise trouble-shooting techniques as they learned more about the issue from
each customer. By the 10th customer, the agents might have a clearer idea of the root cause of
the problem and be in a better position to prescribe more accurate solution. Tis old process, for
the frst nine customers, while the customer service agent learns what the issue is really about,
leads to customer frustration and a poor customer experience.
In addition to a shortened problem resolution cycle, Lenovo has gained a better understanding
of why customers are dissatisfed by studying the community posts. Te community
information is more detailed than a reason for return code in a database. Return codes ofen
dont adequately describe the reason for the return from the customer viewpoint. Lenovo used
the community information to transform the product, improve the product development cycle,
and lower product return rates.
Community content that increases sales conversion rates. Lenovo found that peer-to-peer
recommendations in the community accelerated purchasing. Lenovo also linked promotion-
based ofers to discussions in the community. It found that customer purchase, loyalty, and
retention is very high in the forum to indicate their loyalty, community members list in their
signature line the number of machines they have. Some have up to 10 machines; one customer
has more than 70.
Community content that improves the knowledge management content. Lenovo uses the
information in the community to create a customer tip sheet to communicate late-breaking
6 Case Study: Lenovo Takes Ownership Of Social Media To Reduce Customer Service Costs
For Business Process & Applications Professionals
Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business
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more information, visit www.forrester.com.
2009, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions
reect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are
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news and guidance to Lenovos eSupport site. Lenovo links from the community discussion to
these documents. Te community is an additional knowledge management database enhancer.
Increased Net Promoter Scores (NPS). Lenovo provides customers with a survey to evaluate
agents as well as direct sales customer experiences. Te survey results drove changes to the
products and services, and as a result, Lenovo has seen a solid improvement to its service and
support NPS.
ENDNOTES
1
Data shows that customers who have better experiences are more retainable and spend more. Few
companies are in a position to execute properly on this vision. See the April 24, 2009, Te State Of
Customer Experience, 2009 report.
2
Deciding on the business goals before deploying traditional and social media customer service applications
is one of the fve fundamental ways to improve the ROI of your technology deployment. See the August 14,
2009, Best Practices: Five Strategies For Customer Service Social Media Excellence report.
3
Direct call defection is defned as calls that were defected from the call center because a customer posted
a question in the community and found an answer there. Indirect call defection is when the customer did
not post a question but rather just read the posts of other customers to get an answer. See the June 30, 2009,
ROI Of Online Customer Service Communities report.