Bringing people together used to require a large physical space. Now we can get together more easily and virtually on the web, but it’s the same idea: trade goods or ideas by bringing the buyers and sellers together in one space. So while you may not have a “Forum Vinarium” (yes, for wine) like the ancient Romans you can still delight your customers by providing a place to exchange information.

Do you need forums?

According to the latest SSPA survey, 45% of members have forums in place and another 9% are planning to implement forums within a year, so that’s a majority.  Forums are particularly likely to flourish if you have a community of dedicated users that find personal benefits to answering other users’ questions. So your chances of success are good if your users have lots of how-to questions (as opposed to “this is broken” complaints) or if you have a core of users who offer consulting or other services for which forum participation would be a good entry. On the other end, if your users tend to be corporate IT users that are shy about sharing their experience and impatient for answers, forums are probably not a good fit.

Don’t automatically rule out forums if you tried them in the past and they failed. Try again with a better approach (keep reading.)

Get organized

If you’re just starting out consider having just one forum or a handful of categories. It’s best if you can make the forum look intriguingly busy – as it would with a screenful of new posts each day or two. Add categories as traffic increases. As a starting point, consider the categories you already use for knowledge management or case tracking. Hint: if the categories don’t work well for the forums they are probably not ideal for tracking documents or cases…

Highlight new stuff

Make it easy to find the latest postings by highlighting new and unread threads. You want your customers to find what they need quickly so they want to come back again and again.  Look for a tool that allows users to subscribe to particular forum categories so they are alerted to new postings for the ultimate sticky site. You may even consider an
RSS solution.

Moderate without pain

The most successful forums are not abandoned to the users: they have moderators who provide answers to postings that languish too long and tactfully point users to the FAQ section when needed.
Moderators may be your own customers, who will gladly do the job for the glory if they can find personal or professional rewards for doing so. Recognize their contributions by posting their names, biographies, and pictures on the site – the odd logo mug doesn’t hurt either. Moderators are usually appointed to watch over specific categories.
You can also recognize frequent contributors (that is, the ones that provide many answers). Some forum tools provide ratings and other devices to highlight them.

Moderators can also take on a monitoring role, ensuring that offensive or threatening postings are removed. Post the rules of conduct for all to see and use a light touch when removing postings: your goal is to maintain a respectful environment, not establishing a censorship bureau.

Know your customers

If your customers can freely browse your knowledge base, they should be able to browse the forums, too. Posting to forums usually requires registration, although screen names can be provided for anonymity. Aim for a self-service registration and password retrieval environment for speed and lowered costs for you.

With business customers, access to the support site is usually gated so forums will be inside the protected area as well.

Pick the right tools

Unfortunately most CRM systems do not include forums so chances are you will need to go on a separate shopping expedition. (If your tool includes forum functionality, by all means start with what you have.)
Some names to start with include Jive Software, Lithium (a hosted solution), and the open source phpBB if you enjoy the
do-it-yourself approach.

Mine the data

Well-attended forums fill up with interesting material. Grab the good stuff for the knowledge base itself, and help (or force) users to query the forums before posting a new thread. One of the main benefits of forums, above and beyond case deflection, may well be the building of the knowledge base.

About the Author…

Francoise Tourniaire is the founder and principal of FT Works, a consulting firm that helps technology companies create and grow their support operations. Together with David Kay, she’s the author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge.  For more information, visit www.ftworks.com or call 650 559 9826.