myFICO: Online Customer Community Drives Accomplishment of Support, Marketing, and Sales Goals

By FICO

myFICO is the consumer division of FICO, the organization that created the FICO credit score that lenders use. As a company operating within a heavily regulated industry, FICO is limited in the information it can provide to customers. While myFICO can tell consumers what their FICO credit scores are and the components that make up that score, it cannot directly give advice for how to improve those scores.

Education and support through personal credit-related situations are critical to a satisfying customer experience, but formerly were needs FICO could not address. Using social technologies, myFICO has brought its customer network together in an online community where consumers can share credit knowledge, experiences, and advice with each other (http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/ ). Registered users can post messages in the community, but anyone can view message threads and benefit from the multitude of online conversations on credit-related topics.

With close to 20,000 posts, 400,000 searches, and 10,000 new registrations every month, the Lithium-powered community is thriving and delivering benefits to both consumers and myFICO.

* Lowering Support Call Volume and Length: The community contributed significantly to overall customer service inquiries declining over the last year by 1% (vs. 23% growth the year prior). myFICO also directs about 10% of callers to the community for more detailed user-to-user help, helping to decrease myFICO’s average support call length.

* Attracting New Customers: Community URLs have grown to account for 39% of all myFICO.com traffic from search engines, significantly helping FICO achieve its Web marketing goals.

* Driving Sales: The community helps FICO achieve its sales goals in two ways – the average spend of a customer jumps 66% after they join the myFICO community, and 13% of all myFICO online sales involve viewing a community page.

* Enhancing the Customer Experience: Facilitating user access to helpful educational content and advice helps myFICO deliver a satisfying customer experience, a key component of the company’s strategy to attract new customers and enhance the loyalty of existing customers.

March 2007 to Present

Overall Rating: (21 votes)

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