|
What more could Microsoft ask for? It has market share, cash reserves and brand recognition that most competitors could only dream of. But one prize still eludes the Redmond software giant: better customer-satisfaction ratings.
To tighten its bonds with users, Microsoft is spinning new tools and initiatives designed to foster a sense of community among Windows-based IT professionals.
Microsoft has already molded its developer community around initiatives such as the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), TechNet and the like. Now, the company is setting its sights on developing a sense of community among users, and especially among the powerful "IT professional" category.
Microsoft isn't doing this on a whim. According to extensive internal studies, a robust and responsive community is the No. 1 satisfaction driver among IT pros.
There's a direct correlation: By improving community outreach, Microsoft can improve customer satisfaction in one fell swoop, Microsoft has found through its own research.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates called out the need for community at the recent CEO Summit, where he addressed more than 100 of the world's top CEOs.
"Another big phenomenon is building communities around Web sites, around products. And virtually every company ought to have on their Web site the ability for their customers, their suppliers, various people to interact and their employees to see the dialogue taking place there and jump in and talk to them and help them," Gates said during his summit address late last month.
Microsoft isn't starting from scratch.
There are currently more than 200 "community sites" — more than 70 of which were created in the past 18 months — that fall under the Microsoft.com umbrella.
There are hundreds of Microsoft-related newsgroups. Participation in Microsoft Web casts and online chats has grown exponentially. And at last count, there are about 600 Microsoft-employee-authored blogs.
Check out Microsoft's current community portal site.
The Microsoft.com communities team is seeking to improve these disparate efforts and bring more coordination to the company's community push, according to Olivier Ribet, director of Microsoft communities for the company's content development and delivery team.
To lay the groundwork, Microsoft is readying a number of new tools that it will begin rolling out starting next week. Among them:
A new Web-based newsreader that will make perusing newsgroups easier. The newsreader will allow users to either post a message directly into the newsgroups or send suggestions to Microsoft. Microsoft plans to launch it June 8.
"Smart components," which are dynamic Web-page elements that Microsoft plans to expose across the Microsoft.com community sites. (Examples of these components: a list of the 10 top downloads; the hottest newsgroup discussions; transcripts of the five most popular online chats.) Microsoft plans to make available to developers, customers and other interested parties these components in the form of RSS feeds. This feature will go live in late June.
A new "Chat 2.0" client that will allow users to participate in Microsoft online chats from inside their own corporate firewalls. This will ship later this summer.
RSS, Wikis and Blogs (Oh My)
Microsoft's community portal pages are at the heart of its push, Ribet said.
Instead of relegating these portal pages to a static fate, the Microsoft.com team wants to make them more active by surfacing the latest and most frequented content, in much the same way the Office team currently does on the Office Online Web site.
The team is exposing not just the aforementioned smart components, but also technical articles written by members of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) volunteer tech guides, links to non-Microsoft community sites and other similar content.
The next step is to add even more relevant, active content, including links to Microsoft- and third-party blogs and wikis, events, MVP biographies and the like. All of this content will be made available via individual RSS feeds. By September, the team also is hoping to make this content available as Web services.
Microsoft is seeking more community participation via a recently introduced community partnership tool.
This tool, which allows third-party sites to request inclusion as part of the Microsoft community family, will enable tracking of submissions to Microsoft community sites; automatic publishing on Microsoft.com; and the designation of a personal contact at Microsoft.
At the same time, the Microsoft.com team is putting the final touches on the aforementioned newsgroup reader and chat client.
The new newsreader — in addition to being Web-based, rather than requiring Outlook Express or another Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) client — will include a number of user-interface and functionality tweaks. Among them:
Inclusion of IP address of the posters (no more anonymous posts allowed)
More UI posting and etiquette instructions
Filters to help identify unanswered questions
New MVP icon to designate MVP posters
Full-thread view
The company is planning to integrate all of these features back into the next version of Outlook Express.
The "Chat 2.0" client will add the following new features:
Ability to work over Port 80 (the server port that receives information from a Web client)
A new user interface
Support for code snippets
Passport Sign-In required for authentication
Support for 19 languages.
|
Comments (1)
Check out www.ineta.org. The International .NET Association. Supporting the global .NET user group community.
Posted by David Totzke | June 5, 2004 7:25 PM