CASE STUDY

Microsoft Corporation
Involving Customers in the Development Process and Minimizing Support Costs

COMPANY PROFILE

With approximately 90,000 employees

and $62.48 billion in annual revenue,
MICROSOFT® CORPORATION is the global
leader in computer software, services, and solutions. In addition to
its ubiquitous Windows operating systems and Office software suite,
Microsoft offers products ranging from video game consoles, cus-
tomer relationship management applications, and server and storage
software to digital music players.

The Challenge
Microsoft Corporation’s start-up business group (SBG)
incubates innovative new products as software and then
works closely with customers to gather feedback and sug-
gestions for improvements. “Our goal is to closely align
products with the needs of our user communities,” states
Elliott Lemenager, Community Manager at Microsoft. Popu-
lar products include Microsoft Hohm, Microsoft Tag, and
Microsoft Mouse Mischief.
“Facebook, Twitter, and blogs couldn’t sup-
port the level of customer engagement
we wanted. We needed a direct feedback
loop – a dedicated place where people
could exchange ideas, provide detailed
Given the explosive growth of social media, the team launch-
ing Microsoft Hohm decided to rely on social avenues to
collect customer input, drive adoption, and minimize support
costs. “Facebook, Twitter, and blogs couldn’t support the
level of customer engagement we wanted,” states
Lemenager. “We needed a direct feedback loop – a dedicated
place where people could exchange ideas, provide detailed
input on how to improve the product, and get answers to
support questions.”
To address these needs, the Microsoft Hohm team evaluated
a variety of social media solutions and chose Get Satisfaction.
In addition to offering the functionality and ease of use they
were looking for on the Hohm team, Get Satisfaction was flex-

input on how to improve the product, and ible enough to support the requirements for a wide variety of
Microsoft solutions.
get answers to support questions.”
Elliott Lemenager The Implementation
Community Manager at Microsoft
(MICROSOFT LOVES ITS CUSTOMERS)

Get Satisfaction worked with Microsoft to create a custom

Lemenager is responsible for building social communities
solution that addressed these needs head on. Like all Get
for Microsoft Hohm, an online web application that empow-
Satisfaction sites, the Microsoft Hohm site provides four ways
ers consumers to analyze their energy usage and lower their
for people to engage: ask a question, share an idea, report a
energy costs by applying energy-saving recommendations.
problem, and give praise. Microsoft employees – including
Consumers can log into the Hohm site, input basic informa-
software engineers – engage with customers on a daily basis,
tion, and receive their home energy consumption (their
responding to questions, ideas, and issues so that the entire
“Hohm score”) and compare their usage with others. Con-
community can view them. People can also see if their sug-
sumers can also fine-tune their Hohm score by answering a
gestion or issue has already been raised, check on the status
few more questions about their home, appliances, and more.
of a request, and add their thoughts and suggestions.
And if a user’s utility provider is a partner of Microsoft Hohm,
they can link their utility account with their Hohm profile and
receive their actual historical energy data.
 Users can easily access the site through the feedback button
on the official Microsoft Hohm website. It’s also integrated
with the Microsoft Hohm Facebook fan page. ”This integra-
tion helps to drive more people interested in deeper discus-
sions to our Get Satisfaction site simply because it’s more
accessible,” states Lemenager. “And as the community
manager, I find the integration to be a huge time saver. I
spend a lot of time in both sites and can go back and
forth seamlessly.”
The Outcomes
(MICROSOFT LOVES GET SATISFACTION)
“In our opinion, Get Satisfaction is the one of the best social
media feedback tools available today,” states Benjamin
Gauthey, Digital Marketing, Microsoft Corp. “Our customers
love it because it creates a dedicated place where they can
be heard and have a direct connection with our engineer-
ing team.” And the Microsoft Hohm team loves it because
they’ve been able to accomplish their strategic objectives.
“In our opinion, Get Satisfaction is the one
of the best social media feedback tools
available today. Our customers love it be-
cause it creates a dedicated place where
they can be heard and have a direct con-
nection with our engineering team.”
Benjamin Gauthey
Microsoft Digital Marketing
Aligning Development with Customer
Priorities
With Get Satisfaction, they have tight alignment between
what the market needs and what their developers actually
create. “In many ways, we’re using Get Satisfaction to engage
customers in an agile development process – they express
their opinions, needs, and desires, and we analyze their
input and work on what’s most important to them,” states
Gauthey. For example, customers created a huge buzz about
needing real-time insight into their energy consumption.
This was already on the to-do list, but armed with hard data
about the demand for this functionality, they moved it up
the priority list.
The long-form communications supported by Get
Satisfaction (as opposed to the short “tweets” allowed on
Twitter, for example) encourage people to provide thought-
ful, detailed input and responses – just what the Microsoft
Hohm engineering team needs. But the site is also enabling
the engineers to engage directly with customers – something
they found difficult to do in the past. Explains Gauthey: “Get
Satisfaction is keeping our developers focused on what’s
important because they can engage directly with customers
and understand how it’s helping people.”
Enabling Self-Service Support with a
Dynamic Knowledge Base
The Microsoft Hohm team has also found Get Satisfaction
to be much more effective than email for handling techni-
cal support issues. As customers communicate issues and
bugs, the team – and other community members – respond
back, automatically updating a searchable knowledge base.
“This saves us a lot of time, because people ask a lot of the
same questions,” states Lemenager. “Now they can go to our
Get Satisfaction site first – before they pick up the phone –
and see if their question or issue has already been addressed.
It’s actually faster and easier for our customers – and less
costly for us.” This approach to first-line customer support
has enabled the Hohm project team to stay small and lean.
As the Microsoft Hohm social community grows, Lemenager
believes that its Get Satisfaction site will become more
important over time. “The voice of the consumer can get lost
as a community grows. With Get Satisfaction, our users will
always have a dedicated space where they can be heard and
engage directly with our team.”
ABOUT GET SATISFACTION
Get Satisfaction provides a community-based software platform that helps companies
engage online customers wherever they are—a company website, the Get Satisfaction
network or inside social systems like Facebook. Get Satisfaction enables open, trans-
parent conversations between customers and their peers, and with employees of the
brands and organizations they are passionate about.
Get Satisfaction supports more than 36,000 customer communities with more than
20,000 organizations participating. Companies use Get Satisfaction to engage their
customers in a effort to improve customer satisfaction, reduce support costs, provide
market feedback and increase online awareness.
Get Satisfaction communities are available at www.getsatisfaction.com.
400 Second Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94107
(877) 339-3997 TOLL-FREE
getsatisfaction.com
twitter.com/getsatisfaction