Zapier launches new community with inSided
We’re absolutely delighted to announce that Zapier have launched their new community on the inSided platform. To celebrate the launch and find out what tips and tricks they have up their sleeve to get the most from their community we caught up with Jesse Parker, Head of Community at Zapier. Here’s how our chat went:
First of all thanks for chatting to us Jesse and congratulations on your new community! Happy?
Yes! We are super happy with our new community and the entire implementation process. Your team was an absolute pleasure to work with. We felt supported every step of the way. Everyone was very responsive and willing to work with our requirements and deadlines.
Briefly, what exactly is Zapier’s mission, product, and what’s your role at the company?
Zapier’s mission is to democratize automation. Zapier is an online automation tool that connects apps and services to automate repetitive tasks and get more done at work without needing to know how to code.
I lead Community at Zapier and have been with the company for over 6 years. I started as employee #8, starting in Support and wearing several other hats in the company before being asked to grow and manage a user community.
Backtracking a little, when did Zapier first decide to start a community and why?
Around 3 years ago, Zapier decided to launch an Experts Program, for consultants and agencies using Zapier to help their clients. A part of our program was a private community, exclusive to our Certified Experts. A few years later, in July of 2019, we were ready to expand this community to our global userbase.
Moving on to the new platform: Why did you choose inSided? What specific features were you looking for and how is the project going so far?
Aside from the fantastic relationship and rapport we’ve developed with the team, there were 2 main features that confirmed our decision to move to the inSided platform was the right one.
- inSided is an out-of-the-box solution, yet really customizable. We now don’t have to worry about engineering resources or waiting for a change to be implemented. Our entire team is empowered to make changes to the look, feel and functionality of the platform at any time. Having that autonomy is extremely important to us.
- The moderation functionality is really robust. We’re able to view, filter, assign, label, and tag posts on the backend, allowing our team to divide and conquer to help more of our customers, faster. Being able to move quickly and efficiently through new topics and replies as well as view questions that don’t yet have a marked answer allows us to ensure our customers always get the answers they need.
What is the primary business goal of the community?
Our mission is to create a community that will cultivate, inspire, and connect automation evangelists. Our vision is to become the place to go to discuss software automation and set a new industry standard for customer community engagement.
What would you say are the main KPI’s you’re tracking for the community?
We have 1 KPI for Community at the moment (along with several other guardrail metrics) which is to increase the overall average sessions per user. This helps us capture both active and passive activity and gives us a pulse on how well we’re doing with our engagement strategies.
On that, any great tips on engagement strategies for people looking into community options?
Not right now—we’re still learning this! I can say that making Community just to serve a support function makes it very hard to foster engagement and that while we started with that approach, we’re quickly moving away from it.
Finally, if you had to describe the project in one word what would it be?
Supportive.
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! We’re extremely proud to have Zapier as a customer, and we’re looking forward to a great partnership.
If you’re interested in how our customers are using their online communities and seeing their results that prove the ROI of the community, check out our customers page.
