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Case study: How Pipefy reached a 95% self-service rate in less than a year

In June 2020, Pipefy launched their community with one goal in mind: to decrease the number of support tickets and put self-service and peer-to-peer support at the heart of the customer experience. One year later, nearly 95% of support inquiries are solved by peers.

We spoke to Juliana Spinardi, Community Specialist at Pipefy, about the community journey, the impact on engagement and self-service rates, and what’s next for the Pipefy community.

A quest for better self-service rates

When Spinardi joined Pipefy, inSided had already been implemented at the request of the CEO. Her task? To launch and grow a 100% digital-led community.

In the very beginning, the goal was to reduce pressure on the Support team and decrease the number of tickets by allowing customers to self-serve in the community. But soon, they discovered that community is a long-term investment that isn’t just about increasing self-service rates, but delivering a better customer experience overall through, engagement, education, and events.

Setting benchmarks and reaching a 95% self-service rate

Pipefy’s community was promoted through email invitations to new customers but also pushed by Support, Customer Success, and in the product itself. For example, a simple in-app message would prompt people to visit the community to find support content and share feedback. In the early days, Pipefy employees would answer questions and join discussions, but soon, as more customers joined, the peer-to-peer support solution Pipefy was looking for began to take form.

Today, almost 95% of questions are answered by peers.

So how did they get there? Spinardi created a community strategy based on clear benchmarks for engagement such as:

  • Average Response Time – Benchmark: 3-4 days
  • Users with at least one post – Benchmark: 30%
  • Questions Answered by Peers – Benchmark: 60% for mature, 35% new customers
  • % of Questions Answered – Benchmark: 65%

Next, Spinardi created a one-year plan to help reach those goals. But what exactly helped them reach these numbers in just one year? While getting customers to come to the community is important, once they’re there – engagement is what matters. And to foster engagement, you need to create a rich community experience.

Creating one central hub for the customer experience

Pipefy’s community has four core components; community, knowledge base, ideation, and events. The community section includes news, announcements, Q&A, and discussions while the knowledge base hosts all educational content where users can find guides and best practices. The ideation section allows users to share their ideas and feedback, and, lastly, events, a core driver for engagement.

Driving engagement with events

Events have been a big part of Pipefy’s community strategy since the start, from monthly meetups to bigger events such as the Pipefy Summit with over 1000 attendees. In the monthly meetups, customers are invited to share their experiences and use cases, contributing to collective knowledge for the wider community. Pipefy also boasts an impressive 45% attendance rate.

Another part of events is open office hours, where customers have the opportunity to talk directly to product specialists and ask questions about Pipefy and its features.

The value of a Superuser program

A few months down the line, Spinardi decided to create a Superuser program. She kept seeing the same people replying to questions and showing up to events. So it got her thinking, “How can I reward (and retain) these people?” These users are the hardcore Pipefy lovers that work for the community. And because of that, they deserve to be recognized and to feel special.

Initially, the most active users were invited to the superuser program and received a welcome kit for including a nice t-shirt, and mugs and other swag to make them feel part of the community team. Today, users can apply to the superuser program or nominate other users based on their contributions.

Superusers can enjoy early access to beta features, a private group in the community, free access to online events and conferences, plus they’re recognized in the community with a special badge.  Not to mention that superusers can use their points and exchange them for various products in the Pipefy store and get anything from headphones to sneakers.

So how exactly do Pipefy’s super users contribute? Well, they are typically the first ones to answer questions in the community and share best practices with other users, having a significant impact on the self-service rate. Plus, they will be incredibly invested in the product and often provide very detailed feedback for features and roadmap updates. Ultimately, serving not just the community, but the entire company at large.

Using the Productboard integration to centralize customer feedback

Pipeline’s ideation section is a big part of the community. It’s where users come to share their ideas, feedback and submit feature requests. But since launching the Pipefy Community, they noticed they had a few issues resolve in terms of how that customer feedback was communicated back to Product. In particular, they struggled to centralize the ideas.

Using inSided’s Productboard integration, they can immediately add relevant ideas to the product roadmap and measure comments and feedback in different categories.

Building a better relationship with Product

More than just centralizing customer feedback, the community team can now work closely with the product team. Previously, syncing with Product Managers was an issue, but nothing a simple new workflow couldn’t solve.

“Just using the Productboard integration and Slack, we’ve created a new workflow where community and product can work together – it’s been a game-changer,” says Spinardi.

She also stresses the importance of the voice of the customer, “Since we added the Productboard integration, we don’t miss ideas and comments anymore. It always bothered me when members don’t get a proper response.” Today, a Product Manager is on duty to make sure that new ideas submissions get the attention they deserve and are added to Productboard where appropriate.

To date, Pipefy users have submitted a total of 159 ideas, 14 of which so far have been delivered – with plenty more on the roadmap.

What’s next for the Pipefy community?

With year one of the Pipefy community in the rearview mirror, next, Spinardi is looking to foster even more engagement in the community, and while growing the members, returning visitors will be an even more important KPI.

One way of doing that is to create dedicated spaces for specific users within the community. For example, most recently Pipefy introduced a Pipefy Developers hub, aimed at helping developers find the documentation they need.

Community is also looking to work more closely with Sales. Events is something that Pipefy has focused on since the launch of the Pipefy Community, they host monthly meetups and invite customers to speak. Now, it’s time to double down on that interest and give sales an additional tool to use throughout the sales process. Because who better to sell your tool than a happy customer?

Do you want to learn more about how you can make community a part of your customer success program? Book a demo today

Find more resources here:

  • Case study: How Mixpanel drives product adoption and increases retention through their customer community
  • Blog post: Building your Digital Customer Success program – Choosing your channels (Part 2)
  • Podcast: Creating a Customer Success Community with Kristi Faltorusso