RapidMiner Increased All KPI’s to Deliver Top Tier Support
The Challenge
In 2017, RapidMiner found themselves in a difficult situation. They knew that their current community provider wasn’t delivering (a) the results that they were looking for, and (b) the level of service they needed, and so, they were faced with two seemingly unpleasant options. One, stay with their current provider and learn to accept sub-par results. Or two, try their luck down the bumpy road of community migration and hope for smooth sailing. RapidMiner chose the latter.
Choosing Higher Logic
RapidMiner found everything that they were looking for in Higher Logic. Not only was Higher Logic Vanilla able to provide solutions for all their pain points, but they were able to find a level of honesty and transparency in Higher Logic. With Higher Logic hitting every box on the RapidMiner checklist, they were convinced that Higher Logic Vanilla could deliver what they were looking for in a community.
The Results
36
Hour Resolution Time
Compared to 5-10 days before Higher Logic Vanilla.
80%
Decrease in time to solution
After launching their Higher Logic Vanilla Community.
Increased
Customer Engagement
Using the customizable gamification system.
New Insight
Into Improvement Areas
To understand where changes need to be made.
“I have infinitely better support now than I ever had. I have better support and I’m paying 90% less. That’s a win."
Scott Genzer
Senior Community Manager, RapidMiner
The Search for a New Community Provider
When RapidMiner began the search for a new provider, they had enough experience under their belt to know what they wanted and what they didn’t want. In fact, their decision to migrate presented them with an excellent opportunity to reevaluate their approach to community and look for a provider that could address their pain points.
After their previous experience, one thing was abundantly clear to Scott. They were looking for more than just a new platform that could provide solutions. “Honesty, transparency and a clear bilateral partnership was what we were looking for,” Scott exclaims.
Scott found everything that he was looking for in Higher Logic. Not only was Higher Logic Vanilla able to provide solutions for all the pain points, but Scott was able to find a level of honesty and transparency in Higher Logic that he admits is, “unusual in this world.”
With Higher Logic hitting every box on the RapidMiner checklist, Scott was convinced that Higher Logic Vanilla could deliver what they were looking for in a community. RapidMiner made the switch in 2018.
The Launch
RapidMiner was, of course, very nervous about migrating to a new community. After all, their community was over 10 years old and had over 40,000 posts. The migration team at Higher Logic, however, took this opportunity to prove that they had nothing to worry about; RapidMiner certainly wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last.
The migration was as smooth of a sail as sailing could possibly be. As Scott pointed out, “we were amazed how well Vanilla was able to grab our data, move it into its own ecosystem and get us up and running in a matter of weeks. We had actually budgeted months for the migration process; Vanilla had us a sandbox ready to go in a matter of weeks, and we were up live not long after that.”
The Outcomes: Better than Ever
One of the first things that RapidMiner noticed was that the average time to solution decreased substantially, which is incredibly significant for a support/ help based community. For this KPI, the clock starts ticking when a question is posted in the forum, and the clock stops when the original poster indicates on the discussion that their question has been answered. The results were astounding.
“In our old community, the average time the solution was about 5-10 days. With Vanilla capabilities, we’ve gotten that down to 36 hours time to solution, which is phenomenal.”
One of the game-changing features that RapidMiner took advantage of is the customizable gamification system, which Scott points out, plays a role in improving the numbers. By incorporating unique elements that embody the RapidMiner brand and personality, the community has increased engagement through having the power to customize the community with a touch of humour.
“Our ranks are all named after various elements that are known in the machine learning world,” says Scott, “so when people achieve a certain rank, it’s a bit of an inside joke.” The real advantage of Vanilla, however, is the backend, according to Scott. He states, “the real competitive advantage of Vanilla is our ability to measure [the community] (via APIs) and our ability to get a really clear idea of where we can get even better.” Ultimately, RapidMiner found the rainbow without even having to weather a storm. With the pot of gold now in their possession, their community is better than ever before.
“We were amazed how well Higher Logic Vanilla was able to grab our data, move it into its own ecosystem and get us up and running in a matter of weeks."
Why they chose us
Customizability
“The hidden power of Higher Logic Vanilla forums over a lot of other companies is their backend, their API...our goal right now is to use Vanilla’s [backend features] to automate a lot of the work that we normally did manually.”
Top Tier Support
“The customer SuccessTeamTM not only answers our questions as responsively as you would expect, but they’re technically competent. And for us, a big tech geeky company, that’s critical.”
Honesty and Transparency
“There are a few things that make the Vanilla customer success, migration and sales teams exemplary – number one is clear transparency [and] honesty.”
Cost-Effective
“RapidMiner is saving 90% of what they paid to their previous provider and, “at the end of the day, I actually think we’re better than we were under [our previous provider].”
