BTicino, a division of the Legrand Group, created My Open: an on-line community for customers and partners to crowdsource support and share product innovations.

The aim of BTicino is to move beyond just technical product support in forums to create more business value from the interactions between its customers, partners and employees.  To achieve the scope, the company works with OpenKnowledge (an Italian based Telligent consulting partner) in order to create an oline community My Open for enhanced customer service, social marketing, sales and collaborative product innovation to drive business value. Also it gives an add value to BTicino.

The community connects members for:

  • Social marketing: the staff engage customers and partners to discuss company updates, products and industry news, which helps to strengthen relationships.
  • Market research: the staff enables customers and partners to offer product feedback and suggest enhancements.
  • Social customer service: customers crowdsource product questions in forum and BTicino provides FAQs and technical documentation for all of its hardware and software in searchable wikis. Staff My Open tags all content so community members can quickly sort through and find the information they are looking for.
  • Sales enablement: leads are tracked in the community so that sales team members can quickly respond to and follow up on opportunities. In addition, BTicino previews products in the community and provides special offers to prospective customers to increase sales. It also sells different products in the app gallery, which customers can rate and comment on.
  • Collaborative product innovation: partners and customers share new ideas, which BTicino integrates with Research & Developmnet’s plans to improve products. It created the first “Energy Management Contest” to encourage apps for Android devices, which increased the number of community members and apps available to customers.
  •  Customer communications: BTicino created a private group for employees to coordinate community management activities and issues. The staff can share information and discuss how to complete projects or respond to customer requests in private, as needed.

BTicino created a successful and interactive community to connect its customers, partners and employees in their joint goal of supporting, extending and integrating home automation tools.

  • Enhanced customer experience: My Open helps give customers speedy online customer support, also customers help each other, which reduces the time spent on inbound support requests.
  • Improved product portfolio: BTicino opened the market to third paries, who now invest in development solutions for its My Home products.
  • Differentiated social marketing strategy: BTicino extends the value of its products through innovative designs and online social support, which enhances its market competitiveness. It generates customer insights and feedback from the community for market research, and positions its interactive, supportive community as a key differentiator in the market.