Feverbee's analysis of the Apple community

Pontifications

Feverbee’s analysis of the Apple community.
Not sure why they use Jive but it seems to do the job. And the gamification seems to be from Jive; it seems too complicated to me.
Getting an accepted answer is hard for Apple and most communities on the internet! I guess it’s hard to get folks to mark a reply as an accepted answer.

QUOTE

Apple has had an online community ecosystem since the earliest days of the internet.

The current incarnation of the official community was launched in 2006, revamped in 2011, and has been gradually tweaked and upgraded since then to the site we see today (hosted on Jive).

The community is designed as a customer support channel. The primary goal is most likely to deflect customer support tickets (and calls) and provide a superior level of customer service customers can get through other channels.

The community also provides a less noticeable area for user tips. Members above a certain level can share their best advice to use products more effectively. This can have an impact upon customer satisfaction and retention.

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Apple suffers greatly from not being able to get an accepted answer to most of the questions which appear in the community. This is the single biggest flaw the community faces today. Most of the online communities we looked at, the number of solved questions was extremely low. These were questions asked days, if not weeks ago. This discourages future people from responding. Questions with solutions should be featured near the top along with any trending or ever-present questions.

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