In the episode we talk to Nancy about her personal experiences during the pandemic, what changes she’s observed in her communities and in her work, and explore how we might take what we have learned about collaboration and communities during the pandemic with us back into the world when we begin to emerge from the pandemic.

We speak with Charlene about her new book “The Disruption Mindset”, the quickly evolving role of social technologies, and the pitfalls and opportunities of leading during periods of disruption (for instance, during a global pandemic.)

Over the years different approaches have been fielded for measuring this value in support communities, including the cost savings of customer labor vs staff, the value of a call deflection, the long-term value of a qualified or accepted answer, and possible causal effects of participation on customer behavior. Several thoughtful methods have been formalized and documented by platform vendors and industry experts. This “ground zero” problem seems to have been solved, and cyclically re-solved and re-quantified to the point of diminishing returns, like a community version of the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, we still have executives pushing back on the validity of the calculus, and the corresponding results. This is perplexing to me.

Note: this is the second in a series of posts about community value. If you missed “A Perspective on Community Value”, I’d recommend starting there. Florence: a city that knows a thing or two about community, opportunity and value In the last decade, many companies have come to understand how valuable (and critical) their direct…