3 takeaways from Khoros Engage 2020

Khoros Engage 2020 has finally come and gone, and we couldn’t be happier with how it went! From Nilofer Merchant’s keynote on “Onlyness” to our amazing breakout sessions and networking events, Khoros Engage was a huge success. We’ll be spending the next few months — at least — going over what we learned and talking about the incredible insights.

For now, though, let’s just go over the best ones. Here are the top three things we learned at Khoros Engage this year.

If there’s one thing to take away from Khoros Engage, it’s that brands are modernizing — and fast. 2020 has accelerated trends that were coming anyway, but foremost among these is technology that enables people to work from home, provide better customer service, and automate key processes.

Some of the brands that participated in Khoros Engage are the ones leading the charge to transform into digital-first organizations. Mattel, for example, is using a modern approach to customer engagement in their social media campaigns, one of which highlights how Barbie is handling quarantine, voting, and other 2020-specific events:

Other brands we saw at Engage have also moved mountains in 2020. Intuit, for example, uses their online brand community to serve 25 product lines in four languages and 11 countries. The community has helped over 85 million people find the help they need in FY 2020 alone. They also have driven sustainable growth in brand loyalty by taking calculated risks in content, community management, and customer care strategies. Even other brands who didn’t present at Engage this year, such as Airbnb, Bank of England, and AAA, have experienced success with modernizing and digitizing in 2020.

And these brands aren’t alone. Across almost every industry, especially in the wake of COVID-19, brands are pushing to modernize. Those that don’t risk being left behind.

Now, with that said...

As quickly as brands are going digital, they’re not all doing it in the same way. Some are investing heavily in digital-first customer service; others are focusing more on marketing and social media management.

Teams within organizations are the same way: they have different goals, which means they also have different needs from their technological solutions. Marketing teams might focus on a digital solution that tracks brand mentions and provides real-time updates on trending topics. They might care more about content planning features than, say, a contact center. That’s because in customer service, it’s more important to provide asynchronous chat capabilities and multi-channel support.

Not every team in your organization will need a digital solution on this scale. Some may require other digital tools to do their jobs well and efficiently. The most important point to remember, though, is that the employees on each team know best what solutions will work for them.

There were a ton of exciting ideas floating around at Khoros Engage. You’re probably coming off the event fired up to modernize your brand’s operation.

We get it. So are we.

But as exciting as these ideas are, you can’t implement them all at once. A good modernization plan is, first and foremost, realistic — and that means prioritizing the most important updates and saving others for later. So, think about it: what’s most important, not in general, but for your brand? What goals can you realistically accomplish in the next 90 days?

It would be great to have a fully modernized contact center right off the bat, but if all you have right now is phone support, you may want to start a little smaller — perhaps by implementing a chatbot. Midco, for example, has had great success using this strategy to modernize their contact center with Khoros Care.

Our Khoros Kudos nominees in the Small but Mighty category know that this kind of calculation isn’t a sacrifice — it’s an investment. Never forget your larger goals, but operate with smaller ones and accomplish as you go.

There’s so much we learned at Khoros Engage that of course, we can’t cover it all here. But remember: all the sessions and keynotes are still available on-demand for a limited time, so don’t miss them!