In the News

2010

March 01, 2010

Open Sesame

Twitter, Facebook and other social media are changing the face of traditional CRM, putting customers in the driving seat. CBR Contributor, Janine Milne, interviewed Lithium's CMO, Sanjay Dholakia about how companies should capitalise on this new era of transparency.
Read it in Computer Business Review

February 26, 2010

Third Annual SPIFFY Award Winners Announced: Global Telecom Service Providers Award Telecom Startups for Innovation and Impact

The Service Provider members of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley awarded Lithium Technologies The Edison Award for Most Innovative Startup at the annual SPIFFY Awards, held February 25, 2010, in Palo Alto, California.
Read it in PRWeb

February 23, 2010

Social Media Sock Puppetry - Lessons from Failed Practices in Social Media Marketing

Forbes contributor, Dan Woods, spoke with Lithium's Director of Customer Marketing, Paul Gilliham, and Chief Community Officer, Joe Cothrel, on how reputation systems, a key part of most large Internet communities, are a proven method for increasing engagement and ferreting out the gamers. In addition, they discuss the benefits companies can reap from social media when they sincerely listen, engage, and participate in conversations about their brand.
Read it in Forbes

February 03, 2010

ON24 Honors Best Virtual Events

Webcasting and virtual events vendor, ON24, has announced the winners of its first-ever ON24 Virtual Event Excellence Awards. Among the winners was Lithium Technologies for Best Attendee Engagement. Nominee evaluations were based on ROI, “immersiveness," branding impact, achievement of business objectives, and overall quality, ON24 said.
Read it in Folio Magazine

January 15, 2010

The Lesson of Gaming: Why Do We Have to Pay People to Work?

GamesBeat contributors and Co-authors of Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Business Compete, Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read, highlight how leading-edge companies are extending funware (the use of game-like ideas in non-game applications) even further into the enterprise.
Read it in VentureBeat

January 15, 2010

Lithium Goes Mobile, Brings Customer Service Back to Customers

Lithium is clearly a big league player less than three years after its first round of funding. Now, they have another component set to tear up CRM: Lithium Mobile. With Lithium Mobile, announced in October and just released at the end of Q4 2009, Lithium has developed a site design for their customers that brings full service to a variety of mobile devices.
Read it in VentureBeat

January 05, 2010

Companies Turn to Virtual Trade Shows to Save Money

With travel budgets deeply slashed across Corporate America, more companies are turning to virtual trade shows to connect with customers and suppliers.

Lithium Technologies turned to the virtual format in November for a show on customer relationship management, drawing over 2,200 registrants, with about half signed on live for the 10-hour event.
Read it in USA Today

January 05, 2010

Outsell, Inc. Predicts 2010 Will Usher in the "Age of Experience" as Publishers Compete for Fewer Dollars

In Outsell, Inc.’s new report: “Information Industry Outlook 2010: A New Dawn, New Day, New Decade.”, the research and advisory firm offers its top 10 predictions along with key themes and recommended actions for publishers.

Additionally, Outsell names its "30 to Watch" -- companies that are innovative, disrupt the status quo, or are creating unique experiences. Companies include Lithium Technologies, Apple, Blackboard, Bloomberg, Kaplan, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, and more.
Read it in Business Wire

2009

December 19, 2009

2010 SPIFFY Award Nominees Announced - Nominee List Catalogs Telecom Startups to Watch

Lithium Technologies nominated for Edison Award for Most Innovative Startup

The Telecom Council of Silicon Valley announced today the 2010 SPIFFY Award nominees. Nominees were selected by the Telecom Council’s Service Provider Forum (SPIF) from among all the telecom startups who presented in Telecom Council meetings over the previous year. SPIFFY nominations indicate a startup has innovation, opportunity, and a quantifiable interest among the Council's 20 Global Service Providers.
Read it in Business Wire

December 11, 2009

Lithium Technologies Selects Ogilvy PR

Lithium Technologies, a provider of Social CRM solutions, has selected Ogilvy PR as its global PR AOR. Ogilvy will provide Lithium services centered on strategic consulting, thought leadership, and brand enhancement programs, as well as traditional media and social media relations. AT&T, Sony, Best Buy, and Univision use Lithium to create its customer communities, it said. Lithium is looking to Ogilvy to further accelerate its brand recognition. Led by Ogilvy's technology practice, the client relationship will be serviced from Ogilvy's San Francisco office.
Read it in PR Week

December 02, 2009

Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones

As people spend more time on their mobile devices, many brands such as HP, AT&T Inc., Pitney Bowes, and Best Buy are considering tailoring their message boards, user forums, and blogs to wireless users. That's where companies such as Lithium Technologies Inc. come in.
Read it in The Wall Street Journal

October 28, 2009

FICO’s Online Consumer Community Wins Prestigious Social Media Award

Lithium congratulates our customer, FICO, the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, who announced today that their myFICO® online community has received a 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award for excellence in achieving business goals through social networks. Established by Forrester Research, Inc., the Forrester Groundswell Awards recognize achievement in 13 categories of customer interaction via social applications. FICO won its award in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Support category.
Read it in FICO.com

September 25, 2009

Trusting the Community

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or still using a rotary phone, you’ll know how obvious it is that the business world is starting to take a serious look at the promise of social media in general, and communities in particular. Forrester Research is tracking more than 90 community-forum providers – all vying for a piece of the growing pie – and estimates user adoption of social networks and online communities grew 25 percent in 2007 to 35 percent in 2008. Amid the hubbub, one vendor keeps popping up: Lithium Technologies.
Read it in CRM magazine

August 27, 2009

More Marketers Use Social Networking to Reach Customers

Social-media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and countless other websites, have had a profound effect on how millions of Americans — especially those under 35 — interact with others (or don't), shop, and view brands. It's a real-time digital lifestyle, powered by smartphones and netbooks, that often colors what products they purchase, how they view brands and where they spend most of their waking hours. Marketers have noticed, and social-networking services are increasingly indispensable business tools to help mobilize a company's best advocates — their customers. Best Buy and MyFICO, the consumer division of Fair Isaac, which invented the FICO credit-risk score used by lenders, have built specialized online communities where their customers freely evaluate products and services. Those who visit MyFICO's community website are spending 41% more than other customers, says Lyle Fong, CEO of software company, Lithium Technologies, which helps build online communities for more than 150 companies, including MyFICO. Nine in 10 consumers trust their peers more than marketers, according to a recent survey of 25,000 by Nielsen.
Read it in USA Today

August 09, 2009

3 Questions for Lyle Fong

The SF Chronicle sat down with CEO Lyle Fong for an interview to discuss how companies can benefit from communities; why integrating online gaming mechanisms with communities works; and what has triggered demand for communities despite the economic downturn.
Read it in the SF Chronicle

August 09, 2009

SaaS Business Profile: Lithium Technologies

As part of their SmartSaaS Business Profiles Series, Montclair Advisors, Kevin Dobbs invited Lithium Technologies CMO, Sanjay Dholakia, to share his thoughts about the company and views of the SaaS market in 2009.
Read it in Montclair Advisors

July 18, 2009

Lithium Reinvents Itself as Social CRM

Lithium has changed its game. Once limited to customer communities, the company has moved to become a complete social CRM for the enterprise. Lithium’s new approach creates a flow of information from the social web into your community. The result is the creation of valuable content, community-driven support, and the identification of engaged customers.
Read it in ReadWriteEnterprise

July 15, 2009

Lithium Floats a Social CRM Balloon

Lithium Technologies, a provider of on-demand community solutions, today unveiled its latest offering, the Lithium Social CRM Suite. The suite comprises three products that the company claims will support a network of customer-advocates across the social Web by integrating customer conversations into social media channels and existing CRM business processes and systems.
Read it in Destination CRM

June 25, 2009

Pitney Bowes Branded Community Reduces Customer Support Costs

During the 2007 postal rate change Pitney Bowes, which provides postal equipment and services to businesses, received more than 415K support phone calls on the rate change alone, all in under a month. This was in addition to the company's usual flow of customer calls, so its support teams were moving fast and furious. Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet delves into how Pitney Bowes implemented an online community, provided by Lithium Technologies, to proactively provide answers to presumed frequently asked questions about the latest rate change — and also empower users to help each other.
Read it in ZDNet

June 12, 2009

Brand Aid: Creating Opportunities in Your Customer Community

With the aid of its online customer community, Pitney Bowes, which provides mail and document management products to more than two million customers globally, saves thousands of dollars in customer phone support costs each year.
Read it in PRSA

June 02, 2009

Lithium Acquires Community Moderation Know-how from Keibi Technologies

Today, Lithium Technologies, a major provider of enterprise community platforms, announced their acquisition of Keibi Technologies, developer of automated content discovery, analysis, and moderation for online communities. While Keibi may not be a particularly large addition to Lithium, the melding of the two is something of a match made in heaven.
Read it in ReadWriteWeb

May 19, 2009

You're Not Social (Enough)

Sam Hunter can't point to a defining moment that convinced him of the power of a user community — but there's no denying that power today, he says. As the senior vice president and general manager of ACT! by Sage for North America, Hunter says his team had long considered the notion of a community, but it took a series of events to finally prompt the company to jump into the social networking world. The vendor turned to Emeryville, Calf.-based forum builder Lithium Technologies to create the ACT! by Sage Community for its consultants, customers, developers, and employees. Just a year later the company was on the receiving end of a 15-point boost in customer loyalty, a 300 percent increase in beta-program participants, and more than 8 million page views.
Read it in CRM Magazine

May 19, 2009

Everything's Social (Now)

Adam Sarner, a Gartner analyst, contends that, in getting social, "CRM is where you are going to see an ROI in the business mode as opposed to anywhere else." ...Sarner suggests that while there's not yet an uber-social-computing technology, it's clear that CRM has embraced the possibilities, whether partnering with standalone social sales applications such as Insideview or with community forums such as Lithium Technologies.
Read it in CRM Magazine

May 19, 2009

A Community Gives Pitney Bowes the Stamp of Approval

Pitney Bowes' community, designed to address the problem of postal rate changes, evolved into an enterprise asset for the company. Rudy Chang, Vice President and General Manager of e-Commerce and Shared Services shares his insights with CRM Magazine about what drove Pitney Bowes to take the next step in supporting their customers.
Read it in CRM Magazine

May 18, 2009

Bay Area Economy Shows Signs of Life

In the Bay Area, even as major tech players have slashed thousands of jobs, promising young companies continue to add them — it underscores why small business is so often cited as the nation's job-growth engine. For example, Lithium Technologies, with a payroll of 115, hired 50 of those workers last year, another 15 in the first quarter, and plans to add 30 to 40 people by year-end to meet the growing demand for its services. Last year's revenue, in the range of $10 million to $20 million, doubled over 2007. The Emeryville company works with clients such as Best Buy, AT&T and eBay's PayPal to create online communities for a client's customers.
Read it in SF Business Times

April 25, 2009

Customer Service? Ask a Volunteer

Verizon superuser, Justin McMurry, is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. A look at the customer community that Verizon Communications began in July, powered by Lithium Technologies, suggests that company-sponsored online communities for customer service, if handled adeptly, hold considerable promise.
Read it in New York Times

April 10, 2009

Emeryville Startup Lithium Hiring as Sales Double

Emeryville-based Lithium Technologies Inc., with revenue between $10 million and $20 million, was a pioneer in the space and is in expansion mode. It saw revenue double from 2007 to 2008, according to CEO Lyle Fong, a former professional video gamer who cofounded the company with his brother, Dennis "Thresh" Fong, also a famous gamer. Lithium has 115 employees, 50 of whom were hired last year, and another 15 hired in the first quarter of this year. The company will likely add another 30 to 40 people this year, Fong said.
Read it in SF Business Times

April 10, 2009

Combining Gaming and Social Networking into Community Forums is Reinventing Customer Service

Especially in an economic downturn, customer service is one area where companies are not cutting costs. Instead, many companies are adopting a gamers' mindset to customer service and putting the power in the hands of the community — and it's paying off.
Read it in Telephony

April 09, 2009

Carriers Combine Social Networking with Customer Service

Verizon's Community Forums have generated more than 10 million page views since they were introduced last July, but it's not the only company that's seeing the benefits of merging social networking with customer service. While there is still little documentation to support the business case for community forums, Forrester Research analyst Natalie Petouhoff, for one, is sold on the opportunity. Social media can provide a large return on investment in a short period of time while delivering superb customer experiences, she said.
Read it in Telephony

April 05, 2009

Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs Learn to Do More With Less

With money tight everywhere in today's economy, Internet companies are trying to show they can do more with less. At this week's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, KRON4's Brian Shields found out that many of those companies who create the blogs, wikis, applications, and other technologies that continue to make the Internet easier to use and more useful for all of us see this as period of great opportunity. Shields talked with nearly two dozen visionaries and entrepreneurs during the conference, including Lithium's VP of Client Services, Iain Grant. Listen to what Iain and others have to say about the future of the Internet, and explore links to some of the people and companies creating the next generation of the Internet today.
Read it in KRON4.com

March 05, 2009

Should Marketing or Customer Service Manage Your Social Networking Efforts?

With the effects of social networks and Web 2.0 technologies transcending departmental areas, how do companies best incorporate and manage them within their business? At Bedford, Mass.-based company, iRobot, although there is a formal structure for the monitoring and oversight of its own online communities in Support, there are different parts of the business monitoring the oversight of the wider Internet such as Marketing and Public Relations.
Read it in SearchCRM.com

March 04, 2009

Lithium Diagnoses the Community

How do you determine the health of an online community? Well, it depends on whom you ask. With this issue at the forefront, Lithium Technologies, an online community platform provider, has sought to measure what makes a successful community and has introduced a means to do so with the Community Health Index.
Read it in destinationCRM.com

March 03, 2009

Putting ROI Numbers on Communities

By now, most of us can see the value in communities, both for users and for the companies that facilitate them, but going into your CFO's office and explaining how neato communities are is not going to get it done these days. In this economy, it's not enough to articulate the value of a community; you need to be able to point at a spreadsheet and speak in terms of dollars and cents. Apparently, Lithium gets it. Last week, the company released Lithium Insights, a set of analytic tools to benchmark the "health" of online communities. While the release is geared toward providing companies with a way to gauge the state of their communities, it's also able to provide some figures that marketers can use to justify the investment in a community.
Read it in InsideCRM

February 27, 2009

Robot Lords Rule the Roomba Rooms

Even if you are not a cat, you may be one of the many happy Roomba users, one of the world's most popular robots. But if you have a problem with your Roomba, or any of the many other consumer robots made by iRobot Corp. of Bedford, Mass., you may get your best support from robot lords and not necessarily iRobot customer support staff. Computerworld's Mark Everett Hall find out more about these robot lords that reside on iRobot's Lithium-powered customer community, and how they have decreased iRobot's call volume to tech support while providing iRobot staff with an integrated view of the customer's profile through Lithium's integration with RightNow's CRM service.
Read it in ComputerWorld

February 23, 2009

Building Online Communities by the Numbers

When building an online community, there are three important planning milestones to track to assess your community's initial growth trajectory. Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer at Lithium Technologies, presented them at the recent Forum One Communications Online Community Unconference in New York.
Read it in ClickZ

February 04, 2009

Off-The-Hook Customer Service

Calling all CIOs, your customers are communicating digitally but is your customer service? From phone, to email, to live chat, as customers embrace new forms of communication, businesses must evolve along with them if they want to keep up. To address changing customer needs, platforms like SaaS promise to trim budgets by making the support process more efficient and agents more productive. Companies like Lithium offer community-based solutions to augment customer services. With communities in place, companies can deflect calls and reduce costs by allowing customers to help each other.
Read it in Forbes.com, or view the video

February 02, 2009

How to Increase Business Value in 2009

Lithium's CEO & Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, shares his thoughts with the Sand Hill Group on how driving customer engagement with social web technology and online customer communities can help software companies maintain and expand their customer ranks.
Read it in Sand Hill.com

January 28, 2009

Sprint Dials In ROI Tracking Of Social Media Buzz Via Omniture, Lithium Mash-Up

While marketers have been struggling to find ROI around social media, Sprint recently partnered with Omniture and Lithium to demonstrate the tangible benefits of its online community. "Turnkey integration between Lithium and Omniture lets us easily and cost-effectively combine socially driven community data with our corporate Web site data to gain greater insights and ultimately deliver a better customer experience," said Jason Lorei, senior manager, Sprint.com research & analytics. "The integration Lithium and Omniture have built is what we would have built ourselves, but now we don't have to. I've been impressed with the partnership between these two best-in-class solutions," said Lorei.
Read it in DemandGen Report

January 27, 2009

Business Starts to Take Web 2.0 Tools Seriously

Oliver Young, an analyst with Forrester Research, cites public-facing communities as a key area of Enterprise 2.0 that is likely to grow due to the advantages they offer in supporting two-way conversations. "Customers are talking about your organisation and its products online anyway. A social networking community offers corporates the chance to participate in these conversations and have more control over them," says Lyle Fong, CEO of Lithium Technologies. "Those that do are discovering the benefits of reduced customer service costs," he adds.
Read it in Financial Times

January 22, 2009

Customer Communities that Drive Business Results

eBizQ blogger, Phil Wainewright, discusses with CMO of Lithium Technologies, Sanjay Dholakia, how Lithium's community platform serves as an effective way for retailers, technology companies, and other brand owners to interact with their customers and drive real business results.
Read it in eBizQ, or listen to the podcast

January 20, 2009

Enterprise Customer Communities: Hot Topics for 2009

Lithium's Chief Community Officer, Joe Cothrel, weighs in on his top five predictions for what lies ahead for enterprise customer communities in 2009.
Read it in Community 2.0 Blog

2008

December 26, 2008

Online Communities: Private vs. Public

For companies looking to develop a consumer community around their brand, choosing a type of community depends on your company's goal, advises analyst Cindy Commander of Forrester Research. For customer communities, CEO & Co-Founder Lyle Fong of Lithium Technologies, believes that the openness and transparency of a public-facing community can be seen as a great asset to companies, as they actually drive interactions not only between the customer and the enterprise, but also interactions between the customers themselves. "I can see why some companies who are afraid of social media may want to start there (with private communities), but in the end I think it's just a transitional thing," says Fong. "To create a customer community that is internal where you only handpick a few customers doesn't resonate with this world we're in today."
Read it in Internet Evolution

November 17, 2008

A CRM Insider's Views on Social Media and Web 2.0

David van Toor, senior vice president and general manager for CRM solutions at Lithium customer Sage Software, recently sat down with Customer Interaction Solutions to share some advice on creating online communities. van Toor discusses the importance of understanding how your customers want to communicate with you, so that you create an effective, ongoing dialogue that nets mutual productivity for customer and vendor in time and cost savings.
Read it in Customer Interaction Solutions

November 17, 2008

Gadget Survey Finds Many Bugs Can't Be Fixed

Gadget makers love to sell us on all the things their devices can do, whether it's letting us chat with distant friends at any time or watch movies on our commute. But can anyone fix this stuff when it breaks? As providing technical support becomes more complicated, some companies have started tapping online communities to offer help, taking advantage of tech-savvy customers who enjoy trading tips online. This method can be best for solving problems that involve multiple devices made by different companies, said Lyle Fong, chief executive of Lithium Technologies Inc., which sets up such customer forums for businesses.
Read it in Associated Press

November 12, 2008

Leading Provider of Enterprise Social Media Platform Selects SuccessFactors Professional Edition for Small Businesses

SuccessFactors, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFSF), the global leader in on-demand performance and talent management solutions, today announced that Lithium Technologies has implemented SuccessFactors' Professional Edition for small businesses. The company is using SuccessFactors to manage performance reviews, goals, compensation and 360-Degree Reviews to drive continuity and objective-focused processes to deliver bottom line and top line business success.
Read it in BusinessWire

November 05, 2008

Turning Customers into Advocates

The greatest achievement a company can have in customer relations is to turn its customers into loyal advocates of its service or product. With the help of Web 2.0 on-demand platforms, leading brands have opened the lines of communication with customers and put a premium on listening and analysing their interests and needs. Lyle Fong, chief executive of Lithium Technologies, contributes his thoughts on the benefits of listening to your customers online.
Read it in Financial Times

November 05, 2008

New Tools Helping Some Firms Use Web 2.0 Data to Boost Business

"The rise of user-generated content has really forced brands to [seek a way] to monitor what consumers are saying about them across all the pages of the Web," says John Lovett, senior analyst at Jupiter Research, a unit of Forrester Research Inc. "The ability to measure those comments and what is happening with the brand has become an important part of ensuring the integrity of the brand." Computerworld's Heather Havenstein cites Sprint's BuzzAboutWireless website as an example of a brand that has seen real results from their usage of the integration between Lithium's enterprise social media platform with intelligent web analytics from Omniture's SiteCatalyst.
Read it in Computerworld

November 04, 2008

Your Questions Answered About Online Communities: Part 1

Paul Gillin, author of Secrets of Social Media Marketing and guest speaker of Lithium webcast, "Using Online Conversations to Turbo-Charge Your Business!", provides answers to some of the questions received from the audience during the live event.
Read it in Paul Gillin's Blog

November 03, 2008

iRobot Cleans Up on Customer Service

iRobot integrated activity on its Lithium-powered customer forum into customer interaction records managed using RightNow Technologies to help create a complete "view of the customer." As 1to1 Magazine's managing editor, Mila D'Antonio, found out, only does having this integrated view help save customers' time and iRobot costs, but it ensures that the company's business decisions are customer driven.
Read it in 1to1media.com

October 15, 2008

Where Is the SaaS Industry Headed?

It's a broad and open-ended question during volatile times. To find where the SaaS market is headed and how it will confront an uncertain economy, the Laurel Group interviewed CEO and Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, amongst other SaaS industry veterans, for his insight and opinion.
Read it in the Laurel Group

October 14, 2008

Who's Keeping You in Line Online?

As companies embrace social media and launch online forums that allow customers to share opinions about their products and services, they're realizing that simply creating website is insufficient. The savviest managers are paying close attention to what transpires on those sites as well, because they understand that user comments have the potential to influence other consumers and, sometimes, even investors. ABC News reporter, Ki Mae Heussner, goes behind-the-scenes to interview some of the moderators who manage some of the largest online communities in the web today.
Read it in ABC News

October 10, 2008

A Perspective on Social Networking and Unified Communications

In the connected world of the 21st century, social networks take forums to an entirely new level. The social network is now able to truly leverage the "wisdom of crowds," where everyone has an opportunity to contribute. IT World's Martha Young learns from CEO and Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, the key differentiators between enterprise social networks and unified communications.
Read it in IT World

October 09, 2008

Linksys Ends Email Support, Successfully Migrating the Traffic to the Community

This year Linksys stopped supporting customers through email with surprising results: not only were there no customer complaints, but the majority of email volume was transitioned to an unassisted channel - discussion forums - with zero impact on phone volume.
Read it in SSPA News

October 06, 2008

It's Not Just What Bloggers Are Saying, It's Who They Are

As PR becomes an increasingly important part of an organization's social media strategy, marketers are discovering the importance of striking up key relationships with individual customers and bloggers, the insights gained from monitoring and measuring both brand and customer reputation, and the benefits that building communities of influencers can bring towards bridging the gap with their customers.
Read it in AdvertisingAge

September 25, 2008

How Sprint Nextel Cashes In On Its Social Buzz Analytics Data

Turnkey integration capabilities between Lithium and Omniture enable retailers like Sprint Nextel to analyze the impact of communities, blogs, and other social features on customer behavior such as online buying or customer retention.
Read it in InternetRetailer

September 16, 2008

Harnessing Online Customer Feedback

BusinessWeek's Karen E. Klein interviews CEO and Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, to find out how companies can learn from their feedback, build a loyal customer base, and harness enthusiastic clients through the use of social networks and communities.
Read it in BusinessWeek

August 25, 2008

How Social Data Mining Can Redefine PR's Role

Bernaise Source taps Lithium's Joe Cothrel for his perspective on harvesting insights from communities, and coaches marketers that it's time to stop focusing on negative comments and start focusing on social media's strategic value.
Read it in Bernaise Source Blog

August 13, 2008

Advice for Gaining Momentum in Year One

Cadence's Social Media/Web Community Manager, Tom Diederich, turns to advice from Lithium's Joe Cothrel for the launch of their user community and to assess the community's first year momentum.
Read it in Conversations Matter Blog

July 31, 2008

The Essential Guide to Building a CRM Community

Creating a CRM community takes work, but it could cement your bond with profitable customers. Properly done, a CRM community is one of the most valuable forms of social networking for CRM.
Read it in InsideCRM.com

July 15, 2008

The Best Way to Build a Community Around Your Brand

Nicole Ferraro interviews CEO and Co-Founder of Lithium, Lyle Fong, about deploying community tools in the enterprise and best and worst practices for establishing external communities around enterprise brands.
Read it in Internet Evolution

June 30, 2008

Lithium Technologies Scores Money to Revitalize Community Support for Enterprises

Lithium Technologies has raised $12 million in venture capital today and that's a big boost for the Fong family dynasty.
Read it in VentureBeat

June 30, 2008

Lithium Technologies Raises $12 million; Social Network for Enterprises Will Invest in Innovation

Lithium, a provider of enterprise communities driven via software as a service (SaaS), joins LinkedIn, Twitter, Jaxtr and others, which all this month created a splash with their respective financial news.
Read it in ZDNet.com

June 11, 2008

Letting the Customer Inside

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference featured innovative solutions that provide numerous avenues for retailers to engage their customers in ways previously unimaginable.
Read it in eWeek.com

June 09, 2008

Big Businesses Taking a Cue From Gaming

Online games may be banned in Corporate America, but they have actually proven fairly useful for building customer loyalty. How? Well, companies need to find ways to cater to their power users, who are often similar to gamers.
Read it in BloggingStocks, AOL Money & Finance

June 01, 2008

Linksys Gets Shaken, A Community is Stirred

Credit Lithium Technologies' online community-based CRM solution for saving some users' holiday seasons: When an earthquake struck the South Pacific on Christmas Eve 2006 and brought down contact centers for Linksys (a Cisco Systems unit), customers turned to the new online support community for answers.
Read it in destinationCRM.com

May 23, 2008

An Online Video Strategy That Hits the Mark

FutureShop (a division of BestBuy Canada), Canada's largest consumer electronics retailer, is using online community not only to learn more about its customers, but to help sell products and support customers.
Read it in Paul Gillin's Blog

April 25, 2008

The Power of Play on the Internet

Game design and social networks are merging into one of the most persuasive forces on the internet.
Read it in BBC News

April 25, 2008

How Gaming Pros Help Big Companies

What does zapping aliens have to do selling more phone services, computers or even books? Lyle Fong, co-founder and CEO of Lithium Technologies, describes how hardcore customers share many of the same characteristics of hardcore gamers.
Read it in internetnews.com

January 21, 2008

You Need New CRM Solutions To Keep Pace With the New Social Consumer

In his post about the next generation of CRM solutions, vice president and principal analyst of Forrester Research, William Band, cites Lithium as a solutions provider to "help customers to solve each others' problems with solutions that support customer forums."
Read it in Forrester Business Process & Applications Commentary

2007

October 26, 2007

Social Networking Insiders Build Your Brand for Free

Lori Deschene of BNET blogs on enterprise social networking. "The same spirit that drives individuals to spread the word also motivates others to contribute to company sponsored social networks."
Read it in BNET

September 28, 2007

Future Shop Taps SaaS to Open Virtual Presence

Canada's largest retailer of consumer electronics is employing virtual agents and online communities through a software-as-a-service model to improve customer service on the Web.
Read it in IT World Canada

August 24, 2007

Best Practices: 10 Tips to Online Community Success

Well-defined structures and roles are key to maximizing community involvement in Web 2.0 initiatives such as forums, blogs, and chats; a destinationCRM2007 exclusive.
Read it in CRM Magazine

August 20, 2007

Q&A Versus Forums: Selecting a Support 2.0 Format

Lithium Technologies is one company with plenty of experience building communities. They have designed enterprise software platforms for companies like Salesforce.com and Dell. And Joe Cothrel, vice president of community management has extensive knowledge of online community dynamics.
Read it in Bernaise Source Blog

August 19, 2007

NYSE-listed CEO's say Customer Focus Drives Growth

Chief executive officers of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange believe that meeting and exceeding customer expectations will help drive sustainable growth in the future, according to a new report.
Read it in Reuters

July 30, 2007

Technology (A Special Report) - Companies expand online support

More and more, companies are sending people to the Web for customer support. But most companies don't make it easy for people to find answers once they get there.
Read it in Wall Street Journal

June 19, 2007

Service Research & Innovation Initiative (SRII) Turns to Lithium to Power New Online Community

Lithium Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand community solutions, today announced that the Service Research & Innovation Initiative (SRII) has selected Lithium's on-demand technology to build a new online community. The SRIINet community, located at http://forums.thesrii.org, is the focal point of the organization's initiative, and brings together technology service-based "seekers" and "solvers" to drive innovation initiatives for technology services. The SRII was founded in March 2007 by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) and the Technology Professional Services Association (TPSA), IBM and Oracle in order to increase the amount of targeted and funded service research, development and innovation in the technology industry.
Read it in Market Watch

April 24, 2007

Lithium's Spring 2007 Edition Brings Today's Consumer Web Features to Enterprise Communities

Lithium Technologies, Inc. today released the latest version of the Lithium InterActive product suite, the company's Web-based software for developing
Read it in Forbes

April 17, 2007

Lithium Technologies Raises $9 Million

Lithium Technologies Inc. has closed a $9 million Series A financing round, the company said Tuesday.
Read it in Bizjournal.com