in the news

September 29, 2011

If you need help with a glitchy Logitech mouse or webcam and you happen to stop by the company’s online support forum, you might notice a bunch of posts from a guy calling himself KachiWachi. Since 2006, when he started contributed to the forum, KachiWachi has answered more than 45,000 questions from Logitech customers. He spends about six hours a day monitoring the forum, six days a week, and prides himself on being the first to answer any question about a webcam. But KachiWachi isn’t a Logitech employee, and Logitech has never paid him a cent. He’s just a friendly geek—with a lot of time on his hands—who happens to believe that Logitech makes the world’s best webcams.

If every company could somehow recruit platoons of super-passionate evangelists like KachiWachi to intercept and answer customers’ questions, it would be a compelling way to save money on traditional customer support. Well, there’s a company in Emeryville, CA, that claims it’s possible to build online communities where these “superfans” can be systematically cultivated and encouraged to work their magic. It’s called Lithium Technologies, and it has emerged as one of the most talked-about providers of so-called “social CRM” software (as in customer relationship management).

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