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 s Maggie Wolfe marched down the trade show aisle at eBay Live!, eBay’s
annual customer event, the San Jose, CA,-based company realized just how
well it had met its strategic objective for the event: Create a customer
community.
Wolfe and Brad Aspling, who met on eBay and even bought the engagement
ring and wedding dress on the site, decided to hold their wedding — the
ultimate community event — on the show floor at eBay Live! 2004.
This kind of commitment is exactly what the online-auction company is shooting
for. Even a cultural phenomenon like eBay — with net revenues of
$2.17 billion in 2003, its ninth year — faces the challenge of a
constantly shifting base of customers, buyers, and sellers. And that’s
an expensive challenge. Bain & Company Inc., a Boston-based marketing
and research company, has found that attracting a new customer costs five
times more than keeping an old one.
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of “Creating Customer Evangelists:
How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force” (Dearborn Trade
Publishing, 2002), believe
“organizations that create customer communities tend to create communities
of evangelists.” They say customer communities accomplish four main
goals: 1) building loyalty, 2) providing valuable feedback, 3) contributing
to increased sales, and 4) reducing costs.
One of McConnell and Huba’s best examples of companies that create
a customer community is Shouldice Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada.
The hospital holds an annual reunion for hernia patients — an event
featuring dinner, entertainment, camaraderie, and a free examination of
each patient’s hernia repair. Because of this event and other community-building
tactics, 49 percent of new patients are referrals from former patients.
EBay’s customers wanted a community too; in fact, they clamored for
it. “We found that as customers stay with eBay, they also want to
network; they want to form a community,” says Abby Green, manager
of eBay Live!.
But forming a community from eBay’s chaotic customer base is a daunting
task. Its customers have no commonality — they represent different
genders, geographic locations,
ages, incomes, and hobbies. They don’t sell or buy one kind of product;
they sell or buy thousands, from cars to cement mixers, Civil War-era forceps
for removing bullets to grilled-cheese sandwiches shaped like the Madonna.
EBayers sold nearly 1
billion items in 2003, often from their living rooms. Nearly 430,000 of
eBay’s
114 million customers make
a full- or part-time living
selling on the site. But with
21 competitors, eBay has
to ensure that its customers stay at home sweet
(virtual) home.
The solution? EBay Live! — an idea as homey as a neighborhood rummage
sale. The annual event, which
eBay formally refers to as the “eBay Community Conference,” started
in 2002. The three-day event includes 100-plus classroom sessions, a keynote
speech, an exhibit hall with 81 exhibitors, and a party on the last day.
Since its inception, eBay Live! has achieved a cult-like following. Attendance
the first year was 5,000; the next year it doubled to 10,000 and stayed
at that level in 2004. Throughout the year, community members chat about
the event on the eBay Live! discussion board, which has logged 14,744 posts
since March of 2004.
Clarissa Parashar from La Puente, CA, who runs Perpetual Vogue, an online
clothes and collectibles store, has attended all three events, at a personal
cost of about $1,000 each time. “What you get at the event that you
cannot get anywhere else is the opportunity to network with 10,000 like-minded
people who are involved in the same unusual business you are.” Parashar
usually stays a couple of days afterwards to brainstorm with eBay friends
about what they learned and goals for the coming year.
Here’s how eBay creates a community with its event, with ideas any
company can borrow. No bidding necessary. |
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Egalitarianism rules at eBay Live!. Whether
you’re the little
guy who sells a $4.49 Count Dracula Beanie Baby or a PowerSeller who offers an $875,000
Hawker Jet airplane on eBay, any customer who wants to attend eBay Live! is invited.
EBay invites customers via a special Web page dedicated to the event (pages.ebay.com/ebaylive).
It also sends millions of e-mails and broadcasts radio ads in several markets.
To make eBay Live! accessible to customers, eBay charges a moderate $70 registration
fee for the event. It also aims for a West Coast-East Coast trajectory, although
Green says, “We could pick any place in the world, and our customers would
show up.” The first eBay Live! took place in Anaheim, CA, in 2002, followed
by Orlando, FL, in 2003, and New Orleans in 2004. San Jose, CA, will host the next
event in June 2005.
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To be a PowerSeller at eBay, you have to average
at
least $1,000 for three months of gross monthly sales
and maintain a 98-percent favorable feedback rating
from your customers, among other criteria. EBay’s
5,000 PowerSellers rack up an estimated 25 percent
of its business.
To scratch these big dogs behind the ears, eBay schedules special classes for PowerSellers,
with topics such as “Health Care With the PowerSeller Health-Care Provider.” EBay
also holds a PowerSeller orientation on the first day
of the event, grants access to an on-site business center,
and sets up a PowerSeller Lounge.
The private lounge — open to PowerSellers and select
top sellers — features customer-support representatives; computer terminals;
category managers (the eBay personnel in charge of specific product categories such
as antiques, collectibles, and consumer electronics); and informal Q&A opportunities
with eBay business partners. PowerSellers also get fast-track registration. |
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| In 2004, eBay set up networking dinners. Attendees
could sign up in the main lobby and indicate a specific eBay-related
topic they wished to discuss — from car motors to collectibles.
Then eBay matched up groups who selected the same topics and made reservations
for them at a New Orleans restaurant. More than 1,000 participants met
in the lobby, where eBay organized them into groups and sent them on
their way. |
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Anyone who’s ever visited eBay is familiar
with the site’s feedback system. EBay records all comments from
customers who have purchased from a seller, so buyers can check a seller’s
track record before placing a bid. Like your permanent record in school,
it controls whether you succeed or flop as a seller.
EBay takes the notion of feedback about itself just as seriously. At
eBay Live!, it randomly asks guests to participate in usability testing.
Participants create a listing for a product on eBay, and then evaluate
the process. EBay uses this information for product development. For
their efforts, guests receive $50 in cash and a $50 eBay gift certificate — and
they learn that eBay cares what they think about its product.
EBay also sets up The Chatterbox, a small area on the show floor that lets attendees
record a video message for eBay employees. Attendees are encouraged to talk about
their eBay successes and memorable transactions, or to share what eBay means to them. |
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A customer community is about connecting with members,
and eBay goes out of its way to make sure that happens. “What we
learned from surveys after the first eBay Live! was that what community
members really wanted was to talk to other community members,” Green
says. “But often they were too shy or just didn’t know how
to meet the right people. And they wanted to meet others at their own level
of expertise.”
EBay introduced the “eBay Pals Matching Program” at orientation in 2004,
where the 1,500 members who showed up could be paired off with others like themselves. “If
you come by yourself, we match you with someone on your same level,” Green
says. These new buddies then attend classes together.
EBay attendees also spontaneously created their own buddy program through the eBay
Live! online-discussion group, for those who could not attend eBay Live! 2004. Attendees
met non-attendees who wanted to be “adopted” through the discussion group,
and agreed to gather a bag of eBay Live! goodies to send to their buddies after the
event. |
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Another way to build a community is to reward and recognize
the achievements of individual members. EBay holds the Community Hall of
Fame Awards dinner on the last night of the conference. Guests vote for
outstanding members who are awarded plaques and put into an eBay Hall of
Fame for their contributions to the auction site.
Hokey and small-town, maybe, but recognition from your peers is a kind of social
glue that holds communities together. |
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EBay also uses customer feedback to develop content
for its eBay Live! courses. For instance, in the event’s first year
in Anaheim, CA, the 35 classes were basics such as “Introduction
to HTML” and “Introduction to Selling.”
Based on post-event surveys and on-the-floor polls, eBay learned it needed to add
to its line-up. “This year attendees wanted far more advanced classes, because
the users are becoming more advanced,” Green says.
For those eBayers who clearly sell more than a Care Bear here and there, eBay added
classes such as “Selecting a Retirement Plan for Your Small Business,” and “Hire
the Best! A Tool Kit for Easy and Successful Hiring.” |
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Event memorabilia gives attendees a way to remember
an event after it’s over, energizes the event, and even works as
an advertisement to potential attendees.
At the 2004 event, eBay started the memorabilia free-for-all at registration.
It included a treasure map inside every attendee’s conference bag
so they could play Treasure Quest. The map offered clues to where the
holder could find 26 trading cards and 11 collector pins.
The loot was
scattered throughout the exhibit hall, at stamping stations manned
by eBay staff. At each station, attendees could get their treasure maps
stamped and receive a pin or a card. The final card was distributed
at the eBay Live! gala on the last day of the event.
EBay also set aside a Collector’s Corner, where
attendees could trade pins and cards and meet eBay staff members. EBay
president and CEO Meg Whitman and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar even
made an appearance at the Collector’s Corner to autograph eBay
Live! collectibles.
If the free stuff wasn’t enough, attendees could buy
more memorabilia, including limited-edition trading pins, autographed books
from speakers at the event, and
eBay-branded mugs, clothing, and other paraphernalia.
In addition to the planned collectibles, attendees grabbed anything that wasn’t
nailed down and put it up for auction on eBay, selling everything from trading
pins to napkins.
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At many customer events, an attendee’s chances
of meeting the company CEO are only slightly better than a French peasant’s
chances of sharing a crepe suzette with Louis the XVI. But any guest
can talk to Whitman after her “State of eBay” keynote speech.
They can also chat with a number of other eBay executives at a special
Q&A session and at informal encounters throughout the conference
where the execs make themselves available.
Whitman also appears periodically at the eBay Shop
to autograph eBay Live! memorabilia. Why provide this
kind of access? Because in Mayberry, you could always
talk with the mayor. |
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Every community needs a forum for its citizens to
talk, bond, and argue. To keep the buzz going after the event, eBay
set up a special discussion board on the eBay Live! Web site for conference
attendees. Members reminisce about eBay Live!, swap event photos, offer
their two cents about improvements, and ask questions about future conferences.
The eBay Live! Web site lists event highlights, allows
users to download educational handouts from the event, and offers Web casts of popular
seminars from
the event. The site also includes an eBay store, which sells official event paraphernalia
such as charms, key chains, pins, an eBay Live! memories book, and even an eBay Live!
Adventure coloring book. |
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| CHARLES
PAPPAS,
staff writer |
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