In Brief
Sequoia helps companies address their top people-related challenges by tying their benefits, compensation, and overall people programs to the business results they want. As part of their commitment to their clients, Sequoia envisioned having a strong peer-to-peer community where users could learn best practices from one another and extract maximum value from the product. To bring that vision to life, Sequoia leveraged Gainsight Digital Hub to integrate self-serve enablement, closed feedback loops, and 1:many communications into their community, driving product development and optimizing the client experience.
Challenge
Sequoia has built their business on providing clients with powerful technology, strategic guidance, and access to a great peer community, so it was only natural that creating a vibrant online community would be a high priority.
“The community is really for HR leaders in people-driven companies to come together, connect, collaborate, and put their ideas and their information together—without Sequoia needing to drive those conversations.”
– Jessica Daniels, Grove Community Manager at Sequoia
Sequoia envisioned their community as a place where their clients could help each other achieve value in a self-service model.
“The community is really for HR leaders in people-first companies to come together, connect, collaborate, and put their ideas and their information together—without Sequoia needing to drive those conversations.”
– Jessica Daniels, Grove Community Manager at Sequoia
They also wanted to leverage their community as a 1:many communication channel for important information, such as new features and product updates. At the same time, they wanted the community to become a source of client feedback, which could be incorporated into the product in a virtuous loop.
To help create this community, Sequoia used the capabilities of Digital Hub.
Solution
Using Digital Hub, Sequoia set up the Grove Community in about six weeks time. They built the Grove on a foundation of three principles: Connect, Cultivate, and Curate.
Sequoia’s “Ask Me Anything” events are a good example of these principles in action. During this event, client experts are available online to answer questions for two days, providing answers that CSMs might not have on hand. In this way, different clients Connect with one another. They Cultivate knowledge and best practices that are useful to others. And then that content is Curated, becoming part of Sequoia’s resource center for the benefit of the entire client base.
The cool part about a community is that the information is tangible, It’s always there. Users can always go back to those threads. New people can come in and see it.
Powered by Gainsight, the Ask Me Anything events allows Sequoia to answer client questions at scale in a 1:many format; fuels a self-serve resource center; and provides a client feedback loop that Product and other teams can use to optimize features.
Impact
The Grove Community has become a dynamic, centralized location for client interaction. They have achieved 36% monthly active users (MAUs). Their total registrations stand at 3,000 and they averaged 3,637 visits/month for the period from January to April 2023.
They have also met their commitment to provide a great peer community. Peer-to-peer engagement dominates the community, with 73% of the content created by non-Sequoia employees.
With help from Gainsight, Sequoia’s vision of a centralized, supportive online community has become a reality, delivering value to clients while increasing retention and revenue.
