Are you talking to me? Social Media at Amdocs – a B2B social media blog

It was around this time last year when I wrote a blog about the launch of the new Amdocs Product Support (APS) community.If you haven’t read it or you just want to refresh your memory go ahead, I’ll wait.

Done?

Great! Well in the 11 months since that blog was written, the APS community have been very busy expanding and developing the community. Their newest community feature is the Top Contributor program. The Top Contributor program recognizes and rewards top contributors for their contribution to the community. Every month, the Contributor of The Month will be recognized on the home page of the community.

This month’s Contributor of the Month is – drumroll please – Chris Menard, Principal Business System Analyst, Aspect Software. Congratulations Chris!  Chris is a Principal Business System Analyst at Aspect Software, part of the  team that manages their Amdocs CRM system.

Chris Menard - Contributer of the Month

Chris has been an extremely valuable contributor to the APS community since its beginnings. Being a regular visitor and an active member of the community, he shares his experience and valuable input wherever possible.  On many occasions he has gone the extra mile to come up with a complete customization solution -- “just for fun” he says.  We need to talk to Chris about his definition of fun, but its great for the community. His contributions have helped APS add a new valuable Tech Info to its knowledgebase.

Chris was nice enough to answer a few questions about himself, Amdocs Product Support and the APS community:

So Chris, tell us about yourself: I am a Principal Business System Analyst, part of a team of five here are Aspect Software that manage our Amdocs Clarify system.  Our system is primarily Support focused.  We are on a customized SmartClient 7.5.1.3 environment.  I have been working with various Clarify products since 1999.

Tell us about your experience with Amdocs Product Support: In the past I have had some ‘shaky’ experiences with APS, but my most recent support interaction was great.  I will continue to seek support via the community for non Sev-1 issues before opening a APS support case.

How did you first hear about the APS community: I think through communications from Amdocs.

What are the main advantages of the APS community: Much quicker response to issues as the problem is visible to multiple people at the same time, including APS folks.

How often do you enter the community: I am setup to receive email notifications of CRM community activity.  I read new issues as they get posted.

What are your main activities in the community (e.g. looking for solutions, reading others issues, writing solutions, looking for documents, etc.): I guess all of the activities listed.  Clearly everyone is more invested when looking for help with a problem.  I have used various open source projects in the past where forum support is the only means of help, I have found active forums can be very effective.  Reading and assisting others, creates activity, which in turn may get more folks looking my issues in the future.

Would you recommend the APS community to your colleagues: Sure, my teammates participate.

Any last words: I like the contributions of suggested enhancements, the Task/Outlook integration, for example, was interesting.

Well we are glad you are getting value out of our community Chris, and thanks for your contribution! For the APS team, it’s great to have an external expert offering advice from a different perspective using experience gained from the field.

And speaking of the product support community, new features recently include an improved user interface and easier access to support information, a sharing mechanism between the solutions’ knowledgebase and the community forums, and enables access to the “Meet the Expert” recorded sessions repository by one click (Click Here for the recorded sessions which are available). Of course, you can still learn from the experience of Amdocs experts, customers and partners in our live forums enjoy live expert sessions and access terrific resources on our knowledge base.

Last but not least, check out this awesome new video from our friends at APS :