Fair Isaac's popular forum (powered by Lithium; screenshot below) which supports its myFICO retail credit score/report unit, took first prize among 16 entrants in the Business-to-Consumer Supporting category in the recent Forrester Groundswell awards (winners list).

The Groundswell awards are based on business results using various social technologies. In total there are 16 categories.

The myFICO forum is currently receiving:

• 120,000 unique visitors in Sep 2009, up almost three-fold from a year ago (see chart below)
• 20,000 new posts added each month...with more than 500,000 posts archived
• 400,000 searches per month
• 10,000 new registered users per month

According to information supplied with the application, the forum is helping Fair Isaac in the following ways:

• Lowering call-center volumes: Total call center volume was down 1% in 2008 compared to a 23% gain the prior year.
• Reducing call-center talk time: 10% of callers are referred to the forum for more information and/or help from other users.
• Driving traffic: Traffic to myFICO.com from the forum equals about 40% of the volume from search engines.
• Improving sales: The average amount spent by a customer grows by two-thirds after they join the forum and 13% of all myFICO sales online involve a forum view.

While myFICO was the only financial services winner, Bank of America was one of four finalists among 23 entries in the B2C Talking category for its Morris on Campus student-banking campaign as was MasterCard Brazil for What's Priceless to You? 

Significance to Netbankers: myFICO's busy forum shows that despite the proliferation of blogs and social media, an old-school online forum is a good way to build a community and off-load the tech support burden. Of course, forums don't run themselves, and you'll spend a considerable time moderating them. But considering the alternative, it's an expense worth considering, especially if community-building is part of your strategic goals. Intuit has also had great success with its community forums, attracting 130,000 monthly unique users (see chart below).

myFICO forums (link, 29 Oct 2009)

Website traffic for myFICO and Intuit forums from Compete (link, 29 Oct 2009)

For more info:

• Online Banking Report: Credit Report Monitoring (Aug 2007)
• Online Banking Report: Bank 2.0 (blogs and social media, Oct 2006)