The Community-Led Growth Show - Episode 20 w/ Will Machin, Team Lead, Community Management at Alteryx

In this episode of The Community-Led Growth Show, our Host Joel Primack interviews Will Machin, Team Lead, Community Management at Alteryx.  

Will shares a bit about his background - personal and professional. Alteryx’s community of 300,000 members is supported by the community team, comprised of 18 employees.   

The four functional areas of the team are platform, operations, content, and community engagement. When building out a community team, he shares the two must-have traits for successful community professionals. Remember to focus on the person and how they interact with others, not what looks good on paper, as they’re two different things and community is all about engaging with people.   

He discusses how the community team at Alteryx evaluates and makes community roadmap decisions, not just based on can we do something. His favorite benefit launched for the Alteryx Community is the Gallery, showcasing members helping members through their ideas and creations. His team, community engagement, owns the events for the community, moderation, and ways to facilitate value-add connections among members.   

Will shares the community engagement tech stack, but he calls out the importance of communication and building relationships with team members to have productive conversations.   

Next, the conversation turns to discuss the key metrics of the community team, such as time to first response, ticket deflection, and connecting community engagement to revenue.   

With respect to his team, the number of replies on a thread, traffic, logins, and monthly engaged users. His mindset is really focused on adding value rather than preventing the loss of value.   

Will wraps up the conversation by sharing his 3 community trends in B2B SaaS that he’s excited for looking at 2022 and beyond.