When the Vashon Island, Wash.-based manufacturer launched its bike site in 1997, it also built a threaded bulletin board known as the Tech Forum where customers could ask questions and get answers about their bikes from other owners. Instead of listening to Muzak while on hold, customers could simply sign in to the message board and type their question. K2 customers took to the application like boots to bindings. The problem was, bike owners weren’t always getting the best advice.

"We have problems with people going in [to the forums] and thinking the advice is coming from a [K2] technical rep when in fact it might have come from a 13-year-old," says Ali Wise, Internet services manager at K2. She worries that if a customer gets bad advice on the bulletin board, he will quickly become a former customer.

Employees in the marketing department read the postings when they had time. They addressed bad advice by starting new threads. But this was very labor intensive.

K2 put a disclaimer on the sign-in page reminding users that they were not getting information from K2 representatives. But now K2 is going further, accepting the fact that it has to be more careful both with the information customers glean from the board and with its effect on K2’s brand.

The Tech Forum still exists, but in a different form. It’s now an archive of troubleshooting guides, instructions and technical FAQs all in PDF format that owners can print out or save on their hard drive. Customers can e-mail questions not listed in the archive directly to the company. To make it easier for the marketing and customer service departments to handle all the inquiries, Wise implemented a Web-based CRM application. The application routes customers’ e-mail inquiries to the proper department, does keyword searches through a database of possible answers and then automatically composes a response that a K2 employee can customize.

Wise has temporarily shut down the bulletin board while she implements this new CRM system. She says the company intends to relaunch the board in the first quarter of 2002 as a forum where people can share their experiences on K2 bikes and where the company can promote new products and demos.

Wise believes that the key to getting people to buy K2’s merchandise is to provide them with good service.

"If someone is riding K2 skates, they might be inclined to buy a snowboard if they felt like they had support directly from us," she says. Finding a way to manage its online community has allowed K2 to provide that support more efficiently and convert K2 skiers to K2 bikers.