Blog vs. Forum
Still No Clear Winner!
The Music Business Hosting support team elected to implement this new blog system using proven scientific methods. After exhausting research, analysis, and heated debates, the final decision was the result of a simple coin toss! (LOL)
There are clear advantages to both options -- blog and forum. However, there are also very huge disadvantages to both as well. Many customers have complained of forum searches that produced outdated results (2 and 3 yrs old), contradictory information, and depending on the search query ... no results at all. The chief staff complaint reflected the inefficiency of maintaining both the forum and helpdesk knowledge base for our business model. As far as the blogs were concerned, contempt for most WYSIWYG editors was the big winner along with the lack of familiar structure and stats offered by forums. If it were a simple financial decision -- the Music Business Hosting forum would have died a long time ago as the ROI just wasn't there. Forums are high maintenance -- no question about it. One would think that making the decision to do without both would have been simpler. Just direct customers to the helpdesk and be done with it all. But we discovered something really cool -- customers like talking to each other. Music Business Hosting's online community would evaporate instantly without a medium for customers to "connect" with one another.
So just when we were set to keep both blog and forum up and running, the "bean counters" issued an order to pick one -- "forum or blog, there can be only one!" It was at this point that we began to realize just how passionately people felt about their personal preferences. I prefer the blog solution as I find it to be a more relaxed and user friendly medium. However many of my colleagues would fight to the death over their right to forum! Imagine the uproar when it was announced that the BLOG won the coin toss.
None the less, here we are and now it is time to get down and bloggin'. All relevant forum posts will be merged into the helpdesk knowledge base and the rest will be archived for posterity (another way of saying taken offline, burned to disc and thrown in the dark storage closet down the hall -- never to be seen again). Now that the helpdesk and billing manager integration has been completed, customers are encouraged to log in to the new Account Manager and manage all sales, service and support transactions from there.