Viasat has hundreds of thousands of residential customers, but it’s pretty rare that any of them are seen at any of our offices. That changed last summer, when six Viasat residential customers spent two days at Viasat’s Denver office for the first-ever “Conference of Champions.”
The customers are highly active members of the Viasat-Exede community forum (community.viasat.com), where they often jump in to answer questions for others. When the moderators of the forum notice a user has been a helpful advocate like this, they get elevated to “champion” status.
“Their support is immeasurable,” said Diana Hayes, a member of the Viasat social media team that monitors the forum. “I enjoyed meeting all of the champions. Meeting them helped me to understand each personality and the way they answer on the forum.”
The visiting champions hailed from Virginia, California, North Carolina, Arkansas and Ohio. They got a tour of our network monitoring facility as well as one of the large antenna gateways that connects to our satellites. They also met all of the forum moderators they knew only from online, learned a lot about Viasat and, most importantly, told us how they use the service and what they’d love to see in the future.
They appeared to truly enjoy the experience.
“The trip convinced me even further that the decision I made to become a customer with your company over a decade ago was the right one, and I look forward more than ever to being a customer with your company for as long as I will need rural internet,” said Jim Mizer, an Ohio subscriber.
Otto Rodriguez from North Carolina, wrote: “I really enjoyed my trip to Denver and am very excited about what’s coming in the future with my internet service. You guys are a first-class organization!”
The Conference of Champions was in the planning for many months, and the marketing and care teams that hosted it are still sorting through all that was learned during the visit.
“There’s really no substitute for meeting customers in person, and these are particularly good customers who know our service well,” said Marketing Content Manager Alex Miller, who helped organize the event. “Having strong influencers like these champions out there online is a big plus, and we plan to continue to foster the champion community to add to their ranks.”