Ever had a question about Reckon? Chances are Rav Singh has an answer for you. 

Rav moderates the Reckon Community, a forum where members can discuss and discover all things Reckon. This week, we sat down with him to get the inside scoop on what makes the Reckon Community tick.

This interview has been edited for clarity

1) To start things off, Rav, what is the Reckon community?

The Reckon community is our online platform where users of Reckon software can connect, ask questions, share experiences, and get support. It is a hub for customers to seek advice, troubleshoot issues, and learn more about using Reckon software effectively.

Members of the community can participate in discussions, contribute tips (like our #TipTuesday series), and keep informed on important product news and updates. It also serves as a support network, with other users and Reckon staff offering guidance and solutions

2) What would a new member expect to find on the community?

The Reckon community is a great place to learn about your Reckon software, seek help, and connect with fellow Reckon users. New members will find a welcoming space for product support and discussions and can stay up to date with important news and announcements.

The community is a launching pad, not just for our software, but also to understand their small business better.

Community members get news, access to our how-to tutorials, blog, and help guides, empowering them to know their accounting software and business better.

3) Empowering the users is fantastic. As the Community Manager, what are some challenges you face?

The community is, first and foremost, a support space for our users. So, most users jump onto the community when they have a problem and need help with a particular issue. 

The challenge is to keep those users engaged after they have a solution to their problem. 

We want to encourage ongoing participation for all our users, not just one-quick-fix solutions.

4) So Rav, how many active community members do we have on our reckon forum? 

Our community has just over 33,000 registered users. It’s a popular space; our customers, bookkeepers, and accountant partners are among those community members. 

This year, from January to the end of August, we had 190,000 visits to the community and over 500,000 page views. It’s a popular space, and it’s still growing. 

We love having new members join as we have more discussions, making the community a valuable resource for our members.

5) Wow, that’s a lot of people on the forum. How do you manage that? How do new posts get visibility or bumped up?

For the community, we wanted to remove as many barriers for users to engage and interact with each other. Our community is public; you can consume as much content as you want. So what’s the next step to that? It’s to be part of the community — to actually be a member. It just requires one step, and that is registering. Once you’ve registered, you’re now part of the Reckon Community. 

When it comes to participation, our community is structured by product. So you have a specific space for your Reckon software. Your account is tailored to what you’re using. You’ve got your product and your space so you can join in, discuss, and post.

On our end, we have built mechanisms into the community to alert us of new content that gets published, which we’ll use to jump in and assist. The community is great like that, because we’ll find that other users have jumped in and engaged on new posts.

We have long-term users who have decades of experience with our products, too, and it’s great watching them speak with new community members.

6) That ties into my next question. What makes the Reckon community special?

The members. We have been running this community for years and the interaction between members is fantastic.

Everyone has a voice, everyone comes from different backgrounds and has their own perspective. The repository of knowledge that can be tapped into is astounding. The community is full of people with shared experiences. It’s not a chat box; it’s a forum with real people engaging with each other. 

As part of the community, the support team and I try to match that and engage fully as well. Whatever post is getting activity, we are there. We always getting better and our response times are as well sitting at an average of 15 minutes. We’re always looking at benchmarks of other communities and we are up there with the best.

7) That’s awesome. So there’s a lot of engagement there, which really allows our customers to speak to someone, not AI. Rav, to finish things off, what’s something new that community members may have missed?

We are really excited about our new Reckon Community Rewards program, which launched this September. We can’t wait for our members to join. Our Rewards program will be based on participation, and our members will be recognised for their contribution to the community. We have put in place a ranking system where members can earn points, get badges to customise their profile, and win gift cards and Reckon swag.

We are proud of our community and can’t wait to reward them for their hard work!

Thanks for your time, Rav. There is a lot of excitement here at Reckon about our new Community Rewards program, and we can’t wait for our users to participate. 

New to Reckon? Come and join the Reckon Community and get amongst it.