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An effective customer community enables companies to do more than just facilitate conversations between customers and staff. For customers, it creates a sense of belonging and connection among members, offers valuable resources, and allows customers to provide feedback on products or services they purchase. For organizations, it can provide valuable user insights and real tangible results across product, marketing, sales, success and support teams that we’ll dive into a bit later.
There are many questions when it comes to building a customer community. When considering the creation of a customer community, you probably ask yourself:
If you find yourself asking these or similar questions, you’re not alone.Let’s talk about it.
There are four main reasons you should consider building a customer community. Let’s break them down:
A community allows you and your team to meet your customers where they are at in their unique customer journeys and collaborate with them. The goal of this is not only to humanize your business, but also to encourage your customers to engage in collaborative activities, such as asking questions and sharing value. All of which builds greater trust and credibility in your business
Similar to the first point, providing a space where you and your team can collaborate with your customers can improve business outcomes when done right. An effective community is also a place where the community members (your customers) can talk with each other about things like product feature inquiries, innovative ideas, and industry trends.
If your community is encouraging a culture of trust and mutual help, customers will be inclined to recommend your product. This is due to the Word-of-Mouth effect. This effect is when your customers have such an invested interest in your product that it becomes part of their consistent conversations. Disney is a perfect example of this. The community of fans they have created has brought the Disney brand into the vernacular of millions of people around the world.
And finally, you can gain amazing insights from your customers by seeing what they are discussing amongst themselves in your community. Your customers can contribute to your product, customer success, marketing, and sales teams’ creativity by sharing their challenges, feature suggestions, and how they are using the product.Also,your customer needs will evolve as time and economies evolve. A thriving community can enable your company to adapt your product in sync with these changes and proactively plan for the future.
As businesses continue to shift towards the subscription-based model for their software and services, the importance of Customer Success has become paramount. While both B2B and B2C customer communities prioritize fostering strong relationships with their customers to achieve retention and advocacy, there are significant differences in the way they operate.
In B2B communities, companies typically operate within a larger ecosystem, with many stakeholders involved in the purchasing decision and ongoing success of their investment. As a result, B2B communities tend to be more closely curated and tailored to the specific needs and challenges faced by different job functions.
B2C communities are generally much more user-driven, with a focus on self-service and enabling customers to solve their own problems.
Regardless of the specific approach, the key to success in both B2B and B2C customer communities lies in building trust, fostering engagement, and delivering value at every touchpoint.
Company culture and strategic planning are integral factors contributing to the success of your customer community efforts, and they are closely intertwined. Establishing a clear strategic plan is crucial for defining the framework for a successful community within your organization. This plan should outline what success looks like, identify the necessary personnel to execute the vision, and establish metrics for measuring success. It is key that this plan is shared with, agreed upon, and adopted by all relevant leadership teams because a customer community has the potential to benefit multiple teams and departments. For instance:
Setting clear objectives upfront and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) is key for evaluating success. Metrics should include participation metrics like tracking the growth in active users, posts, comments, and conversations. You also could choose to evaluate the business impact by looking at metrics like and changes in support inquiries, customer churn, and product adoption, etc.
Having a customer first culture and mindset are paramount for your success. As the saying goes, “Happy customers are the best strategy of all.” This is true in the world of community building as well. Focusing on customer success enhances participation and creates loyalty, leading to organic promotion and recommendations of your brand. Word-of-mouth marketing driven by satisfied customers, is a highly effective strategy. Collecting VoC (voice of customer) (VoC) data is instrumental in refining products and messaging, emphasizing the importance of valuing customer opinions. By giving your customers space to be heard, you show that their opinions and thoughts matter to you. This can go a long way in building a positive Customer Experience (CX) and driving community growth.
Bottom Line: A Customer-First mindset, coupled with strategic planning, is the golden ticket to creating an effective community that works for your business and your customers.
Now that we’ve discussed the groundwork, here are the top five tips to grow active participation:
What are your community values? Examples to consider:
Founded: 2001
Membership: 1.7 million +
Brief Summary: The Topcoder community is global, attracting a wide range of talent from programmers and developers to designers and data scientists. Their worldwide membership makes them one of the world’s most diverse technology community. It offers a platform for members to showcase their skills, solve real-world problems, and connect with a diverse community of technology professionals.
Why this community made our list:
Founded: Early 2000’s
Membership: 33 million +
Brief Summary: This community is a user-driven platform where Adobe users can connect, share knowledge, and find support. It has product-specific forums for software like Photoshop and Illustrator, allowing for peer-to-peer support, expert advice, and resource sharing. The community is integral to Adobe, fostering collaboration and learning among a diverse, global user base.
Founded: Mid-2000’s
Membership: Nearly 1 million
Brief Summary: The Autodesk community is a large network of enthusiasts centered around Autodesk’s extensive range of software products. It’s primarily known for their applications in architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, and entertainment. Autodesk offers a wealth of learning materials, including tutorials, training videos, and documentation, to help users of all levels improve their skills with Autodesk software.
Founded: 2004
Membership: 500k +
Brief Summary: Moz is a thriving community for online marketers. It’s centered around Moz, a company known for its SEO software and tools. This community is made up of SEO professionals, marketers, and business owners who use Moz’s tools and resources to improve their search engine optimization and online marketing strategies. The community was formed around the same time Moz was founded.
Founded: 2005
Membership: 400k +
Brief Summary: The VMware Technology Network (VMTN) Communities are a set of forums and online spaces where users of VMware’s products and services share knowledge, exchange ideas, and find solutions to technical challenges. VMTN hosts numerous discussion forums covering different VMware products and solutions, such as vSphere, vSAN, VMware Workstation, and VMware Fusion. These forums are vital for troubleshooting, sharing best practices, and getting advice on VMware products.
While customer communities may not be for every business model, the idea of creating a space that thrives on communication and shared values is a winning strategy many businesses are seeing.
The best communities are built and grown by the customers, not the corporations.
By working together on issues, customers are more likely to trust the brand when trying out new products and services. Providing helpful discussion points on topics such as user experience or product development, businesses can learn more about how their customers think and use this feedback to make decisions.
In 2024, consider making this a key piece in your customer outreach and growth strategy. It’s worked for millions of businesses over the years, why not yours?
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