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Top : Customer Communities: Customer communities is a topic of significant interest and value. Community based online help forums can provide high value when they work, both to company and customers, but can seriously damage the company if left unmanaged
Examining Customer Communities In Action - Crowdsourcing
Customer communities became practical only recently, first with the advent on the Internet, and then with the development of software and platforms for social media.
Customer communities can have huge value for both companies and customers, provided they are monitored and staffed, can be used to provide both pre and after sales support, help generate product and brand buzz.
But it's not a simple task to set up a customer community, and to take advantage of the lowering of costs possible by having customers help each other. Many an attempt at customer community building has failed on the shoals of lack of staffing and moderation, or simply because the "community" fails to capture the imagination and engage customers.
Sadly, a poor community reflects badly on the business running it.
Whether your goal is to create a customer community for marketing, support, buzz or crowdsource information, you'll find some useful thoughts on the matter below.
How To Create, Publicize and Run Customer Communities
How to Select An Online Community Software Vendor | The Social Customer - by Vanessa DiMauro and Ryck Lent...how to build an online community and offered a detailed process overview to help organizations get started envisioning their community. While the community strategy, business goals and member needs remain front and center, one of the more daunting challenges for new online community initiatives is selecting a platform.""Similar to choosing a new home, the community software you choose should fit your and the members' needs -- and your organization's culture -- to best serve both the members and the staff who will run the community. Factors to consider when selecting a platform include: implementation path, feature mix and pricing. (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 222 )
Building online communities for business: 10 Rules For Online Community Success - by Vanessa DiMauro
Short and sweet with bullet points, and still useful. As social is an emerging trend, many have put down their soapboxes to talk about online communities. Consequently, there is some good (and lots of just OK) advice "out there" on building online customer communities -- yielding a great deal of information to sort through and parse. While theory is interesting, there is a practical side to us all - especially when endeavoring to act. And, human nature craves rules; rules to be examined, adapted and applied. Having built award-winning online communities for 20 years, I am boiling my journey down to a simple set of 10 implementable actions for online community best practice in hopes that it accelerates your community successes. new (Added: 17-Apr-2012 Hits: 2 )
Designing Metrics for Online Customer Communities | CustomerThink - by Vanessa DiMauro
Useful, usable and engaging, these are the qualities that successful online customer communities are made of. But, while all good community leaders within an organization hold these core values close, when business stakeholders start asking for hard ROI metrics, most community teams get a little nervous about how to prove value and define success. So, when the "what has community done for me lately" question get launched, panic sets in and people start to make dashboards and spreadsheets and charts galore. Community managers send reports off to leadership with fingers crossed and a heavy heart because they know the data isn't truly indicative. But they don't know a better way to communicate outcomes. (Added: 23-Aug-2011 Hits: 87 )
Online Customer Communities Are Strategic (reg required - by Patricia Seybold
Vibrant customer communities are a hallmark of businesses that lead in product and service innovation. You want to build and nurture communities for different types of customers as well as for the different roles your customers play in your company%u2019s innovation strategy. Here are a few tips to nurturing and spawning online customer communities. (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 231 )
Why most online communities fail - More Commentary - by MRoc
Additional commentary on WSJ article and Deloitte study on the failure of online communities. (Added: 18-Jul-2011 Hits: 96 )
Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction Research | Online Community Report - by na
The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction Survey was initiated in May of 2010. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the emerging field of social media marketing, and specifically, to explore the variety of platforms that are being used within online communities and how effective they are and which features are most valued. Forum One released a report based on the study last week."We received approximately 51 responses. Participants represent a healthy swath of the types of organizations participating in online community building activities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, interactive marketing firms and independent consultants."Several key issues pertaining to online community platforms and services surfaced during this report, including: (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 237 )
p They Said What?! Managing an online community - by na
Some advice on how to manage the following issues when (not if) they occur in your community forum."1. Offensive (language)""2. Offensive/Abusive (content)""3. Off-Topic""4. Incorrect""5. Negative (about your company, brand, products/and or services)""6. Positive (about the competition)""7. Sensitive/Confidential""8. Advertising/Spam""9. Other (including the unexpected) (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 227 )
Online Customer Communities: Critical to Most Organizations - by Patricia Seybold
There's a Catch-22 in deciding whether or not to invest in trying to nurture one or more online customer communities. The biggest issue in my mind is not, "will customers say bad things about us?" The answer to that question is, "Of course, some customers will be critical, but other customers will be complimentary. It's better to have at least some control over the conversation by hosting it, than it is to be at the mercy of the discussions customers are having elsewhere on the Internet."""The more important question, to my mind, is "will the community take hold?" Why would your customers or prospects want to converse with one another in and around your products or services? The answer is that they really don't want to talk about you or your products. They want to talk about themselves: What they are trying to do; what they care about; and, also many of them actually enjoy helping others who share similar jobs, interests and passions, it's kind of a quid pro quo. "I'll help/encourage you. You or someone else will help/encourage me." (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 233 )
Building a Listening Post Online For Customers %u2014 Pragmatic Marketing, world's most popular product management training - by Sherri Dorfman
Good. We have a fear of not being relevant any more to our customers. Three months ago, we set up an online community to listen and leverage customer insight in our product design and in our marketing strategies. We need to better understand the patient experience in order to drive innovation, explains the VP of Marketing for a healthcare technology company. In their book Groundswell, Forrester Research shares many examples of companies using online communities to listen to customers discuss their products and engage them for more information. Businesses use their online communities to harness the collective wisdom which guides their strategic and tactical product and marketing decisions. In the process of co-creating with the customers, companies build and strengthen customer relationships and business. new (Added: 17-Apr-2012 Hits: 1 )
Why online communities fail and how many succeed - by Emergence Marketing
The 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that was released last week led a lot of people to conclude that online communities do not work and that companies are spending too much money on making them happen.""Well - there is some of that and then there is a whole other side to the story that we uncovered as part of the study. (Added: 18-Jul-2011 Hits: 94 )
CRM News: Customer Loyalty: If You Build a Branded Online Community, Will Customers Come? - by Jeff Zabin
User groups take on a new meaning with the advent of social networking technologies, which provide the means for sharply heightened communication and collaboration. However, even with the best toolkit, the onus remains on the company to offer a value proposition that will make customers eager to participate. (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 223 )
Why (most) online communities fail - by Laurent Haug
After portal, Cextranet or web2.0, community became the favorite buzzword of web agencies sales teams, a sesame to convince clients to sign for expensive developments based on the magic user generated content formula. Give a toolkit to your clients and they will do the work for you they say.""Unfortunately reality is very different. In a world saturated with solicitations where people have less and less attention available, most communities fail because they bypassed a few important questions, like what are we offering users?, what is differentiating us from other communities?, etc""This phenomena is finally getting noticed and studied:""Wall Street Journal:Why Most Online Communities Fail (via LOIP)""One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community. (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 242 )
Twelve best practices for online customer communities | ZDNet - by Dion Hinchcliffe
One of the more significant Web 2.0 trends in business this year has been the advent of the Web-based customer community, where groups of like-minded individuals focus around a brand or a set of product and services come together and interact online. Far from the cynical marketing ploy that it can sometimes seem, customer communities often sprout up on the initiative of passionate customers. Successful examples of this include XMFan around XM Radio, HDTalking for Harley-Davidson, and IKEAFANS on IKEA products.""It's imporant to note that the communities above are vibrant, active, and absolutely not affiliated with the businesses that the communities are focused on. As a result, business are increasingly realizing they can reap benefits by attempting to foster these communities themselves, rather than hoping that a group of users will do it on their own. While this can be a risky proposition -- garnering an active community of users successfully is still more art than science at the moment -- the rewards are increasingly clear for those that are successful. (Added: 22-Jan-2011 Hits: 273 )
10 Things About Building an Online Community That May Surprise You | CustomerThink - by Joshua Paul
Linking a private social network to your website is straightforward. However, creating a successful online customer community or member community can be difficult. It takes an abundance of customers, an understanding of your audience, staff resources, a solid strategy, and the right social technology. As with any enterprise business challenge, this complexity leads to various levels of understanding and expertise in the marketplace.""To help corporations and membership organizations dig beyond surface level guidance and gain an understanding how to create a thriving private online community for your customer or members, I have laid out 10 rarely talked about tips that executives should internalize as they develop their customer or member engagement strategies: (Added: 23-Aug-2011 Hits: 76 )
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