Customer community forums provide a meeting place for customers to engage with fellow customers in order to share ideas and information, get tips on product usage and access knowledgeable subject matter experts. Importantly, early adopters find that community forums differentiate them from competitors by providing interactive ways for customers to engage and find support. Forums aggregate relevant product information and usage ideas and share pertinent information to online communities. As more customers become members of a company’s community forum, it is essential to monitor sites and add fresh content to provide a wide range of valuable and actionable information to consumers.
For many organizations the creation of community forums originates in the marketing department. However, it is also important to involve customer support in the planning stage and design a site that encourages interactive participation of customers. A well-designed forum becomes a valuable source of information and encourages customers to resolve issues independently. It provides advisory services and helps customers find answers through FAQs and access to product experts who may be knowledgeable customers or in-house product managers. Additionally, community forums have a huge potential for reducing the need to speak to agents, which lowers support costs.
Companies encourage active user participation by recognizing customers who regularly support the community forum and often give them special titles such as valued advisor or company ambassador. Customers enjoy this acknowledgement and may also receive rewards, such as special discounts or coupons. This is enough to incent some customers to reach a top rank advisor status and continue active participation. Engaged customers are the most loyal and forums help them identify more strongly with the company’s brand.
Although there are costs associated with developing a community forum and supporting it, the ROI for this investment can be short. Customer loyalty and engagement are factors to consider. as well as the savings from call reduction or shorter call duration. It is important to identify the more routine reasons customers call for support and post information on these topics. The cross conversations between marketing and customer support can ensure that content is kept up to date and relevant.
The sponsor for developing a community forum needs to gain consensus between marketing and support departments, as well as the executive team, on the need for a forum and clearly define how it will differentiate customer engagement. Selling the project internally is essential to getting the cross functional support needed to deliver a quality experience. It is essential that the content plan is applicable to the customer needs and not be merely a clone of the web site. Once the site is launched, on-going monitoring and testing will safeguard the content and make certain the users gain value.
Want more? See Social Communications and Customer Support - A Winning Combination
