Customer communities – more than just a support tool

I’m a big fan of communities. Brands the world over are successfully using customer communities as increasingly important parts of their overall online customer service models. The work we’ve done in BT with Lithium in creating the BTCare Customer Community is an example of what I mean – the power of bringing groups of like-minded customers together to help support each other is well documented as a serious tool in both delivering a better level of service, and reducing overall support costs for businesses.

But communities go much further than just service, and this is where I think that a largely untapped opportunity exists for many brands.

Whatever it is that you sell, whether that be computers, hi-fi gear, sportswear or cars, there will be a group of people on the internet who are totally passionate about what you do. Take cars for example. A simple Google search for any model of car typically brings up a myriad of fan sites devoted to that particular car. And it’s the same story for all sorts of different products and companies. But how many companies are actively embracing these communities, welcoming them into their inner sanctum, making them feel special and valued? Not as many as could, that’s for certain.

There’s some well documented examples of where brands have totally missed the spot of just how important fan communities are. Ford’s experience in the States is one of my favourites, and is neatly summarised by @ronploof here. In short, one part of the Ford corporation took some action against some fan community sites without really thinking through the implications (though the excellent Scott Monty was the saviour of the day, and he well and truly ‘gets it’!). Indeed, the moral of the Ford story was that not all parts of that company truly appreciated the value of their community to them, and it is this that seems to pervade through many other large brands.

So, if you think about your own business have you stopped to think about what community means to you? Having a support community is a great start, but you can do so much more. There’s a multitude of tools like the Scout Labs and Radian6 monitoring products and plain and simple Google search that will help you identify where your ‘virtual communities’ are, and if you add in the capabilities of social tools like Foursquare which by their definition start to gather data about who’s engaging with your brand (as well as where and how), you can quickly collect basic data to input into your strategy for community outreach. And for most of us at least in the B2C space, daring to ignore Facebook is just crazy. Whether you’re starting to use social plugins to start to identify your prospective community members, or going the whole hog with all-singing all-dancing fan pages, there is a ton of stuff available to help create new opportunities for customer engagement.

There’s a few companies who I think do especially well in this space. Motorcycle manufacturer Harley Davidson have engagement with their customer communities integrated into the fabric of their business (and not just in terms of online community engagement – getting out there and riding with fan groups helps cement the brand-to-customer relationship and reinforce to the customers that Harley Davidson are more than just a bike seller). Coca Cola and Marmite are two other brands for whom direct engagement with fans online is second nature. Taking the Marmite example in particular, this demonstrates how creating a fan community where one doesn’t already exist can bring together groups of people where previously no such place existed.

In summary, communities are something that no company can afford to ignore. From creating a customer-led expert virtual support team via a support forum to creating new opportunities to celebrate brand loyalty, communities are an incredibly powerful tool in any customer engagement strategy. Whether in good times or bad, an active, vocal community where your company regularly participates in community activities can be another differentiator between those brands who ‘get’ the power of online and those for it remains largely irrelevant beyond the basic corporate website.

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