Online Customer Community: Benefits and Implementation

An online customer community is a group of customers who gather together online to share information, give feedback, and support one another. These communities can be found on social media platforms, forums, and other online spaces as on a community platform like MeltingSpot.

The benefits of having a customer community for a company are numerous. It can provide valuable feedback, help establish a company as a trusted brand, and foster stronger relationships with customers. 

For one, customer communities provide valuable feedback on products and services. This can help companies improve their offerings and make them more appealing to customers. Additionally, customer communities can help companies build stronger relationships with their customers, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business.

Building an online customer community is also a way to enhance your onboarding and customer education throughout the customer lifecycle. This allows you to accelerate product or service adoption by hosting webinars to announce new features or launching a discussion forum to foster peer support. Explore our SaaS use case to learn more about this.

Another benefit of having a customer community is that it can help a company build its brand and reputation. By providing a space for customers to share their positive experiences and recommend products or services to others, a customer community can help a company establish itself as a trusted and reputable business. For example, the online retailer Zappos has a customer community called “Zapponian”, where customers can share their love of the brand, exchange information on products and services, and connect with other customers.

Building your own customer community is not difficult, but it does require some planning and effort.

The first step is to choose a platform for your community, it could be a forum or a social media group. However, a thriving community requires the right tool. It needs to combine a wide range of features that will help you educate (content sharing features), entertain (live streams), and grow (instant chat, forum, feedback collection) your customer community - and your business! Next, create a set of guidelines for your community to ensure that it remains a positive and productive space for all members.

Once you have your community set up, it's important to actively engage with your members. This includes responding to their questions and concerns, sharing relevant information and resources, and encouraging them to share their own experiences and insights.

Finally, it's important to listen to your customers and use their feedback to improve your products and services. This will ensure that your community remains active and engaged, and will help your business grow and succeed. For example, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia has an online community called “The Cleanest Line”, where customers can discuss environmental issues and share information about sustainable products.

In conclusion, an online customer community is a valuable asset for any business. It can provide valuable feedback, help establish a company as a trusted brand, and foster stronger relationships with customers. Building and maintaining a customer community requires some effort, but the benefits are well worth it. By following the steps outlined above, any business can create and grow a successful customer community. Read our next cheat sheet if you want to learn how to build a customer community step by step ?