How does online communities help businesses? This simple question doesn’t have a simple answer.
In today’s competitive market, businesses work to define core strategies for maximizing opportunities and fostering online communities to connect, engage and grow relationships with customers, employees and partners. From high tech to higher education, the online community has strong use cases in most sectors. Thus, business goals and audience needs drives this strategy, and it’s also consistent with current systems and processes.
What is an online community?
An online community is a group of people who interact and work together online to achieve a common goal. Nowadays, companies are investing in building their own community properties while also building communities on open social networks.
Many people are trying to understand how organizations are leveraging the online community. Therefore, we have identified six ways in which businesses can benefit from their online community and better serve their customers. They are:
To provide more value to customers through their products and services
Today, with the growth of SaaS and other cloud-based systems, it’s becoming more important for companies to use installed software. According to Flexera Software’s 2016 Software Monetization and Licensing Survey, 51% of software manufacturers admit that they are not tracking customer usage.
As a result, the community helps customers better understand the products they purchase, and they troubleshoot when problems occur. In addition, they ultimately evaluate products and services, increase customer usage, and improve asset management practices.
Improve the way the organization enhances products and services
The online community allows organizations to quickly grasp what their customers want to get from their current products and services, rather than waiting for customer satisfaction surveys and annual customer meetings.
To create and develop better products and services
When organizations work with customers on a sustainable basis, this could lead to the creation of a better roadmap for future products and services.
To effectively market and sell more
When communities are being leveraged by forward-thinking organization early in the customer journey – when potential buyers ask questions, or when they need to learn from existing customers about their experience and weigh their options – communities can be the ideal place to connect potential customers and pre-sale leaders.
To reduce post-sales service cost
Customers wouldn’t want to wait to talk to a support professional if they can provide self-service and get answers through the support portal and customer community. As a result, communities can increase customer satisfaction and also reduce support costs.
To manage the social media conversation about their company
While public social media campaigns has its own time and place, many organizations prefer to have deeper conversations with customers in a private setting. Thus, this prevents competitors from getting too much information and also helps organizations promote continued engagement and support.
You want to know more about joining online communities? Reach out to us Ovacom Consulting.
