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5 Ways to Put Your Community Members First

September 20, 2022 By Jim Storer

Online customer communities solve many tangible business problems. They can increase case deflection, lower support costs, enable distance collaboration, and connect global audiences. Customer communities also empower their members by making them feel seen and heard.

Empowerment might not be on your radar as a community use case, but connecting with your audience can pay big dividends. When your members know you care the online relationship shifts from a transaction to an interaction.  A whopping 62% of customer communities report that their members feel seen and heard through online community initiatives. How can you make sure the communication in your communities is a two-way street?

Here are five ways we’ve found to put your members first – making them feel valued and contributing to long-term engagement and member satisfaction.

1 – Integrate members into your strategy

For a lot of you this is going to be a big, “yeah, obviously” but online community members often take a back seat to corporate initiatives when it comes to strategy. Create formal member input channels for member feedback, like ideation programs, suggestion boxes, and event old-fashioned contact us forms. Also critical?

Make them easy to use. You want the barrier to contributing to be very low. You can set up a regular cadence of surveys for members, either tied to your editorial calendar (ie. surveys happen in June and December every year) or tied to member milestones like anniversaries or engagement markers.

The most important step here isn’t collecting the data, it’s truly integrating member input into your strategic conversations. Regularly review ideas and bring member feedback to relevant conversations. Don’t forget to acknowledge member contributions to help members understand where and how you are using their feedback.

2 – Give members visibility

The first rule of member feedback is: give credit! Always mention the member who originated an idea/attach their name to the feature, both internally and externally. This both provides positive reinforcement for the behaviors you want to see in your community and encourages others to share their feedback and ideas. You can also give shoutouts in the community and internally at your organization for those that might not have ideas or feedback that is used but are taking their time to contribute.

You can also create a formal recognition program (often called superusers, advocates, etc.) to tie member contributions back into the strategy of the community. This can be gamification, badges, branded swag, or awards, and doesn’t need to be physical gifts. Banners/labels on a profile or special mentions during calls or events are great rewards that don’t tax your budget. You can learn more ideas for superuser programs here.

3 – Recognize your members

Regularly spotlighting members and their work is a low-lift way to increase individual visibility in your community. Member recognition and spotlight programs do double duty as an engagement tactic, as they recognize the work of members and provide a way for members to get to know each other.

Sharing member contributions publicly may not always be an option for you, depending on your community type and organization’s standards. However, if you have a community Twitter, Facebook group, or LinkedIn you can cross-post content there. Sharing about community members publicly gives some visibility to what they’re doing behind the scenes.

4- Listen!

Make sure you’re proactively connecting with members with regularly scheduled check-ins. Don’t wait for them to come to you! Pay attention to what members are talking about, asking for, and challenged by. You can then create content and design programming that applies to these situations, even if they didn’t ask for it explicitly.

You can say you’re listening, but unless members see the result of that, are you really? Be sure to act on what you see, hear, and are asked about. Be flexible and willing to act (often easier said than done!) but your willingness to implement ideas and enact changes turns your listening into tangible action.

5 – Be transparent

Regularly share your strategy and roadmap and then listen to your customer community’s input. If online community members do have a say in your strategy/roadmap, make sure you touch base with them regularly to keep them involved. Don’t make them feel like an afterthought. If they have taken the time to influence your work, understanding how their contributions are being implemented is gratifying. If members aren’t directly involved in your strategy/roadmap, you can still update them on progress and plans to help them feel more connected to the community program.

When possible, share the reason why decisions were made. This leads to telling them why you make the decisions you do which can help them understand why your community operates as it does. Be straightforward and explain whether and why something works or fails. This transparency leads to trust, and if members trust you, you have truly built a community.

Esha Singh on Empowering Members

December 6, 2020 By Jim Storer

Esha Singh, Product Manager at Workday.

Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI, and more. 

Episode #73 features Esha Singh, Product Manager at Workday.

In this episode of the podcast, Esha shares how to empower members to keep coming back, the differences between a transactional community vs experience focused community, and how determination is a underrated superpower!

Listen now:

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/thecr-podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/CWCM_EshaSingh_Workday_2020.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Listen to more episodes of Conversations with Community Managers.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

3 Customer Engagement Tips from Powerschool, Tealium Education, and Acer

December 3, 2020 By Jim Storer

Check out how customer support organizations across industries use online community programs to engage with their audience and improve the customer experience.

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You know community is important, but what is the actual impact of a mature, well-resourced community program?

Community programs leveraged as tools to support the customer experience have an out-sized impact, improving everything from engagement rates, satisfaction levels and NPS results.

Consider these three ideas when thinking about how you can use an online community to meet your customers on their journey with your brand.

1. Use Collaboration to Support Customers

“We are currently trending 30% higher in activity since last year.”

Jbid Kissel, Senior Manager, PowerSchool
Community Use case: Customer Support

PowerSchool designed their community to empower and streamline customer experience, bringing a multitude of customer support channels under one roof. Using the Khoros platform, the community supplements a direct business-to-customer support system with a collaborative space that increased activity by 30% over the past year. Learn more.

Think about where your customers want to connect with you? How can you meet them there with your community? By offering collaboration support solutions you not only get your audience connected with the information they need, you empower advocates to share their stories.

2. Start at the Beginning (Every Time)

“We are replicating many community features in our Employee Portal, because of the growth we have seen.”

Kristen Meren, Community Manager, Tealium Education
Community Use Case: Advocacy Programs

Tealium Education recently revamped their community and added two community managers. The update aligned advocacy initiatives with the pillars of their community, identifying three core advocacy tasks: create killer content, drive engagement, and build internal advocacy. The Tealium team focused on welcoming new members and engaging previously passive members. Learn more.

On-boarding is crucial, but also can be a drag on resources. Remember, every time you on-board someone into your community it is their first time (every time). What may be dry and rote to you is new and valuable to new members.

3. Extend Your Reach (and Your Value)

“Our community allows us to provide a level of support and expertise that would be impossible otherwise”

Brad Bliven, Sr. Program Manager Digital Services, Acer
Community Use Case: Customer Support

Acer has been supporting its customers with a community for almost a decade. As a mature community, it has captured and delivered a lot of expertise – but it extends its impact by generating visibility and value for the company via public search engines. The Acer community team can connect its engagement to a range of strategic business goals across the customer lifecycle; awareness and branding, communications efficiency, lower support costs, and customer loyalty. Learn more.

Connecting your community to your wider business isn’t just good for your current customers. Extending the reach of content helps educate interested parties, and keep your employees in touch with the voice of the customer.

Brian Oblinger on Customer Experience

April 16, 2020 By Jim Storer

Brian Oblinger - Customer Experience

Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, customer experience, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more. 

Episode #67 features Brian Oblinger.

In this episode of the podcast, Brian shares his perspective on why customer experience is a powerful brand differentiator. He also discusses how community programs can impact the end-to-end experience for customers, members, employees, and the power of communities at scale.

Listen Now:

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrianOblinger_April2020.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Find more episodes.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

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