You Only Have One Customer Community

[MUSIC] Customer communities and, and really you know where they fall inside the organization, how they can be used, and what value they can return. It's a really hot topic right now. In fact one of the surveys we did this year. We do a social business survey every year. One of the questions this year was, you know what are you gonna invest in from a technology perspective over the next 12 months? The number one answer this year, and for the first time, was customer communities. The community is you know typically today communities deployed in the customer service organization. It's kind of a really obvious ROI. but, but, but the problem is that, in a lotta companies, that's very siloed, so, there's a huge value in havin' a customer service community, havin' a peer-to-peer support community. And there's a, and it's a great place to get content, it's a great place to build trust. But if you look across the organization, there are other places that, can benefit from that same community. And, and I actually I should say this, that you only have one customer community. You may have some variation in the customer community. So, you know, maybe I have OEMs and I have B to C and I have, you know, there could be some different types of customers, I buy that. But, but other than that, you only have one customer community. You can't have a marketing community, a sales community, a product innovation community. Is, it won't work. One customer community, and you have to be able then to take it outside of customer service and see what you can do with it in Marketing. What do I mean? Well, in marketing for example, if you think about the interaction, if I could take a prospect and help lead them into the community, then my own customer influencers, not me. Would tell my story much more effectively than I could ever tell my story. I mean assuming you have a positive customer community, of course. and, and then, and then take it to sales. What, what could sales do with a community? Well, and actually sales and marketing. One of the biggest problems today is this idea of omni channel. Omni channel sounds great, you know, I want to reach out to customers wherever they are, fine, but how do you know who your customer is in every channel? I bet you you don't. Because I'm certainly not the same person on Gmail that I am on LinkedIn that I am on Facebook that I am on Twitter that I am on, you know, I can keep going. So the customer community is a great place to build out a full profile of the customer and really understand who they are. If I can figure out who they are everywhere, then in marketing I can much more effectively communicate, and have a conversation, and interact with them. In sales, I can build out a much deeper profile, and I can really start to, you know, have deep analytics in that customer community that helps me understand buying patterns, behaviors, learn more about you, get to know you better, etc. And then, lastly, from a product standpoint or service standpoint. If you're a member of my community, I can take that community and use what I learn out of the community to drive better products and services. Or, to build what customers actually want to buy, which is, kind of, a novel idea. and, and again, all those interactions, service, marketing, sales product development, all of those have huge ROI if you can really operate that community across all those silos.