"Why Should Companies Embrace Online Communities?" — Webinar Q&A

In this week’s webinar our speakers discussed the unique role that Online Communities play in today’s digitalized world, highlighting the importance of customer engagement and how it can improve your customers experience. Additionally, our speakers highlighted how an online platform, such as QuestionPro Communities, can provide businesses and organizations the right environment and tools for such engaging activities.

To see the slides shared during the webinar, please check below.

Here is a synopsis of some of the main questions and topics that were discussed in our webinar:

Q1. Why should companies use Online Communities platforms for customer engagement and insights?

A1. Online Communities help companies stay ahead of the competition by keeping their customers engaged, empowered, and excited about their experience. As the internet grows exponentially, companies need innovative solutions in order to stay relevant and improve their customers experience with their brand, products, and services.

An Online Community platform provides the tools and perfect environment so companies can engage and connect with their customers across multiple activities, in meaningful and significant ways. Furthermore, platforms such as QuestionPro Communities, allow for their community members to have real-time conversations and interactions with the companies as well as within themselves.

That is, Online Communities provide companies the ability to communicate with their customers while collecting significant insights that will help them improve their experience while impacting their business outcomes.

Q2. How can I keep my community members engaged?

A2. An online community platform can give you all the tools to help you keep your customers engaged and connected at every stage of their journey.

First, you should have a transparent strategy for your community, aligning specific goals and objectives with that effort. By doing so, this you will start communicating and connecting with your customers with a clear sense of how and when you should communicate with them.

Second, such platforms can provide the tools that will empower your customers to communicate with you (and with each other), while sharing their thoughts and opinions about your products/ services, as well as their overall experience with your brand.

By providing your customers the right tools to communicate and connect, you can deeply listen to them; strengthen your relationships; promote ongoing participation and communication; collect insightful feedback; and, most importantly, build customer loyalty, generating word-of-mouth advocacy as your customers share their positive experiences with your brand with their own network. And remember, together, you and your customers make your brand real and relevant.

Q3. How big does my community need to be?

A3. The size of your community really depends on your specific goals and needs. We have clients that have communities sizes as big as hundreds of thousands of users, and they are tailored to the insights they aim to collect as well as their goals. Also keep in mind that a community and customer engagement should be organic, meaning that the size of your company can grow as your needs expand. For example, you can start off small, but can grow over time as your customer database grows, or the opposite can also be true, as you see a better opportunity in funneling a community with only a segmented group. Again, the size of your community truly depends on your goals and objectives.

Q4. How can I exponentiate the use of a Community?

A4. There are many ways that you can use your community to collect the customer insights while connecting with the members and strengthening your relationship. With these online platforms, you can use your community for focus groups, surveys generation, polls, topics discussions, product feedback, ideas collaboration, events invitations, updates… The possibilities are endless. Just make sure you have a clear understanding of your goals with those activities, and start engaging your customers.

By the way, this is our team of experts that was just having a fun time while sharing their insights about Online Communities.