Customer Service Community

Customer Service Community

A customer Services Community is defined as places or platforms for customers, experts, partners, and others to discuss a product, marketplace, post reviews, brainstorm new product ideas and engage with one another about a company’s products/services/brands.

Online customer communities are online platforms for similar activities. They have gathered steam in recent years, majorly because of the boom in the social media platform, evolution of smartphones and the cheap and easy availability of the internet. These technologies have facilitated communication-making interaction smooth and easy.

This is the era of customers. This has been an important factor in fuelling customer community, who have gained powerful dynamics with businesses and brands. Consumers have a greater say in deciding the price of the product and negotiations in terms of deals that want to strike.

This attribute has also revolutionized and promoted the democratization of how information flows online. Instead of just a few expert sources providing information online or offline, consumer reports and consumer community has now become a trusted source, as the information offered on these platforms are first-hand. A customer community is yet another outgrowth of customer’s voice becoming supremely important.

Customers have turned into communities because they offer real-time information to engage with a company, as opposed to the more traditional communication channels. Customers sometimes promote anonymity to discuss or write about poor customer service without having their information attached to the comment.

Customer  Services Community communication can be carried out using the following platform (online/offline):

1. Blogging: Corporate blogs serve as an important platform for customers to post their opinions, and for other customers to post their opinion on the products or services discussed related to a business or a brand.
2. Surveys: Surveys have always been the most powerful tool to collect feed back from customers. Create and conduct surveys, polls, and questionnaire to collect opinions and also use it as a platform where you can create a dedicated dashboard, to view the overall analytics of the responses received from the customers.
3. Email: Send emails to a selected group of customers and ask them for their opinion. High end, loyal customers are usually the ones who render the most honest responses. Use these responses to make the necessary changes in your products or services.
4. Discussion Groups: Discussion groups or focus groups are one of the most candid ways of understanding what the customers feel. Customers can ask questions and discuss issues directly either with the company employees or company representative as well as other customers in the forum organized by categories and topics.
5. Social Media Platform: In the last decade or so social media platforms have become an extremely effective platform for customer voice and opinion. This platform has democratized the entire outlook of customers voicing their concerns. In the online community, members can do the same sort of things, such as posting an update, uploading and sharing files, links and pictures, commenting etc.