Customer Community

The discussions in a customer community can show you what users do and don’t like about your product and how they use it. You might also learn about issues with your technology. For example, if several users are talking about a glitch in your iOS mobile app, you can troubleshoot that immediately — and thank users for bringing it up!

“Trust” is a sentiment that’s nearly impossible to build with marketing and sales materials. But when you have a community of active customers sharing their insights about your products, you’re building trust in your brand. That’s because customers trust stories from other customers, and that trust eventually passes on to the brand.

Newcomers to your forums can search for both positive and negative comments about your product or its features. Preserving those negative comments in your forum will show that you value transparency and aren’t afraid of constructive criticism.

Your online community is a great place to grow customer advocacy. Take note of the people who are most enthusiastic about your product, and consider recognizing your “super users” in some way. For example, you could assign a star rating based on how much feedback a user provides over time, or just add “super user” under a person’s name after they’ve posted a specific number of comments.

In a B2B customer community, you might also invite your top users to write a blog post or record a video about how your product solved a problem for their company. First-person customer stories demonstrate how you help people, which can inspire trust in your brand.

Think of some of the common reasons SaaS companies lose customers, like absent features or low engagement with the product. In a customer community, users can talk about these issues and solve problems for each other. And you can proactively reach out to users for additional feedback if they have suggestions for new features. In-the-moment engagement with fellow customers and customer success teams can improve customer retention.

Customers may like your brand, but that doesn’t mean they’ll contact you when they need help. In fact, 69% of customers prefer to resolve issues on their own, if possible. A community forum helps customers post questions, find information, and gather input from multiple people. And that reduces customer service inquiries for your business.

If you have several products or different pricing tiers, the chatter in your customer community could convince customers to buy something more from you. Say, for example, that your top-tier SaaS subscription includes analytics that are unavailable at lower tiers. If your top-tier subscribers are raving about the insights they’re getting from your analytics, a lower-tier subscriber might decide to upgrade.

When you’re developing new products or features, present them to your community and ask them to vote for their favorite. That accomplishes two objectives: showing customers that you care about their opinions, and generating interest in the upcoming product or feature release.

Content generated within a customer community can be indexed by search engines, significantly boosting your brand’s visibility online. The discussions and user-generated content can create a long-tail effect, drawing in organic traffic over time. This not only increases your website’s search engine rankings but also attracts new customers who are searching for solutions related to your product.