Customer Engagement Using Digital Customer Communities

Digital customer communities create a dynamic customer engagement solution. These communities give your customers a place to share insight, collaborate, advocate for your products or services, and even make purchases. A customer community will let your customers connect with those just like them, with similar interests.

Use Case #1: Deepen Customer Engagement 

Customers really enjoy being listened to. They enjoy sharing their thoughts and expertise with other customers and prospects about your products/services. You in turn respond to these customer observations with your own insights. This ‘two-way’ customer dialog drives customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. You take customer engagement to a new level as you offer Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences from within your online customer community.

Imagine the impact of taking your wine connoisseur customer on a visit to your vineyards using VR technology! Or offering technical support services and technical training via AR experiences.

Learn more about ISM’s VR/XR/AR Resource Center

Use Case #2: Shorten the Sales Cycle/Enhance Lead Nurturing Through Digital Customer Communities

You invite leads to become members of your digital customer community. They talk with loyal and even enthusiastic customers that genuinely recommend your products/services. This provides the lead with ‘impartial’ insights, which help move the lead down the sales pipeline. You can also ‘digitally trigger’ leads encouraging them to follow your best customers’ journeys within your community to include asking questions, reading noteworthy blogs, participating in key discussion groups/forums/conference rooms, responding to quizzes and surveys to earn rewards, and more.

Use Case #3: Organize Key Customer Meetings and Facilitate Customer Activities

Many companies use private customer rooms located in your digital customer community to invite their customers to meet confidentially to create and/or review annual sales, marketing, and support plans. Many companies also invite subject matter experts – either from within or outside your company – into private customer rooms to discuss and resolve key customer issues.

Use Case #4: Launch Customer Polls and Surveys in Real-Time

Secure real-time customer feedback via surveys and polls that are offered from within your hotel. This could be regarding a new product launch, a new marketing program, a revised incentive program, etc. The goal is to have the Voice of the Customer continuously providing their opinion to you. By tying gamification to polls and surveys, meaning you give rewards for taking a poll or survey – you also deepen customer engagement.

Use Case #5: Digital Customer Communities Provide Support to your Distributors/Brokers

Digital customer communities are a wonderful way to maintain a two-way dialog with your distributors/brokers. Together, you share and manage business leads efficiently. They get quick answers to their questions, 24/7. They have access to your subject matter experts and to desired business/technical documentation. You facilitate the sharing of distributor/broker best practices. Where appropriate, distributors/brokers share ideas and business challenges with one another. As needed, you invite one or more distributors/brokers into private, one-on-one digital meeting rooms to further discuss issues.

In our next email, we will share more use cases on gaining valuable customer insight from a customer community. However, we recognize that you may need answers more timely.  We would be happy to discuss using a customer community to enhance your customer engagement efforts in more detail with you over a call.  Reply to this email or feel free to schedule a chat.

Choose a good time for us to connect here.

ISM was founded 36 years ago to help transform companies like yours to enhance customer engagement.  We look forward to your call, but if you are not ready please look forward to our next email.