Maximizing Community in Customer Success Management
Effective Customer Success Managers know that creating and maintaining a strong sense of community among their customers is essential to ensuring long-term success.
But what does it take to build and foster a healthy community?
In this article, we’ll explore some best practices for maximizing community in Customer Success Management. We’ll discuss ways to develop a strong community identity, cultivate meaningful interactions, and keep your community engaged over time.
Before that, let’s go ahead and review what Community is in Customer Success Management.
The definition of community and how it applies to Customer Success Management
What exactly is “community”? According to the dictionary definition, a community is a network of people who share common interests and interact and influence each other. In business, this is a space for your customers to build mutually beneficial relationships among fellow customers and your company, as well as to come to resolve their challenges and other issues arising from their implementation and utilization of your solution.
However, you need a strong, engaged community before users begin to drive measurable value from it This means that you must first create an environment that fosters this sense of community and engagement among customers where they feel comfortable sharing ideas, providing feedback, and interacting with one another and then the community will becomes useful and will start to take off and grow on its own.
The benefits of having a community for customers
Customers that are part of a community tend to be more loyal and engaged with a brand or service because they feel a sense of connection and value. In fact, customers that participate in communities have been found to have an 18% higher lifetime value than those who don’t.
An analysis conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium Technologies revealed that companies with active customer communities experienced 86% greater annual growth in revenue than those without them. The study also found that when companies invested in their customer communities, total customer satisfaction increased by 24%.
Furthermore, research from Microsoft Dynamics suggests that 64% of customers will stay with a company longer if it provides online forums and other social media channels for its customers to connect with each other. Additionally, according to the same study, 85% of customers are more likely to recommend a product or service if it offers an online community for customers to interact with and share experiences.
The evidence is clear: investing in your customer community pays off. Not only does it improve customer loyalty and engagement, but it also increases satisfaction and referrals while driving greater revenue growth. By creating an environment where customers can safely interact and share ideas, Customer Success Managers can foster connections that will help create lasting relationships between their company and their clients.
How can Customer Success Managers create a successful community?
Customer Success Managers are integral in the development and maintenance of successful customer communities. Customer Success Management involves proactively promoting relationships between the business and its customers through personalized strategies and using those strategies to support customer loyalty.
Customer Success Managers can create a successful community by implementing solutions that address their customers’ needs. This can be done by gaining an understanding of what those needs are, and then creating and implementing strategies that will meet them.
For example, Customer Success Managers can offer tailored experiences that provide personalized support and advice to customers, based on the products or services they consume and the feedback they have provided. By doing so, Customer Success Managers can ensure that customers feel heard, valued, and understood.
Customer Success Managers can also foster engagement within the community by creating a forum where members can interact with one another, ask questions, offer support and advice to each other, and share their experiences with their peers. This creates an environment of trust and connection between the company and its customers which leads to increased loyalty.
Additionally, Customer Success Managers should take the time to listen to customer feedback in order to better understand what is working for them and what isn’t so they can make informed decisions about how best to serve their customers’ needs.
Using customer feedback and other KPIs, Customer Success Managers should leverage data-driven decisions in order to best identify issues or opportunities before they arise. By staying ahead of potential problems or areas for improvement through constant analysis of customer data, Customer Success Managers can proactively solve issues before they become larger problems for their business and community as a whole.
Finally, Customer Success Managers must provide useful content designed to educate customers on various topics related to the product or service they’re using as well as help them find answers within the community itself. This content could come in various forms such as eBooks, blog posts, infographics, videos, etc., depending on what makes sense for the product/service offered. Doing this not only provides value but also helps build relationships between businesses and their customers since it shows that companies care about educating their users on topics that matter most to them.
Summary,
Keeping customers engaged in their success is essential for creating long-term relationships and the best way to ensure ongoing customer loyalty is to create and maintain an active Customer Success community. This can be done by providing open dialogue between the company and its customers, leveraging user-generated content to showcase success, constantly iterating on feedback, and providing opportunities for customers to engage with the brand. With a Customer Success community in place, companies can have:
- better retention rates,
- lower support costs,
- more product advocates, and
- increased customer lifetime value.
If you’re a Customer Success Manager looking to create or improve a community, there are a few key things to keep in mind: make sure it has a purpose, consider what motivates your customers to participate, establish guidelines and expectations for participation, cultivate relationships with power users and moderators, and be prepared to put in the time and effort required to keep your community active and engaged.
Looking for more Customer Success Management best practices? Visit our website for courses designed specifically for Customer Success Managers
Want More?
Coming up in October on our “Thought Leaders in Customer Success” live webinar event series, our CEO Rick Adams will be hosting Remco de Vries, VP of Global Demand at Gainsight and subject matter expert in all things relating to customer communities. Learn more about our events and advance-book your attendance here.
