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the Free CMSWire NewsletterYour company may already be working with online communities as a new way to provide service to customers. Is your company also listening to the many customer and company related conversations that are taking place on other channels that aren’t sponsored by your company? Community isn’t just one destination…
Providing Customer Service 'Anywhere, Anytime'
Companies have begun to extend customer service functions into the external online communities and forums that they sponsor. Communities offer a dynamic opportunity for collaborative support of customers to answer their questions, to give them guidelines and ideas for solving problems, to discuss new ideas and critiques for the company’s offerings.
However, “Community” isn’t just one destination — it’s not limited to venues sponsored by individual organizations. Community is in every social venue that touches the customer and the company: other forums and social media sites offer support and sounding boards for customers of that company. Companies should understand that an overall Virtual Community can come into play for providing customer service “anywhere, anytime.”
Listening to these other social venues or communications channels has become very important to achieving highly responsive customer service/support. Listening may spur the company to join in on the discussion to offer answers and assistance. Or listening may be about clearly hearing what customers are saying and then acting on that feedback by making changes and improvements to offerings, support, marketing, and even strategic company direction.
According to Mark Studness, director of eCommerce at Verizon, the Community Forums have been well-received since rolling out last July, generating more than 10 million page views
'The Community Forums have spurred interaction among customers because people today expect to be able to find answers to their technical questions online,' said Studness. 'The feedback we've already received shows that our customers value the personalized peer-to-peer advice and feedback they receive from fellow users.' "
To achieve effective customer service in the Virtual Community, there’s plenty of work to do. It takes quite a bit of management, new processes, new culture and attitude adjustments to communicate with and support customers, to glean feedback, and to add value to the customer experience, no matter where the conversation is taking place. Customer interactions on the Virtual Community plane must be synchronized with CRM and customer service practices and processes to ensure that all of the appropriate teams are tapped to participate. Strategy, goals and metrics also have important roles.
Source: Dion Hincliffe's Community Management: The Strategic New IT-Enabled Business Capability
Effective Customer Service Communities
It’s pretty obvious that traditional customer service practices are broken for a lot of companies. Companies are making investments in social connections to customers often with the intent of doing a better job of providing answers and support, and to learn from the conversations customers are having in a variety of social venues. The Virtual Community is taking shape as it encompasses social sites external to the company as well as company-sponsored communities, both for customers and for employees.
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