becoming a customer experienci leader

8/12/2019 Becoming a Customer Experienci Leader

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Te Community Effect (part 1)

Becoming a CustomerExperience Leader

The Art of Enabling Community for Your BusinessTis paper is the first in a series on the AR, SCIENCE, and OOLS that enable companies

to realize the community effect. Get Satisaction has been on the oreront o community

management and technology development or six years. We know communities better than

anyone and offer a unique perspective on the uture and strategic value o communities.

About Get Satisfaction

Get Satisaction helps customer-centric organizations engage millions o consumers in

meaningul conversations about their products and services every day. Te Get Satisaction

community platorm transorms these conversations into powerul, user-generated market-ing content and insights, enabling businesses to create differentiated customer experiences,

acquire more customers and bring new innovations to market. Headquartered in San

Francisco, Get Satisaction has customers around the world, including Citrix, HootSuite,

Intuit and Kelloggs.

Table of Contents

The Benefits of Becoming a Customer Experience Leader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Learn the Secrets to Cultivating a Strong Community Effect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Art of Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

Laying the Groundwork for Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Making the Community Part of Your Business Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Creating a Customer Engagement Playbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8


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Te Benefits o Becoming a Customer Experience Leader

At Get Satisaction, our experience has shown that com-

panies with a thriving customer community that is well

integrated into the heart o their business see tremendous

benes. We call this the Community Effect, and we think

that all business can achieve this customer experience

advantage.So what are these effects? In simplest terms, communities

will oster:

Cultivation o a more customer-centered culturethat encourages a laser ocus on what customerscare about

Systematic incorporation o voice-o-customereedback into decision-making across departmentsand at the executive level

Highly effective sel-service and social support thatefficiently taps expertise across your business andcustomer base and scales as you grow

Creation o customer-generated content marketingand other word-o-mouth programs that areauthentic and effective

Improved customer loyalty, brand perceptions, andlietime customer value

Tese are kinds o benefits that every CEO should care

about because collectively, they are instrumental inmaximizing shareholder value now and in the uture. Te

business perormance o companies that successully di-

erentiate their customer experience speak or themselves;

according to Watermark Consulting, an analysis o the

6-year stock perormance o customer experience leaders

versus laggers compared to the S&P 500 (2007 2012)

shows that customer experience leaders clearly outper-

orm the market (see Figure 1).

Understanding Customer Experience

Customer experience management (CXM) is not a newconcept; rather, it is a proven business strategy popular-

ized more than 10 years ago. Te goal o a CX strategy is

to create compelling, user-riendly experiences at every

customer touch point and provide personalized, contex-

tual inormation that aligns with customer needs (pre-

sale, point o sale, post-sale, and beyond). Over the past

ew years, social technologies have given companies more

tools to create some pretty amazing customer experi-

ences. As explored in this paper, community is one o the

most versatile tools in that toolkit.

Customer Experience

DriverCommunity as a Tool

Multi-channel Content optimized or discovery

in mobile, brand website, social,

and search engines

User-riendly Easy-to-navigate, simple interace,

search optimized

Personalized Incorporates customer profile and

behavioral context

Relevant Displays content that is relevant

to customer needs or stage o

liecycle

Engaging Allows customers to get responses

rom the brand or other customers

able 1: Community as Customer Experience Driver

Customer Experience LeadersOutperform the Market

6-Year Stock Perormance o Customer Experience Lead-ers vs. Laggards vs. S&P 500 (2007-2012)

Figure 1: Customer Experience Leaders Outperform the

Market


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Learn the Secrets to Cultivating a Strong Community Effect

So how can you establish a customer community to generate a strong Community Effect and rapidly

accelerate your path to a more customer-centered business? Success requires vision and strategy, strong internal leader-

ship and communication, solid execution, and a finesse thats based on extensive experience. Tis series will not only

overview the basics o starting a successul community, but also share our experience-based best practices and insights

to accelerate your learning curve. Each paper in the series will ocus on a different aspect o community:

Paper #1: Te Art o Community What are the key components necessary to build a vibrant, valuable customercommunity? Tis paper will discuss the ormula o people, process, and organizational elements, while touchingon some practical to-dos as you prepare or your communitys launch.

Paper #2: Te Science o Community Next, well ocus on the technical aspects o running a community, suchas how to integrate your community with your website, back-end business systems and processes, and socialnetworks to capture data needed to measure, analyze, and optimize your community.

Paper #3: Te ools o Community Learn how successul Get Satisaction customers are using our platormstools to strengthen the Community Effect. Well share practical examples o how they are cultivating andexploiting the Community Effect to create a customer-centered culture and competitive differentiation.

What is the Community Effect?

When you have a thriving customer community, no one

can pretend that they dont know what customers are

thinking about your brand, how they are experiencing

your products, or what they are eeling about your com-

pany. Customers say it like it is, giving every area o your

business first-hand insights into whats working, whats

not, and why and telling the world about it at the same

time. Teir conversations raise the level o accountability

that departments and even individual employees have

regarding the quality o the customer experience and

how they eel about your offerings and brand.

YourProduct

Team

YourProductTeam

YourMarketingTeam

YourMarketingTeam

YourSupportTeam

YourSupportTeam

Figure 1: Community closes the gap between business departmentsand your customers.

And this is when the magic happens. Departments

start to work together to address customer issues raised

in the community and act on their ideas and sugges-

tions. Employees move beyond bureaucracies, policies,

and inflexible processes that hinder collaboration and

innovation, paving the way or everyone to be in regular

communication to take timely action. Imagine having

your sales team collaborate with your support team to

understand the biggest pain points and eature requests;

marketing talking to product development so they knowhow best to position new offerings in product launches;

support talking to marketing so they produce commu-

nications that accurately reflects the biggest challenges

customers ace; and so on. Everyone companywide is

on board with what customers are saying and asking or

and your customers eel heard, valued, and happier to

be a loyal customer and advocate o your brand.

Te Community Effect is accelerated by integration with

core business processes and systems CRM, knowledge

management, marketing automation, business intel-

ligence, and so on so that decision makers receive a

steady eed o prioritized customer eedback, suggestions,

and insight. In other words, you can have a community-

enabled customer experience because the community

helps key departments stay aligned to meet customer

needs and respond to their eedback.


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Te Art o Community

Preparing Your Pe ople and Organizat ion

to Drive Community Success

Establishing a successul community isnt as simple as,

build it, and they will come. It requires vision, commit-

ment by management and your organization as a whole,careul investment in the right places and the finesse

o an artist who instinctively employs certain techniques

to achieve the desired outcome. Tis finesse can take

years o experience to cultivate and most likely, you

dont have that much time. Tis paper will help ensure

your success by sharing some o the techniques and best

practices developed by the experts at Get Satisaction.

Te art o community is about orchestrating the right

human and organizational resources and employing the

right techniques to set you up or success.

Laying the Groundwork orransormation

Bui ld Strong Inte rnal Relat ionships

Around a Sh ared Vision and St rategy

raditional communities are built on solid relationships

and online customer communities are no different. Te

little-known secret to successul communities is that they

are dependent upon a strong web o internal relationshipsbetween executives and employees spanning a wide range

o departments all o whom must be motivated to work

together to respond to customer questions, issues, ideas,

and praise raised in the community in a systematic,

timely manner. Its this need or internal collaboration

triggered by the introduction o voice o the customer

into a business that breaks down traditional orga-

nizational silos and helps your business become more

customer-centric.

Lets explore this secret in more detail and share some

proven techniques and best practices to help you build

these relationships.

The art of community is about

orchestrating the right human and

organizational resources...

Communicate Your Vision and Strategy

Introducing a customer community into your business

can be a truly exciting and transormative event because

it captures and elevates the voice o the customer and

like a pebble thrown into water, customer conversations

shared throughout your organization can result in all

kinds o ripple effects. Most importantly, a community

can make your business more aligned around the cus-

tomer (see box below).

Communities make your business more customer-centric by ostering:

Serendipitous collaboration and innovationbetween employees and cusotmers

Te creation o a Voice o the Customerculture

Te ability to identiy, respond to, and fix issuesmore quickly

Always-on inrastructure or listening, acting,and closing the loop with customers

A orum or many-to-many conversations toenable knowledge sharing

A platorm or delivering amazing sel-serviceexperiences or customers

Differentiation rom competitors by deliveringan exceptional customer experience


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Te goal o a customer community as a communication

channel is always two-old:

First, to provide an engaging customer experience

Second (and just as important), to help employees

understand more clearly how their work is valuedby customers, as well as address their need anddesire to proactively improve the business

Beore getting started, its important that everyone

understand these two goals. So kick-off the initiative by

explaining how community creates a direct line o com-

munication between them and the people (customers)

who ultimately keep them employed by consuming the

products and services your business offers. Your objective

is to get them excited about participating in the commu-

nity and seeing the effects it will bring about internally.

Consider an anecdote shared by Prezi, one o Get Sat-

isactions customers a business that develops cloud-

based soware that brings presentations to lie. When a

developer helped the support team to answer questions

and issues raised in Prezis community, he said, I have to

be more careul with my work. I had no idea it had such

an immediate effect! Hearing the voice o the customer

through the community got this developer thinking

outside his coding bubble and ocused on quality and

excellence in the areas customers care about.

Making the Community Parto Your Business Strategy

Think big

Weve ound that customers who have successully built

thriving communities with a strong Community Effect

chose to invest in one because they wanted to:

Create a customer-centric business

Build a social brand

Have customers generate authentic, trusted, andpersuasive marketing content

Differentiate based on service quality and getrecognition or it

Notice that their goals are broader than just improving

customer service and or good reason. As discussed

earlier, communities are ar more than just sel-service

support platorms. Tey can, or instance, be the linch-

pin o your customer experience strategy, helping you

differentiate based on the quality o your total customer

experience.

What is your community strategy going to be?

Think big and ask yourself:

Which business goals and objectives are yourtop priorities? How do you envision yourcommunity supporting them?

What systems and processes both customeracing and back office would need tointegrate with your community to support thisvision?

Who are the stakeholders youll need to bringon board rom each department, and how canyou make them understand the impact thiswill have on their specific department?

What are the organizational barriers tobuilding a more customer-centric business,and how can you address them?

Where will the budget come rom? When donecorrectly, community impacts and is used by

multiple departments. So who will own it?

Al ign Cross-Departmental Stak eholders

As you share your vision and objectives, secure the

approval and commitment o key stakeholders in de-

partments such as Marketing, PR, Research, Analytics,

Content/Production, Customer Service, Legal, Compli-ance, and I. Never underestimate the need to secure

broad support or your community.

First, your community managers wont be able to handle

every issue; they will need to reach out to relevant depart-

ments or timely expertise and assistance. Your success

will be assured i management o each department ully


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embraces the community and makes a commitment to

engage with customers.

And second, teams will need to collaborate around

customer needs, ideas, and issues that require cross-

departmental engagement. Tis requires breaking down

traditional organizational silos and impediments to col-

laboration and innovation, such as inflexible processes,

outdated policies, and obstructive processes.

For this reason, consider having a private, internal com-

munity where different departments can collaborate.

Customer-acing teams can use it to discuss the best

answers to complex customer questions with engineers.

Marketing can ask about the most common support

issues as inspiration or blog posts. Product development

can post updates about their latest release. And Sales

can use it to let everyone know key actors in won and

lost deals. In this way, all departments can act as a more

cohesive unit and pool their collective knowledge to bestserve your customers and drive innovation in the areas

customers care about most.

o gain buy-in, share your strategy and translate how the

community will help the company achieve its goals. For

example, when talking with the head o support services,

discuss how community can impact the bottom line by

deflecting issues away rom more expensive, one-to-one

channels like chat and email. And when you need to

secure the approval o marketing, share how communi-

ties impact the top line by vastly improving search engine

optimization and organic reerral traffic to your com-

panys marketing website.

Dete rmine How You Will Measur e

Success

Being clear about what the communitys strategy and

objectives are will help determine what you should

measure, what you should report on, and what success

looks like in measurable terms. For example, i your goal

is to break down business silos to become more customer

centric, your success metrics might be as simple as Xnumber o customer ideas implemented. I your goal is

to reduce contact center costs, you might measure sup-

port tickets deflected and pageviews on support conver-

sations. Similarly, reerral traffic and unique visitors are

great measures o marketing success as well, since a goal

o a marketing should be to attract new prospects with

relevant user-generated content.

Its helpul to publish a dashboard that clearly displays

your metrics over time (weekly or monthly is best). Tis

will allow you to see the progress youre making, as well

as identiy areas that could use some extra attention. Ac-

cording to Te Community Roundtable, to assess overall

community health, most companies measure:

otal activity

Members (total, active, & contributing)

Questions answered

Volume o comments

Look or a platorm that makes this easy to do or

example, the Get Satisaction platorm includes an ad-

vanced Community Health Analytics dashboard.

Weve found that companies that

measure impact (or even ROI) invest

more in community management

likely because theyre realizing all the

value their community is creating and

want more.

Creating a Customer EngagementPlaybook

Set the Stage for Dynamic Customer

Conversations

At this point, most companies want to deploy a com-munity platorm and start engaging with customers.

And the act is, not all customer community platorms

are easy to deploy. (Te biggest challenge is selecting the

right one or your business a topic that will be discussed

more ully in the second paper in this series, Te Science

o the Community Effect.)


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But the secret that companies with successul communi-

ties know is that a bit more prep work is needed to set the

stage or successul customer engagement. Tis prep work

is central to the art o community. Its the so stuff that

you need to layer on top o the platorm to make it a place

that customers will enjoy visiting and contributing to on

a regular basis.

Lets take a closer look at whats involved in getting ready

to engage with customers.

Hire the Right Community Manager(s)

Te first person you delegate or hire as your com-

munity manager is one o the most important decisions

you will make regarding your community. Lying at the

crossroads o social media and key departments such as

marketing, customer support, and product development,

community managers are uniquely positioned to help

re-ocus organizations on the voice o the customer.

Many companies ocus on hiring someone with the

skills and traits to make them an effective online pres-

ence. o succeed in this area o their jobs, they need the

right technical skills, as well as certain personality traits.

For instance, you need someone with a strong sense o

empathy and altruism so that they instinctively respond

to customer issues with warmth and care. You need an

enthusiastic person that expresses this in person and in

their writing. At the same time, look or a very detail-

oriented person so nothing alls through the cracks

especially when your business aces a crisis. Communitymanagers also need to have a healthy sense o curiosity

and be willing to try new things; communities and their

enabling technologies are constantly evolving, and this

person needs to stay on the cutting edge o new tools and

tactics. And they need to be strong, diplomatic writers

and communicators who care share tough news (such as

a product delay) with grace and clarity.

But the real secret to hiring the best person or the job

is balancing out these skills with those needed to make

them an effective internal representative o the voice othe customer within your business.

Remember: this person will be responsible or under-

standing and sharing the voice o the customer with the

right people at the right time. Tis requires judgment,

analytical skills, communication skills, and business

understanding, as they need to be able to easily discern

whats important and elevate their findings to decision

makers in a way that is clear and actionable. In addition,

they must be able to get along easily with others and have

good judgment and instincts regarding what is important

and whats not.

Set Community Guidelines for

Employees and Customers

Youll want to write and distribute community guidelines

that will set rules or whats acceptable and whats not

and ensure your community is a positive, collaborative

place that keeps customers coming back and generating

more content. ailor them or your audience, o course.

Once you launch, be sure to enorce them. Here is a link

to our community guidelines: https://getsatisaction.com/

corp/help/community-guidelines/

Defne how quickly you want to

respond to customers, set an SLA for

responsiveness, and always close the

loop on customer issues within that

timeframe.

In our work with thousands o businesses, weve seen

that guidelines will vary depending on the stage o your

community and your business goals. For example, i

your community is airly established and your goal is to

increase customer collaboration, you may want to wait

24 hours beore responding to customer issues so that

community members have a chance to respond first. I

your community is new and youre trying to unnel all

requests there, you may want to set a rule speciying

company responses to customer issues within our hours

(or even aster).

Train Employees on How to Respond to

Negativity

Regardless o what wed all like to admit, not every

customer is going to be satisfied 100% all o the time, and

there will always be a ew who are more than happy to

voice their opinions loudly over the Internet. So develop a

3) To view a sample of guidelines, visit http://getsatisfaction.com/corp/help/ community-guidelines
http://getsatisfaction.com/corp/help/community-guidelineshttp://getsatisfaction.com/corp/help/community-guidelines


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negativity plan and train employees to execute it aith-

ully. each them to:

Listen. You want your community to know you arelistening and understand what they are saying isimportant.

Show empathy. Show that you eel their pain or their

joy. Recognize it.

Express appreciation. ell people that you are gladindividuals are engaged and you appreciate allcomments thats what makes the communityreal.

Use negative diffuser statements. Give peoplesample diffuser statements to use so that the toneo your community stays positive.

Ofen overlooked, it is important to remember that deal-

ing with negativity is an opportunity or your brand toshine as you handle issues with grace and care, as well as

uncover ways to improve your products and processes.

At Get Satisaction, we find that:

Customer insight is always valuable even i itsnegative. Use negative eedback as an opportunityto learn and co-create with our customers.

You can turn negativity into positivity by handlingissues swily and graceully.

Negative comments are a great opportunity tobreak down organizational silos. Many groups canbenefit rom these conversations, analyzing them tosee how they contributed to an issue and workingtogether to fix root causes.

Cultivate a Tone that CustomersWill Love

ake the time to create a community voice that channels

the riendly, supportive, empathetic riend that every-

one tells their problems and secrets. Tis voice will be a

powerul extension o your brand, so educate employees

explicitly about what it sounds like when responding to

both positive and negative comments or example, by

providing examples. While your support team may find

it easy to adopt this voice (remember, they are used to

talking to customers all day), your product team probablyisnt. Make sure theyve been trained on your companys

tone, know when and how to escalate situations, and are

comortable using your community.

Conclusion

Increasingly, we are seeing a transormational change among Get Satisaction customers who actively and ully

embrace their customer community: the breaking down o organizational silos to enable closer alignment

around customer needs, priorities, and expectations. We call this transormation the Community Effect, and

its what happens naturally when you capture and elevate the voice o the customer to its rightul place at the

heart o your business. As such, capturing the community effect should be a c-level initiative. And to do it

effectively, you need the right combination o art, science, and tools.

Learn More

Interested in taking the next step to make your customer service more social? Want to deliver exceptional, differentiating customer experiences

with a community platorm while also saving costs, enhancing productivity, and increasing revenue? Get Satisaction enables you to create

engaging customer experiences by ostering online conversations about your products and services at every stage o the liecycle. Companies o

all sizes such as Intuit, Kelloggs, and Sonos rely on the Get Satisaction community platorm to acquire new customers, provide better service

and build better products.

Contact us or a customized demonstration.

(877) 339-3997
http://info.getsatisfaction.com/getsat_demo_request_for_customer_community.html%3Flsd%3DWebsite_Demo_Requesthttp://info.getsatisfaction.com/getsat_demo_request_for_customer_community.html%3Flsd%3DWebsite_Demo_Request

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