Beyond the "recommendation" effect, developing and animating a customer community has many advantages, including being a real lever for innovation, and a highly effective substitute for customer service. Certain sectors, such as fashion and retail, have made no mistake about it.
And what if software publishers decided to take inspiration from it to boost their business?
Here's everything your customer community could do for you.
1. Make people want to choose your solution
From TripAdvisor to Trust Pilot, today it's hard to choose a product or make a purchase without first sifting through comparisons and customer reviews! The software world is no exception, with platforms such as appvizerto name but one.
The difficulty is that you have no control over what happens on these platforms...
Creating and animating your own customer community means offering your best supporters a place where they can express themselves and say all the good things they think about you.
And that's not bad. Judging by the results of a clothing brand like ASOS, for example, which observed a 45% increase in spontaneous mentions of its brand among ASOS Insiders...
2. Ensure the success of your next modules
Another good thing about customer communities is that they can be a veritable goldmine of inspiration and good ideas to fuel internal innovation and guide R&D investment.
Toy brand LEGO, for example, has developed a strategy via social networks and its LEGO Ideas platform to identify its future bestsellers. New models are chosen through a consultative and collaborative process, including the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"!
Others, like Décathlon, go even further in co-designing their products with their community of customers, establishing direct collaboration between development teams and users, who sometimes propose very specific ideas for solving a technical problem or an unsatisfactory use case.
This is a field in which software publishers are generally quite at ease, as developers are often very committed to working alongside users to resolve any bugs or limitations they encounter, and to taking note of requests for improvements.
3. Test and improve your new applications
In the same vein, Société Générale has chosen to rely on its customers to create "the LAB", a community of beta-testers to optimize the operation of its mobile application.
As soon as the bank wishes to integrate a new feature into the app, the developers first put it online on the LAB. Users can then try it out for the first time and give their feedback.
They can also give their opinion on design, color, etc. The aim is to develop the solution that comes closest to the needs and expectations of its customers.
4. Nurture interest in your solution
As already mentioned, customer communities are also formidable vectors of visibility, notoriety, legitimacy and influence!
By mobilizing their customers around the design of their products, LEGO and Décathlon not only ensure that these products "meet their public" when they are released, but also create a real teasing effect for the future product, generating a strong sense of expectation around it!
Without going that far, sometimes rewarding your best customers for their loyalty or diligent use of your solution is enough to create a buzz around your brand: this is whatthe start-up Tilkee did perfectly when it sent its "Black Card" to its 100 best customers., well relayed on social networks.
5. Supporting your users
Finally, customer communities are a real asset when it comes to customer care. User forums can be more responsive than support teams, and your regular users can be the best Happiness Managers!
The most active self-help communities can come from unexpected quarters: every day, for example, over a hundred questions are answered on average four times by enthusiasts on the fishing tackle online sales site pecheurs.com!
The SNCF and BlaBlaCar community self-help chats are led by experienced users, with a proven positive impact on the transformation rates observed on their sites!
One of our customers, a manufacturer of photovoltaic panels, saw its customer community on what's app become its best support and meet with immediate success with the craftsmen who install its products : the speed and relevance of the answers provided was unrivalled when it came to solving its customers' technical difficulties. This enabled the company to quickly identify areas for improvement.
These are all approaches that can be widely applied in the software publishing sector, helping you to grow your business.
In any case, the success of a customer community depends on a few good practices and key steps:
- Define an objective for your community: what should it contribute (to my company and its members)?
- Define a target (What type of customer? How to identify them? Recruit them? Build loyalty?)
- Choose the channel: social networks, specialized platforms...? (Which channel will be the most relevant for animating this community? Make sure that its members "live" it autonomously).
- Define transparent rules (for leadership, participation/contribution)
- Reward and value the most active customers (points/benefits systems, gift vouchers, highlighting, rewards, etc.).
- Set up an effective internal organization to lead the community and use the feedback generated (product/service improvement, customer relations).
The examples cited in this article were largely inspired by these sources:
https://potion.social/fr/blog/communaute-de-clients-4-exemples-concrets/
Here are a few examples (and a comparison) of platforms dedicated to animating online communities:
To go further and learn more about targeting and building a customer file, you can also watch our webinar:
