Customers want to feel like they're part of something bigger. An external community allows them to do this in ways that can increase sales and loyalty. Online communities enable customers to engage with your brand and other customers, get support, find answers, and so much more.
As the world becomes increasingly digital, businesses are realizing the value of online communities for both internal and external purposes. But if you're not familiar with the concept, you might be wondering: what exactly is an online community? Simply put, it's a digital platform where customers, clients, or employees can interact, share knowledge, and collaborate, making it a vital tool for organizations of all sizes.
A lot of our customers wonder why they haven’t heard of the Verint Community Platform when we take them through a platform evaluation. When we hear this, we seek to quickly fill in the gaps, because Verint is a fantastic option for many companies.
External communities are a curious thing. Why does a user repeatedly return to a community that they aren't being paid to or required to participate in? If it's not an obligation, why do they choose to invest their own personal time in the community? What motivates them to be there?
Alfresco is an enterprise open source company focused on making business flow quickly, seamlessly and intelligently. Their software powers the daily work of more than 11 million people at industry-leading organizations in 195 countries worldwide. Alfresco customers rely on their open, modern platform to digitize critical business processes and connect people with the information they need, quickly and effortlessly.
Engagement is key to a community's success - both internal or external. Some common external community goals include awareness, information sharing, trust, loyalty, feedback, happy customers, and informed internal stakeholders, to name a few. All of these goals are achieved through different levels of engagement. So how does one engage members?
Have you been thinking about using an online external community to reach your customers in a truly helpful and "sticky" way? It's a fast-growing trend with which many large companies are exploring and experimenting. It makes sense when companies like McAfee, Wells Fargo, and Verizon Wireless are experiencing measurable successes with their external communities. McAfee, for example, reduced call volume by 26% and increased customer satisfaction by a whopping 25% (Source).
JiveWorld14 is just around the corner, and Social Edge is busy planning which sessions to attend, what we want to learn about and who we want to meet. With the Jive-x external community platform release this year, there's even more to learn. As Social Edge president Andrew Kratz Kratz mentioned in a recent blog post, Three Trends to Watch at JiveWorld14, a topic we look forward to hearing more about at JW14 is Jive-x. This year Social Edge has worked with a number of clients that successfully leveraged the features of the Jive-x platform to connect in meaningful ways with their clients, partners and customers.
When organizations contemplate creating a new customer community, multiple factors must be taken into consideration. Defining the target audience, developing the community goals and objectives, and building an environment that aligns to the organization's business values are all essential for a successful Jive-x community implementation. But there are myths and misinformation about customer communities that we can definitely bust. We recently hosted a webinar on this topic with Jeanie Kedia, Director of Communities at Birst, who shared insights from her experience working with ThinkTank, Birst's Jive-X community.
Unlike your typical Jive collaboration scenarios, best practices for knowledge management dictate a tighter, observed process. This usually involves content templates, guidelines and an editorial process. Here are a few examples of how we handled this in internal and external communities.
An externally facing Jive Community is a huge opportunity for a company to interact in a more meaningful way with its customers and partners. As you share knowledge and ideas in a public forum, you will be deepening the relationships you already have, and building new ones. Unfortunately, your community at some point may get some unwanted attention from unfriendly bots. Fortunately, Jive is on top of that and has a strong spam prevention service built into the product to protect your community.
Andrew Kratz, president and founder of Social Edge Consulting, shares his thoughts on the business value of communities in the first of a series of blog posts. In this post, Andrew talks about how his social journey began, his background working with collaboration platforms, and two challenges the community platform industry faces.
Andrew Kratz recently sat down with Kate Weaver, a community veteran and former Director of Extranet Communities at Health Catalyst. The purpose of their conversation was to discuss her experience migrating from one community platform to another. Kate’s story and insights will prove helpful to other community owners considering a similar path.
During the week of May 20th, Social Edge attended and sponsored the Verint Engage19 Conference in Orlando, Florida. Verint owns the Telligent community software platform. Telligent is a community platform that Social Edge began to partner with in 2017 as a solution for our community customers. Check out Andrew Kratz's recap of the conference here.
What are the most common scenarios or use cases for an external-facing community? At Social Edge, we often work with external communities that are focused on customer support. While the nuances may vary from community to community, here’s what popular communities focus on.
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