Online communities allow members to share information and exchange ideas over multiple digital media and devices and, from a marketing perspective, they can foster customer loyalty while developing legions of brand ambassadors.
According to a SAP study, “Supporting The Online Customer Journey Through Communities,” 70% of companies that use communities estimated that their customers have high purchase confidence, compared with just 48% of companies not using communities.
The study surveyed 788 business professionals involved with online customer interactions in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.
Marketers often struggle to better understand and meet the needs of its customers. Technology has empowered customers with nearly limitless resources to help inform purchasing decisions, and as a result, customer expectations have skyrocketed.
Consequently, marketers must focus on creating valuable interactions across the entire customer journey that will drive better customer experiences and satisfaction. While current adoption of online communities is near 50%, the study notes, most companies see significant opportunities and benefits in leveraging communities more effectively.
Here are some more key study findings:
Communities can enable more effective marketing: Communities’ role in marketing is twofold: Communities help improve segmentation and targeting by providing a more in-depth understanding of customers’ desires and preferences; and provide customers with user-generated content, which has a more powerful influence on purchase decisions than brand-generated content.
Customer service should be integrated with communities as a revenue enabler, rather than only a post-purchase troubleshooting resource: Customer service is usually only contacted if something goes wrong. There is an opportunity to leverage the repository of knowledge that customer service departments have—Q&As, FAQs, product knowledge—to support customers before something goes wrong. Communities offer a perfect platform for sharing valuable customer service content, which can help buyers find the answers they need prior to making a purchase and avoid running into problems post-purchase.
Leveraging community content increases pre-purchase buyer confidence and drives customer lifetime value. Customers who are able to make more informed, confident purchases experience greater purchase satisfaction. Using community content helps boost confidence and satisfaction by offering customers for both pre-and post-purchase engagement. This stimulates greater customer interaction and drives ongoing customer loyalty.
In today’s competitive market, companies must become more customer-focused by viewing the online customer journey as a continuous lifecycle, rather than a liner progression, the study notes.
“Online communities can offer a consistent thread to assist customers across all phases of their journey,” the study says. “Communities are able to fill this role because of their unique ability to play a part in supporting marketing, ecommerce, and customer service objectives simultaneously.”
No single phase of the buyer journey is less important than another, so companies that are truly looking to delight their customers must be ready to meet their customers’ needs at any given moment.
“Communities offer that unique capability to meet customers’ needs across their journey by connecting buyers with valuable content pre-purchase in order to enable greater confidence during the purchase phase,” the study adds. “This translates to greater purchase satisfaction, which ultimately drives loyalty.”