The Market Research Nuggets Most Companies Ignore (at their peril): Comments In Online Communities

A customer shares an insight within your company’s online community. He somehow found the time in between meetings, phone calls and lunch to share a suggestion, idea or complaint in a discussion thread.  “It would be great if the XYZ product would … ,”  he writes. What does your company do with that customer input?  This is the $1,000,000 dollar question -- literally.
 

Should you:

Choice #1: Fail to notice it?  Because the online community is large or understaffed, the customer suggestion falls through the cracks.

Choice #2: See it and leave the customer question/comment/complaint unanswered?   They assume that “someone” will take care of it because the customer does have people to talk to in the company.

Choice #3: Fire all alarms? A community manager copies and pastes that message and emails it to everyone she can think of -- her boss, her boss’s boss, and others. After the email train goes round for a few days, the customer gets many [and sometimes contradictory?] responses. 

Choice #4:  Have a clear plan in place to manage such feedback – to consider internally and make sure the customer eventually is informed of the outcome of the evaluation? This ensures that you respond quickly and appropriately to every customer comment shared online.

Of course, the correct answer is Choice #4. Yet from my experience in guiding the strategies of dozens of online communities over the last two decades and seeing message after message go unanswered, I believe this is the least-chosen option. The most common response is to not respond and/or hope another customer does instead. 

This is ironic given that organizations worldwide spend $18.9 billion annually on customer research ($6.7 billion in the U.S. alone), according to CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organization). Organizations make enormous investments to divine what their customers want from their products and services.  So why should customer feedback in online communities be regarded as far less important than input from focus groups, online or phone surveys, or other established methods of customer research? The failure to act on customer input in online customer communities may be the largest missed opportunity of the social business decade. 

While companies are busy hiring market research firms to learn what their customers think, they often have the answers right under their noses if they have an online customer community (and most B2B companies should).  Thriving B2B communities are chock full of useful customer insights -- ideas that could spark innovation or be early warning signals for a crisis-in-the-making. 

Here is the most exciting part: Unlike expensive and episodic market research, online community comments are both free and continuous.  But sadly, companies allow this customer feedback to fall through the cracks because they don’t have plans and processes to deal with the input. 

From our experience as online community strategists, we believe the main reason why so few companies act on their digitally shared customer insights is because they either don't know how to leverage so much unstructured data or haven't considered its operational value.  Only a few B2B online communities like SAP, Autodesk, and LexisNexis have developed repeatable processes for leveraging online customer insights in research and development, sales, product development, marketing and other functions. These communities also happen to be among the most successful ones.

Why aren’t more companies following suit? One reason is that community managers are often not well integrated into the core business functions.  Even when community managers see customer input shared online, they are typically not empowered to do more than simply acknowledge such comments; they are not permitted to act. 

How do you make sure your online community isn’t one of these? Answering the following questions will reveal a lot:

•  Who does the community manager need to inform about relevant customer feedback?  Who is on the triage team and what are their responsibilities?
•  Is the feedback welcome (or at least expected) by R&D, product development, sales, and any other department that could benefit from it?
• Who is responsible for evaluating the idea or suggestion? What is the standard process for handling customer insights?
•  Who will let the customer know about the outcome of his idea?  While not all ideas, complaints or insights are viable, when a customer takes the time to offer his perspective, isn’t it appropriate to respond?
•  And most importantly, who is in charge of shepherding this process from cradle to grave?

These are big questions that organizations need to answer to turn their online customer community into more than just an occasional listening post and feel-good platform.  When we help companies create the operational processes for their online community, our focus quickly turns to developing processes and performance indicators that directly affect the company’s ability to get products and services to market better, faster and more accurately because they reflect customer needs and identify market trends.  It is essential to align community objectives and outcomes with the overall organizational strategy. 

Ignoring online customers is even more detrimental to customer satisfaction than disregarding their input in offline channels. Online comments are forever captured for the entire world to see. 

There is a better way. The next time your company plans the next market research study, in–person customer event, executive briefing center program or social media listening platform launch to get closer to the customer, you should first explore how your customers are being treated in the online community. A wellspring of customer insights might already be there for the taking.

Why Your Doctor Can't Be Your Online Friend

The boundaries between the physician - patient relationship have always been difficult as the relationship is based on trust, intimacy and the ability to share information from both sides of the desk.  This relationship has grown more complex due to the rise of social media engagement.  Physicians are being friend-ed, followed and reviewed across the digital channel like crazy, placing the doctors that care for them in difficult positions regarding the confidentiality of their patients who often don't think about the impact of their digital-buddy request.

Similarly, due to the ease of digital communications, the commonly time-stretched doctor also faces temptation to use quick communication methods to reach their audience, in lieu of a more professional path.  No-one really wants their test results Tweeted to them! These examples of digital doctoring to be avoided are covered in the guidance.  Protecting patient privacy and confidentiality is stressed as the main area for focus when using social media.

In order to help doctors better understand digital communication best practices and to fill a gap than many medical practice management efforts have neglected, about a week ago, the American College of Physicians (ACP) and Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) published a policy paper entitled“Online Medical Professionalism: Patient and Public Relationships.” Some of the highlights from this publication can be found in this helpful table (click to enlarge):

The article itself is interesting to read and a good idea for both doctor and patient alike to understand the digital expectations.  Here, I have called out some of the guidance details: 

On boundaries: "Professional distance and privacy are appropriate for both physician and patient. Physicians should not “friend” or contact patients through personal social media. Physicians should familiarize themselves with the privacy settings and terms of agreements for social media platforms to which they subscribe, and they should maintain strict privacy settings on personal accounts. Professional profiles should be constructed with an explicit purpose (such as networking and community outreach)."

On self auditing: "Physicians should consider periodically “self-auditing” to assess the accuracy of information available about them on physician-ranking Web sites and other sources online.

Ranking, feedback, and other Web sites may offer patients insight into physician training and office practices... Physicians should consider doing routine surveillance  of their online presence by searching for their names, and they should correct inaccurate information."

On Googling patients: "Digitally tracking the personal behaviors of patients, such as determining whether they have indeed quit smoking or are maintaining a healthy diet, may threaten the trust needed for a strong patient–physician relationship. Commentators encourage physicians to consider the intent of the search, whether it affects continuing therapy for the patient, and how to appropriately document findings with implications for ongoing care."

And it cautions doctors to pause before they post controversial or negative content. Certainly good advice for everyone!

 

What Online Communities Can Learn From a Master Convener: Eva Perón

As I sit at my desk thinking about a new blog post topic, I struggle to write. Not because of a lack of topics, but because this is my first day back from a glorious vacation. We all know that post-vacation tension between enjoying the past and needing to return to the business at hand.  But in this case, I am delighted to realize that my trip to Buenos Aires makes for excellent fodder for a community-related discussion. 

 

My fascination with Argentina's obsession with  Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina (1946-1952) started shortly after I landed in the airport where her image was distinctly present.  I was only vaguely aware of her and my data was largely fueled by the Madonna musical, a South American history scholar I was not. So, I endeavored to learn more about this women of great interest and learned Perón came from humble means, became a radio actor, and eventually the second wife of President Juan Perón.  She is credited with being the voice of the people, the inspiration behind the Argentinean’s women’s movement, and developed countless programs to aid low-middle class people. She died very young, more than 50 years ago. 

However, despite the lengthy time passage since her death, there are patronages to her honor all throughout the city (and I mean all throughout the city – as in everywhere!).  From museums dedicated to her life, to her face being illuminated on the Ministry of Work high-rise building (this installation happened in 2011), to flags of her on street corners and apartment balconies.  

  

Why does she retain the ability to captivate a nation, controversial as she was?  What did she do for Argentina that prevents her from fading in the way so many icons eventually do? Wandering around her museum, I pondered the artifacts to glean a better understand of her.    

What I discovered was that Eva Perón was a community builder, extraordinaire. Her undeniably amazing contribution was her power to convene. She brought together a country of disenfranchised people, enabled them to unify around their collective needs.  She gave voice to groups and helped them represent themselves.  She learned about her people and tried to reach them all: orphans, elderly, women, victims of foreign war.   Through her, the country was stronger, more resilient.  And, she listened to her community – a lot.  She walked among them and ensured when a program was developed that it was meaningful to those it intended to serve. She ensured that her service of community was evergreen.

When you look at her offerings the essence of her activities will sound very familiar to many community builders.  After all, Isn’t using the power to convene really what community building is about – online or offline?   

When I think back to some of the online communities I have been involved with, the memorable moments happen when the community was able to create/support a federated, representative voice of a group…To be bigger than an individual member could be alone.  In some cases, like with Cambridge Information Network (CIN)  groups of CIOs came together online to grapple with big ideas like what does the invention of the World Wide Web really mean (yes, this was the 1990’s)? In other cases, like with the WEGOHealth online community, health care advocates are supported in their quest to share their stories and help inform healthcare about their needs. And, sometimes, even in B2B communities, it gets personal.  For example, there was a time when Computerworld’s CIO community ComputerWorld Executive Suite rallied together online to organize technical assistance to NYC companies during the aftermath of 9/11.  These are all examples big and small, where, with the help of a community builder, groups were supported and great things resulted.

So, if you aspire to be Evita of your online community, there are a few lessons learned from her powerful and beloved tenure:

• Show a human face to your community – personality, passion and insight go a long way with a community.

• Bring people together in groups and help them connect with each other in meaningful ways.  Profession, title, interest, geography are all good fodder for micro-group formation provided they share a common need to connect.
• Listen to your community and understand their needs and point(s) of pain.  (Not just what you think their problems or needs may be.)
• Validate your assumption about your community with rigor and persistence.  This will help ensure any changes or new community offerings will be well received. 

• Understand that one size does not fit all!  Endeavor to serve all community members in the ways that they can benefit and customize offering to different types of members.

•  Never lose sight of the community members you endeavor to serve. As Evita once said “I am only a sparrow amongst a great flock of sparrows.”  

Avoid Online Customer Community Failure!

Failure.  It’s not a word anyone likes.  Yet it is common occurrence with innovation projects.  When projects fail, there’s a natural inclination to avoid looking for the reasons why.  This is especially true for online customer communities. A failure with customers (Ouch!) is far more painful than any internally-facing problem, because it touches the people and companies that are core to the organizations’ success.

The usual reasons offered for online customer community failure include: the members weren’t ready for online discussions; the software wasn’t what we expected; the subject matter experts didn’t produce enough content; the customers were too “traditional.” These deflections don’t address the root cause of your community’s failure. It was the result of your firm’s organizational process, strategy and execution.
 

In 2012, Gartner predicted that by 2014 70 percent of proprietary communities would fail –a sizable group of investments generating little or no return for some of the world's largest enterprises. At the same time, use of social channels continues to grow. A recent Forrester report (Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy, March 2013) states “Online communities and Twitter have seen increases in usage rates in the past three years. However, satisfaction remains low for these channels, as companies have not invested in best practices for managing interactions on these channels.” 

Not all communities are doomed. For those who succeed, the returns are enormous.  Online communities are growing in importance for mid-size to large organizations, especially in this era of tight budgets and greater focus on customer retention. The case for online communities is based on an increase in customer satisfaction and customer retention, which lead to increased profits. The business case for customer community initiatives is overwhelmingly positive.  For example, Forrester calculates that a 10-percentage-point improvement in a company’s customer experience score can translate into more than $1 billion in revenue. (The Business Impact of Customer Experience, 2012).

Why the wide gap between success and failure? One reason is some organizations are much better at managing large-scale innovation initiatives than others – those which do not skimp on process will emerge the victors. Eventually, most organizations will figure out how to leverage their community investment and learn from community-driven insights. But it will take time to change their core business processes to reflect and integrate this customer community-supplied data. Struggles to achieve online community success can be attributed to a few common missteps.

Business Goals Don’t Match Community intentions: The online community strategy and goals need to be clearly articulated to insure the mission, vision and execution are reachable. Once these are defined, able leadership can guide the creation of an online customer community that successfully blends business and member needs.  Too often, community programs are skewed toward business priorities, forsaking the promise of value made to each customer and member. Every community must serve its customer-members -- without members, there is no community -- and not the other way around.

“Tool Talk” Before Business Strategy: Organizations large and small have a propensity to make the online community software purchase without a careful analysis of their business objectives, technical requirements and customer preferences. The result is an online community that provides what the tool has to offer – and not what the business, IT and customers want or need.

Building Mausoleums Instead of Sherpa Tents:  Social business success means constant innovation through iterative cycles, driven by member feedback. Enterprises, often very skilled at long-range planning, try to plan a large, long-term community effort. That’s a recipe for disaster.  Communities, by their very nature, are in constant flux from changing member needs, business objectives, technical improvements and online social norms. Community programs and plans should focus on short sprints -- not big-bang approach. In the social business world, planning that spans years is simply not an option. Think this way: build, learn, evolve; build, learn, evolve; build, learn  ...

Failure to Feed the Content Beast: The iterative cycle of innovation also requires a constant flow of new information into the community. This is especially important for new communities, where access to insightful content and provocative ideas is what brings first-time visitors back a second time and, eventually, an expanding population of members. Engaging content builds a growing community.

Poor Community Management Skills: There is no shortage of information on this topic, often in painful and painstaking detail. Community management is a professional role. Managing relationships online requires dedicated, experienced professionals with wide range of specialized skills, who are treated with the same respect and expectations as any other skilled managers. 

Excessive Exuberance:  The old saying “you achieve what you measure” is especially true for social business.  It is common for online customer communities to track the wrong metrics – ones that don’t matter to the business but are the easiest to gather.  Likes and fan numbers only go so far in determining value. Achieving real success is means taking on the difficult task of measuring the impact an online community brings to customer satisfaction and other business success measures.

Lack of Business Integration: This is the biggest misstep of all, for fledgling online communities and established, successful ones alike. To be truly effective and valuable, an online community must have an impact on core operations.  Organizations may struggle to create a repeatable process to mine the data from the online community to inform new product development, R&D, influencer relations, partner and supplier programs and market messaging, but this is the way customer insights can be brought to bear on all aspects of the organizations operations.

Lack of Strong Executive Sponsorship: Any innovation project needs effective leadership and commitment from the business. Recall the Standish Group CHAOS report findings?  The number 1 reason why IT-dependent projects fail is the absence of a fearless leader willing to take charge.

I share these failure factors not to frighten but to forewarn.  Online communities, when successful, can transform an organization and are an imperative for the future. Who wouldn’t want to develop better mechanisms for learning from their customers, prospects, employees, partners and other stakeholders?

So what does it take to succeed? Review this Customer Community Readiness Checklist

John Coate and the WELL: Looking ahead by looking back

A month ago I went to London to give a presentation at the 13th annual VIRCOMM Summit. On a cold and rainy morning (it was London, after all) about a thousand community builders and social media managers from around the world gathered to think and talk about the art and science of our complex profession -- creating and managing online communities. It was a rare luxury to take part in  an industry-specific conference, we all wear many hats and operate in a diverse group of reporting structures: marketing, customer care and sometimes IT. The event was well covered, with lots of blog posts and reports. It even trended on Twitter for a while (#VICROMM13).

Reading through the post-event writings, I was struck by the limited coverage of the opening keynote by John Coate, one of the leaders of the WELL. For me, this was a shining moment, a bit of online community building history.  John's keynote offered a pictorial narrative of the history of the WELL.  Why it was started, who was involved and what it meant to those who were a part of the online community movement, now almost 30 years old. He shared a view of our collective history as community builders; where we have been and what the future may hold. Coate's presentation offered a view into the origins and growth of our profession, something of real value to the many 20-something attendees who were not part of this history. As virtual communities and online social interactions have become ubiquitous (at last!), it's essential that current practitioner know about this history and consider its lessons – where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

For those not familiar with the WELL, it was the first substantial online community open to ordinary people. While there were online communities prior to the WELL, they were largely for academics and research. The technologies in use – then termed "Computer-Mediated Telecommunications"-- were expensive, difficult to locate and access, and even more difficult to navigate. [Sidenote: Back in the day, many of us had to travel with a screwdriver and spare phone wires so we could disassemble a hotel phone and connect our dial-up modems to the phone lines!]

By and large, VIRCOMM conference attendees haven't had to deal with such inconveniences just to get email or access a chat group. That’s real progress! But they also weren't online during a time when online community was more focused on the pure power and impact of human-to-human connections, nor did they have to answer to the revenue gods. Today, we have come a long way in terms of tools and opportunities for online community to do great things for learning. We live in a world where we can gain instant access to connections and information about everything from a specialist's point of view to travel suggestions to how to fix a fussy smartphone app. These changes are unarguably for the better.

 

However, there are core principles about online community that John Coate's presentation -- indeed, his whole body of work -- remind us are a fundamental part of whatever flavor of online community building we do. Starting in 1992, and revised twice since, Coate's wrote an essay called "InnKeeping  in CyberSpace" which still serves as an up-to-the-minute guide to online community best practices. In it, he identifies the Principles of CyberSpace InnKeeping:

• The currency is human attention. Work with it. Discourage abuse of it.
• You are in the relationship business. 
• Welcome newcomers. Help them find their place.
• Show by example.
• Strive to influence and persuade.
• Have a big fuse. Never let the bottom drop out.
• Use a light touch. Don't be authoritarian.
• Affirm people. Encourage them to open up.
• Expect ferment. Allow some tumbling.
•  Don't give in to tyranny by individual or group.
•  Leave room in the rules for judgment calls.
• Encourage personal and professional overlap.
• Think "tolerance."

These principles are still true today, 20+ years later.  It doesn't matter if your online community supports a brand, a professional community of practice, or even a gathering of fans.  Human-human connection is the centerpiece of all substantive online community interactions.  Without meaningful exchanges of information, there are no insights to be harvested; without sustained involvement and a sense of comfort, there is no customer retention or connection.  Without people connecting to people, there is no community - online or otherwise.

*Blog post edited on 3/21 to correct spelling of John's name.