FreshNetworks Blog

We’ve already looked at the insight you can get from profile data and focused discussion in online communities. For the third in our series of how to get insight from online communities we are going to look not at what people say, but how they say it.

Communities drive discussions, be those the organic discussions that will begin between members, or discussions prompted by questions, content or other stimulus from the community manager. There is a lot that we can learn about the community members from how they respond in these discussions. What they say, the ideas they give and the opinions they express. But often overlooked is to examine the language they use.

There is a great value to seeing and  understanding the language people use when talking to each other about issues, products and brands. Organisations often have no clear idea of the language people use, the words they choose and the way they discuss their product or talk about an issue. It is difficult and has traditionally been hard to really see how a mass of people discuss and talk about what you do. With online communities you get a real spotlight into this, not only the language people choose but how they talk about and describe things to each other.

Observing and understanding this can be really valuable. One of our clients at FreshNetworks was able to identify significant problems in it’s marketing by watching how people discussed their needs and the different products in an online community. When none of the language they used was chosen by community members we saw that there must be a problem, asked the members why they hadn’t used this language and then realigned the client’s marketing message using the language that customers were using. In this case the real insight from the online community was not so much what was said, but how it was said.

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Some more reading

• Five ways to use an online research community in 2009
• Crowdsourcing – does the customer know best?
• What Can Small Business Owners Learn From Obama

For the final in our series of Five things to do in 2009, I thought we’d go back to basics. Today we’re going to look at five ways you can engage your customers in 2009. One of the real benefits for brands of using social media or of building an online community, is that it can build sustainable engagement with your customers. Here are five ways to get this engagement.

1. Be active about asking your customers for their opinion

Too often firms don’t ask customers what they think. They may give ways for them to contact the brand, tell them their opinions or call them with compliments or complaints. But this is all very passive. Brands need to be actively asking their customers what they think. You need to go to them, not the other way round. For the customer, being asked what they think makes them feel special, part of our organisation and valued. A simple task such as calling your ten top clients in the first week in January will give you new insights into what you are doing right (and wrong) and will make ten more loyal customers. You then need to think about how you do this long term and on a much larger basis.

2. Make it easy for customers to complain

There are many ways that customers can raise their complaints about you and your products. They can tell you directly, post their thoughts on their blog, write to a newspaper, talk to all their friends…the options are endless. As a brand you should be able to feel in control of these complaints. Nobody likes to hear that their customers are unhappy, but it is much better for them to do this in a space where you have right or reply and you can even learn from these complaints. If you don’t provide a way for people to complain they will still do it, except you won’t know where and won’t be able to respond.

3. When you ask your customers something, make sure you respond

There’s nothing worse than being asked for your opinion and then not hearing what people think about it or if they are going to do anything having heard it. When you ask customers questions, or ask them to complain you must respond. Closing the feedback loop will make them feel valued and make them realise that you are actually listening to what they are saying. This will encourage them to continue to engage with you and, by knowing what and how you think, it will make their contributions more focused and productive from your perspective.

4. Deal with customers in public

Only some of your customers are going to want to talk to you and give you their opinions, and an even smaller proportion are going to want to complain. But all of your customers will want to know that you are an organisation that listens and responds. They want to know that if they were to have an idea or some feedback, that you would take it on board; and if they were to have a complaint that you would deal with it. There is a huge benefit to engaging with your customers openly and in public. If they can see you resolving a customers problem they will have greater respect for you as a business that cares about it’s customers. If they see you giving feedback they will know that you’re an organisation that listens to and focuses on the needs of its customers. Respond, and respond publicly; this is where an online community can really pay dividends.

5. Realise that engagement is not a campaign

Unlike other activities, engaging your customers cannot be run as a campaign. It is not about creating a number of advocates for a product launch or about having a conversation with some of your customers for two months. Engagement needs to be ongoing; sustained and sustainable. Once you start to listen to and close the feedback with your customers you must keep doing this. Of course, the benefits you get will be vast and wide-ranging, so most brands won’t want to stop engaging!

Read all of our Five Things to Do in 2009 posts

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Some more reading

• Criticism Is Good
• Big questions for social media strategy
• Success Beckons the Social Media-Driven Enterprise
• Five things your brand should ask about social media in 2009

It’s almost Christmas, and for  the penultimate in our Five things to do in 2009 series, I wanted to focus on one specific use brands can make of social media: online research communities. Of the communities we build and manage at FreshNetworks, many are specifically built for research. Even those that are not usually end up offering valuable insight into what consumers think. This insight is something every brand can benefit from, so today here are Five ways to use an online research community in 2009.

1. Get customers involved in your business

It’s often said that the cleverest people don’t work for you. And it’s certainly true that customers and consumers are likely to have quite extensive experience of your products, and how they are actually used. If you want to test a new idea, find out how people are using your product or find out about how you are different to your competitors, then the best way can be to ask these people who know best. An online research community can act as a customer voice and empower internal teams with customer input and insight. If you have a question, however small it may seem, you can get feedback from your online research community, often overnight, and be able to represent the customer inside your business.

2. Innovate with your customers

We’ve posted before about the power of co-creation and of innovating with your customers. An online research community can be a great way of both getting new ideas organically, and of working with your customers on innovation and co-creation. The format means that you can have ongoing discussions with them and involve them throughout the innovation process, rather than just testing ideas at specific stages. Bringing together internal experts and others with your customers can also have a powerful outcome, and in our experience always brings to your brand ideas you might never have thought of before.

3. Find out how your customers interact

Traditional market research has often considered the customer as a respondent – an isolated being who can answer questions about their habits and behaviours. This is a false construct and misses the most important aspect of any market decision – the social context. It is difficult to truly understand the ‘why’ of market research using traditional methods – we  know what people do and think but not why. All we can usually do is ask them what they think the why is. With an online research community it is easier to observe the conversations people have, how they discuss your product or competitor products. How do they advise other people, how do they explain their decisions and opinions, what do they choose to discuss. Answers to all these questions can come from observing what they do and how they talk to their peers. Just watching your online research community can sometimes be an enlightening thing to do.

4. Learn the language your customers use

Too many brands and products are hindered by the language that is used to describe it. We often find that customers use a very different vocabulary to the one that brands use. This can be very difficult to explore and understand using traditional methods. It’s only in an online research community can you analyse and draw insight from the language people use. And then you can ask them why they use this language and not the one that you do. Perhaps the most powerful finding from one of our online research communities this year was that a global telecoms firm was talking about its product in a way none of it’s customers understood.

5. Find answers to questions you didn’t even know to ask

Traditional market research offers great ways to find answers to questions. It’s less good at getting answers to those questions you never thought to ask in the first place. By building a community of customers and then using this for research and insight you will generate organic discussions and debates alongside any activities you run. These discussions will let you understand what your customers talk to each other about, what they really think about your product and how they really talk about. You will be able to see what matters to them most and what they think about it. And most importantly they will ask questions. A well managed online community will see community members generating ideas and debates with each other. If you are using this community for research then you will be able to benefit from these questions, and the answers others give. You’ll know the answer to things that are important to your customers, but that you probably never thought to ask

Read all of our Five Things to Do in 2009 posts

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Want to improve your community in 2009? Ask your members.
• How to build an online research community: a podcast
• How the market research industry should embrace communities
• What can you do today that can empower your customer using social media?
• Why Facebook really can’t be your online research community

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours this evening taking part in Futurelab‘s liveblogging event – marking the 1,000th day of their marketing and strategy innovation blog, and the release of their new Agency Report. The session was a great opportunity to share and build on ideas with others in the marketing industry, and reminded me of some of the sessions that work well in the online communities we build at FreshNetworks. The

The Agency Report that was also released today is a great read and the presentation below shows the highlights of what they’ve found. For me the most useful section is to look at the disconnect between what clients want and what they are all to often being offered by their agencies. I’m sure many of these are familiar to those of us who work in marketing, but this doesn’t mean that these are not issues that we should be addressing or working with clients to overcome. The changes that Futurelab suggest include:

• engagement rather than noise
• being different
• truly focusing on the customer rather than product
• being digital

Perhaps most important is to do these things without losing the focus on the client’s needs and their business objectives. In the current climate there is a real opportunity to keep improving the relationship between client and agency and making sure that we are meeting all of their needs and they are positioned in the best possible position. The report below suggests some ways we can all do this.

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Some more reading

• Join the Futurelab LiveBlog on Tuesday December 9th
• Futurelab Agency Report
• Social Media + Company = Are you ready to innovate?

The relationship between a brand and the customer is a complex one. It can be fickle or it can be very strong, it can be two-way or it can be all take take take. Sometimes the customer has all the power – they know they want pizza but they’re not tied to a particular brand and so could make a different choice with each purchase. Other times they may be very brand loyal; they may love a brand so much they will almost always go with them. In this scenario what you often find is that the customer is significantly more passionate about the brand than the brand is about the customer.

This makes sense when you think about it. Imagine a brand like Virgin Atlantic. Lots of people like flying with them (and a few don’t, but let’s not focus on them today). Imagine they had  5,000 strongly loyal customers, people who loved flying with them and would always choose them if they could. For each of these individuals it’s a lot easier for them to be passionate about Virgin Atlantic than the other way round – they only have to be passionate about one thing, Virgin would have to be passionate about 5,000. It’s just not that easy to do this.

But being passionate matters. Traditionally there has been a concept of brand which essentially put types of consumer within a particular brand’s sphere of influence – “this is what an Abercrombie and Fitch customer looks like” was the way that many thought of things. But the consumer has much more control than this. They are really at the centre of the relationship. A brand should be thinking  of themselves as part of a consumer’s  personal brand rather than the other way around “we want to attract the kind of people who drink Innocent Smoothies and fly Virgin Atlantic”.

In this environment it’s critical that you move the relationship from give give give to something that really is two-way. You need to love your customers. Something that isn’t easy to do. People like Virgin Atlantic (and other airlines) try to do this with loyalty schemes. They reward their best (ie their highest spending customers) with perks like free access to their lounges on departure. But this doesn’t necessarily reward the customers who are most passionate about you. These may not be your biggest spenders, but they may be your most important influencers, amplifying word of mouth. They’re probably the ones who purchase your product every time they make a purchase in this category, even if that isn’t that often. But between purchases they’ll be the ones telling everybody they know how great you are.

So how do we love these people back as much as they love us. It’s not easy, but social media can really help and during the holiday season for the next month or so we’ll be showing you a few ways that you can love your customers.

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Some more reading

• Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency
• Will online communities by airlines help their brands take-off?
• Social Media + Community = a new approach to creating customer loyalty
• Web 2.0 Summit 08: Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com)
• Zappos: Above and beyond customer service