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Digital Customer Community: 8 Use Cases

A Digital Customer Community is the place where your customers digitally meet 24/7, share ideas and get solutions, while you build customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

Digital Customer Community Use Cases

Use Case #1: Shorten the Sales Cycle/Enhance Lead Nurturing

You invite leads to become members of your Digital Customer Communities.  They talk with loyal and even enthusiastic customers that genuinely recommend your products/services. This provides the lead with ‘impartial’ insights, which help move the lead down the sales pipeline.  You can also ‘digitally trigger’ leads encouraging them to follow your best customers’ journeys within your Digital Customer Community to include asking questions, reading noteworthy blogs, participating in key discussions groups/forums/conference rooms, responding to quizzes and surveys to earn rewards, and more.

Use Case #2: Achieve Cost-Effective Customer Support

As visitors to your Digital Customer Community provide and receive answers to their customer support questions, you build a searchable Customer Support Knowledge Base that can be used by internal support personnel as well as to support external customer support queries.  Your most knowledgeable subject matter experts can leverage their expertise across your entire customer base.  Experienced customers also enjoy providing resolutions to customers’ support questions via forum, videos and more, often in exchange for community recognition or gamification points. Both activities decrease customer support costs.

Use Case #3: Deepen Customer Engagement

Customers really enjoy being listened to.  They enjoy sharing their thoughts and expertise with other customers and prospects about your products/services.  You in turn respond to these customer observations with your own insights.  This ‘two-way’ customer dialog drives customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.  You take customer engagement to a new level as you offer Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences from within your Digital Customer Community.  Imagine the impact of taking your wine connoisseur customer on a visit to your vineyards using VR technology!  Or offering technical support services and technical training via AR experiences.

Use Case #4: Organize Key Customer Meetings and Facilitate Customer Activities

Many companies use private customer rooms located in your Digital Customer Community to invite their customers to meet confidentially to create and/or review annual sales, marketing, and support plans.  Many companies also invite subject matter experts – either from within or outside your company – into private customer rooms to discuss and resolve key customer issues.

Use Case #5: Provide Support to your Distributors/Brokers

Digital Customer Community are a wonderful way to maintain a two-way dialog with your distributors/brokers.  Together, you share and manage business leads efficiently.  They get quick answers to their questions, 24/7.  They have access to your subject matter experts and to desired business/technical documentation.  You facilitate the sharing of distributor/broker best practices.  Where appropriate, distributors/brokers share ideas and business challenges with one another.  As needed, you invite one or more distributors/brokers into private, one-on-one digital meeting rooms to further discuss issues.

Use Case #6: Provide Customer Training

There are several different types of training that can take place from within your Digital Customer Community.  This includes AR training (e.g., a technician onsite at a customer premise can view training manuals), self-paced sales, marketing or customer service training, customer training on how to use your product/service, and more.  As internal and external personnel get trained, your Digital Customer Community builds a Training Knowledge Base that highlights where trainees tend to get stuck in the training so you can revise the training accordingly.

Use Case #7: Facilitate Internal Discussions & Remote Office Support

Provide invitation-only forums, typically meant for company personnel, to discuss an ongoing customer issue (e.g., a pricing issue, a competitive situation, etc.).  As appropriate, you can invite the customer to these forums for clarification or discussion.  Build loyalty and satisfaction by offering remote office support to field and virtual personnel who come to see your company as an integrated whole, rather than as corporate or departmental siloes.  Overtime, you build an internal Knowledge Base that can be easily searched and shared.

Use Case #8: Launch Customer Polls and Surveys in Real-Time

Secure real-time customer feedback via surveys and polls that are offered from within your hotel.  This could be regarding a new product launch, a new marketing program, a revised incentive program, etc.  The goal is to have the Voice of the Customer continuously providing their opinion to you.  By tying gamification to polls and surveys, meaning you give rewards for taking a poll or survey – you also deepen customer engagement.

4 Reasons why the Digital Customer Community is critical to your 2021 Customer Strategy:

 Secure Customer Insight

  • Launch customers surveys and polls in real-time and secure continuous customer feedback
  • Invite customers to conferences at the Hotel that include your organization’s SMEs and industry experts
  • Receive customer perspectives through forum posts re: how they enjoy using your products/services and what they would like improved

 Enhance the Customer Experience

  • Create a fun place for your customers and employees to conduct business and share ideas that includes gamification, peer-to-peer exchanges, AR/VR, Zoom and more
  • Invite customers to attend break-out sessions to learn about new products, technology, support, R&D, and more
  • Establish private, digital customer rooms for one-on-one customer meetings that deepen customer engagement

 Increase Sales

  • Meet with customers one-on-one to create and monitor sales, marketing, customer service and financial plans
  • Nurture leads effectively and shorten the sales cycle
  • Provide a 24/7 ‘internal’ meeting place to confidentially discuss customer challenges

 Perform Customer Support & Save Costs

  • Give customers the quickest way to get questions answered about your products/services
  • Drive down costs as customers talk to each other to solve customer service issues
  • Build your ‘Customer Knowledge Base’ as customers participate in your Digital Customer Community

 

To learn more about the Digital Customer Community, visit https://ismguide.com/digital-hotel-webinar-2021/ where you can view ISM’s recent webinar titled: “What is a Digital Hotel, and Why is it Critical to your 2021 Customer Strategy,” and access Digital Customer Community articles written by ISM president, Barton Goldenberg.  Alternatively contact Barton Goldenberg directly at bgoldenberg@ismguide.com, office phone (301) 656-8448.

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