Support Communities Customer Support Benefits
Support Communities are transforming customer support performing customer support and saving costs. Community members create content, support one another by sharing knowledge around specific products, offer mentorships, moderate forums, and more.
- 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 Support Communities.
5 Customer Support Use Cases for Using Support Communities
#1: Achieve Cost-Effective Customer Support
As visitors to your Support 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.
#2: Provide Customer Training
There are several different types of training that can take place from within your Support Communities. 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 Support Communities builds a Training Knowledge Base that highlights where trainees tend to get stuck in the training so you can revise the training accordingly.
#3: Provide Support to your Distributors/Brokers
Support Communities 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.
#4: 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 Support Communities. 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.
#5: Organize Key Customer Meetings and Facilitate Customer Activities
Many companies use private customer rooms located in your Support Communities 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.
To learn more about the Support Communities, 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 Support Communities articles written by ISM president, Barton Goldenberg. Alternatively contact Barton Goldenberg directly at bgoldenberg@ismguide.com, office phone (301) 656-8448.