User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

As a builder of products, is it more important to simply win customers or should you also strive to convert those users into community contributors–active participants in a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle?

Users are people who have to do something with your product for their job or at home. They may or may not want to be good at it. They might want to figure it out and move on. Community members who truly “belong” to the community are those who care about helping others or want to prove their knowledge. They get such a kick out of their own abilities that they want to help others kick it up as well. An example of such a superstar community member is Michelle L. Long of Lee’s Summit, MO. She’s a 45-year-old accountant who has posted more than 5,600 answers on the Intuit community. I found the BusinessWeek link through Arie Goldshlager’s blog entry about Intuit’s “Narrowcasting” Approach to Customer Communities. Michelle Long is not only a user, but a user who likes to impart knowledge. When I’m doing my taxes, I definitely fall into the “user” category. I just want the number at the end of the piles of forms. But I would love to get help from a community with people who love calculating taxes so much, they’ll help others with the forms! 

I’m guessing it’s no accident then that Intuit’s community is the top search result in Google for “customer support community.” Intel and Cisco are in the top ten on that page. And the concept of a customer support community is described quite well by a Cisco Program Manager in the blog entry, Are you a 10 Percenter?

An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest. The Support Community is such a group. It exists for users and enthusiasts to share tips among themselves on how to solve problems they have encountered with their computers. It is also a forum to explore new ideas and new ways to use technology.

Tips, problem solving, ideas, and innovation – who wouldn’t want all these things for their products? There’s immeasurable value in sharing those with community members and building community rather than building a user base alone. There are reports that say value is measurable from community efforts. From Lithium’s 2007 State of the Practice Report, AT&T reported in 2002 that Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. And, it appears that when users take care of each other on communities, the sales tend to follow, which generates even more users. Ebay’s 2006 survey found that community users spend 54% more than non-community users. I believe you can measure both intrinsic and extrinsic value from communities – so which do you think is more valuable, a user or member?

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

-->

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 11:21 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: , , , , ,

  • The infamous chicken-and-egg questions for communities -- how to make your chickens lay more eggs, so you can have more chickens.

    You cite all the right stats and numbers here: the 10-percent rule, loyalty, commitment to a brand, advocacy, etc. There are all goals that a company should embrace when moving to build / support / create a community -- but I am more on the side that the company should view communities differently. Intuit is probably the closest (in large enterprises) that does this. They don't build communities for more than members sharing knowledge -- and they leverage that in a milion ways. the intent, when they started, was not to be in the top-10 of communities in google search -- but it happened. their intent was not to offload their support lines with questions they could not answer -- but it happened.

    and this is the killer point about communities - they just make business function better by delegating the work they don't do quite as well to the people who can do it better. That is why ideation, support, and R&D via communities is so interesting -- all you have to do is observe what happens... your customers (even the 90 percent that just "lurk") will show you the way to a better business.

    Great post, thanks a lot...
  • Great points, Esteban. What is it that Intuit did differently that allowed their community to flourish and, in turn, allowed them to benefit from that? Did they go beyond just viewing the community as a tool and embrace it as a change agent for their culture?
  • Louis,

    To the best of my knowledge, Intuit did well in allowing the communities to grow independently, without interfering. They did provide answers as needed when there were none, but for the most part they allowed the communities to function with their "experts" (certified consultants) providing the answers. These same people in exchange got to show their prowess in certain topics, which essentially became free marketing without being such.

    In other words, they allow the communities to self-police, function autonomously, and be what they needed to be.
  • So, even though it was a company owned community the community was in control. Thanks for your insights!
  • I would say that instead of company-owned it was company-sponsored. a key distinction that is going to become more relevant in the coming years as we shift away from traditional communities (forums) as we know them today.

    thanks for the forum, interesting discussion...
  • annegentle
    I like that "company-sponsored" nuance, Esteban. Good line to walk. Obviously Intuit walks it well!

    One of the reviewers for my book mentioned "astroturf" communities which are fake grassroots efforts. I hadn't ever heard that, and the term cracked me up! But it also is a good reminder of how important perception is when building communities, and how important it is to be genuine in your hands-off approach.
  • Astroturf is a big issue, but thankfully the lack of perceived value in those communities is clearly and easily apparent to users and they tend to have very short life.

    I am doing some more research this year on "company-sponsored" communities, I see them as the new normal community model.
blog comments powered by Disqus