Here are several excerpts from an article by the Social Computing News Desk, Getting a Handle on Best Practices for Online Community:

Companies are becoming increasingly aware that the social Web is becoming the dominant channel for interacting with their customers.

In particular, online communities based on popular consumer and business offerings are becoming more commonplace as users desire to connect to like-minded individuals as well as to the companies that create the products and services they value most. Make no mistake, customer communities are one of the hot business topics of 2008.

While most successful online customer communities are created by the customers themselves, businesses are also trying to create community themselves with varying degrees of success.

Summary of Online Community Best Practices…

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Here are several excerpts from an article by Christopher Musico, Editorial Assistant, CRM magazine, Web 2.0 Technologies Remain Top-of-Mind for Most Companies:

As consumers adopt new technologies to interact with one another, companies seeking their business must evolve as well — a message that’s coming through loud and clear, according to study results from the Service & Support Professionals Association’s (SSPA) 2008 Member Technology Survey.

According to the results, Web 2.0 technologies are at the top of the list of planned purchases by SSPA members in 2008, with both large and small businesses reporting budget allocation for discussion forums, wikis, and Web collaboration.

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Here’s a synopsis of an article about a new book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, that can help IT leaders decide which social technologies can work for their organizations, Evaluating New Social Networking Technologies. For much more, check out the complete source article:

First, [keep in mind that] Web 2.0 technologies change rapidly. Second, [remember that] the technologies are not the point. The forces at work are.

Here’s the principle for mastering the groundswell: Concentrate on relationships, not technologies. The way people connect with each other—the community that is created — determines how the power shifts. When evaluating a new technology, ask the following questions:

1. Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways?
2. Is it effortless to sign up?
3. Does it shift power from institutions to people?
4. Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself?
5. Is it an open platform that invites partnerships?

Of course, a lot more goes into analyzing new technologies: Do the privacy policies make people feel secure, for example, or can these technologies get a boost from existing big players like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia or Comcast? But, in general, technologies that get a ‘yes’ on all the questions we described are the ones mostly likely to take off.

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Here are several excerpts from an article by Lauren McKay about a recent study conducted by InsideSales.com, Can I Call You Back Later?:

Has phone-based customer service lost its value? One might think so from the results of a recent study conducted by InsideSales.com. The research team sought to investigate lead response management out of the top 500 web companies. After filling out web-based inquiry forms, researchers awaited responses. Surprisingly only eight percent of companies responded to by phone. Forty-seven percent responded by email, but forty-five percent never responded to any inquiry at all.

Where has the phone contact gone?

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Here’s an interesting article by Christopher Musico about several recent Forrester research studies that show the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty, Want Customer Loyalty? Improve Customer Experience First:

According to “Customer Experience Spending Intensifies in 2008,” a Forrester study authored Senior Analyst Megan Burns, more than 80 percent of respondents say that improving the usability, usefulness, and enjoyability of the online experience is more important in 2008 than in years past, with the top two spending priorities being Web analytics and customer satisfaction surveys. According to Burns, that one-two finish reflects a growing focus on measuring key components of the customer experience — something she says she finds unsurprising. In fact, she adds, one of the underpinnings of her study was to quantify the rumblings she had been hearing from companies with regard to hard-number results.

Bruce Temkin, a Forrester vice president and principal analyst, customer experience, echoes Burns’ thoughts on the importance of quantifying what customer service personnel were already talking about. Going beyond mere investment projections, Temkin’s study, “The Business Impact of Customer Experience,” concludes that customer experience directly correlates to customer loyalty. Temkin admits the conclusion may seem like a no-brainer, but he claims no quantifiable numbers had ever reinforced the connection. “We’ve taken something that certainly a lot of executives — and clearly just about all customer experience pros — knew, which is that improving the customer experience improves business results,” he explains. “But, in all cases that I’ve seen, people talk about the anecdotal connection between the two. What we’ve done in this report is we’ve quantitatively tied together ‘change of customer experience’ with ‘the change of some loyalty factors.’ “

For more, check out the complete source article.

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