Customer Experience and Online Community: How Communities Reshape CX

Although it has become a norm for companies to claim they're "customer-centric," the actual point of differentiation comes from companies that truly execute what they claim. If we simply observe our interactions with different brands, this becomes evident.

When it comes to customer experience, it can be summarized as the sum of all interactions a customer has across touchpoints—from discovery and sales to post-sales and support. Delivering best-in-class experience across touchpoints isn't a fresh idea, but in recent years it has picked up steam.

The reason: the abundance of online platforms where people share their experiences. It could be a blog, a review site, or a social media post. Companies can't hide bad customer support, dubious pricing, or any other issue. This trend will only grow as more people become digital natives.

This focus on customer experience is bringing different teams together. Everyone from marketing and customer success to product development is working in unison with a singular goal of offering better customer experience.

Why Customer Experience Management Matters

Managing customer experience is about taking control of how customers interact with your brand at every touchpoint. Companies have gradually shifted from examining interactions from their own viewpoint to two-way management—looking at experience from the customer's perspective as well.

Customers interact with companies across channels, and perfect synchronization between departments is pivotal for exceptional experience. This means practices for managing customer experiences must be continuously evaluated to find improvements throughout the customer lifecycle.

Customer Referrals and Advocacy

When you offer better customer experience, customers tend to share their experience with their network. Primarily because they want their friends to have a similar experience. According to research, more than 70% of people trust companies that friends recommended. Getting word-of-mouth referrals is crucial for acquiring new customers as traditional advertising has less impact on decision-making.

Boosting Loyalty

Gone are the days when customer and company relationships were purely transactional. In the modern age, it's about retaining customers for the longest period by meeting and exceeding expectations. This happens through consistently delivering remarkable experience which drives loyalty.

Building Brand Reputation

Any company must build a trustworthy brand. The most credible way is to encourage users to share their experiences and manage negative feedback effectively. This requires active listening, feedback collection, and acting on issues raised by customers.

How Online Community Impacts Customer Experience

Engaging Across the Customer Journey

Online communities seamlessly weave into the entire customer journey. This starts from discovery and becoming a paying customer through support and loyalty.

A customer can discover your brand from user-generated content, learn about success stories, and get first-hand experience of your support directly from the community. They can purchase the product and get onboarding resources from the community. They can share feedback and get support from peers.

Customers can stay updated by consuming content from the community, become loyal, and even join your MVP (Most Valuable People) program to help promote your company.

Promoting Self-Service

Online communities are amazing support channels. Customers get help from other customers as well as your team. Communities act as a central space where your support, success, marketing, and product teams can closely work with customers and deliver enough resources so they can find solutions on their own.

According to research, the vast majority of companies already have a consumer community or similar support channel. This is clearly a key support and customer experience channel.

Building Valuable Networks

Online communities offer space for people to connect and build valuable networks. These customer networks amplify based on shared use cases and locations, improving connections that create stickiness.

Direct Communication Channel

Businesses can directly connect with customers via branded communities since there's no issue of algorithm changes that happen on social media. Customers are empowered by proactively seeking answers—they can easily mention company representatives and ask questions.

A Holistic View of the Customer

When your online community is integrated into your existing technology stack, you get a comprehensive view of the customer journey. Your CRM and support ticket software can show the community content that a customer has visited.

This behavioral data—interactions in the community, content consumed and contributed—equips your support and sales teams to meet customer expectations.

Improved Product Innovation

Online communities are candid in nature. Whether you proactively ask customers to share feedback or not, they'll always be inclined to report bugs, suggest experience improvements, and propose features.

After collecting feedback, close the loop by acting on those suggestions. Innovate by co-creating with customers and show that your brand truly cares.

Dynamic Content Resources

Every company needs to educate customers and help them get best value from products. The integrated knowledge hub allows you to have both knowledge base content created by your company and user-generated content in one place.

This creates the perfect merger of static pages and dynamic content where users upvote, discuss, comment, and share insights. When users search, browse, or add questions, relevant content surfaces from both sources.

Identifying Brand Evangelists

With authentic people sharing recommendations and positive views, a product can sell itself. The reliability of public word-of-mouth builds trust and reputation among others not yet part of your community.

Communities help identify and recruit these brand evangelists—the authentic voices who drive social proof.

Delivering Better Onboarding

A solid onboarding process helps you leverage the precious time a new member spends joining your community. The goal is delivering an engaging experience from the beginning to make them come back regularly.

When you get a new customer, make them aware of the amazing resources you've created to help them succeed in their initial days.

Showcasing Customer Experience

Online communities are powerful places to showcase customer success. When customers share their experiences working with your company and how you helped them succeed, it acts as social proof. Research shows that 72% of customers share positive experiences with six or more people.

Delivering Better Customer Experience

Improving customer engagement and retention are key factors contributing to growth. Companies truly inclined to make a difference are leveraging branded communities to boost both.

The customer insights extracted from communities are valuable for understanding customers, their needs, and their expectations. When you understand expectations, it's much easier to manage and delight customers.

Community platforms like Bettermode provide the infrastructure for this—integrating with your CRM and support tools to create that holistic customer view, while giving customers space to connect, learn, and support each other. The result is customer experience that differentiates your brand.

Ready to improve your customer experience through community? Talk to sales for a demo.

FAQs

How does community improve customer experience?

Community improves CX by providing self-service support, peer connections, direct access to your team, and a space for feedback. Customers get faster answers, feel more connected to your brand, and have a voice in shaping your product.

Can community replace traditional support?

Community complements traditional support rather than replacing it. It handles routine questions through self-service and peer help, freeing your support team for complex issues. The combination delivers better experience than either alone.

How do we measure community's impact on customer experience?

Track support ticket deflection, time to resolution, customer satisfaction scores, and retention rates. Compare these metrics for community-engaged customers versus non-engaged customers. The difference demonstrates community's CX impact.

What if customers share negative experiences in community?

Negative feedback in community is an opportunity. Address issues transparently and show how you're resolving them. This builds trust—prospects see that you take feedback seriously and respond constructively.