Smart companies are using many different channels to listen to their customers. In addition to capturing the voice of the customer through their Customer Advisory Board Programs, user groups (technology companies), customer research, companies are using social media and online customer communities.  It is important to bring these customer engagement initiatives together into an integrated Engagement Plan and map these different activities to business goals.  Engagement Plan: Social Communities & Media 1) Social Media Engagement: Companies are using social media to build relationships with customers in various ways. They are creating formal listening programs to gather and understand what customers are saying about their company, products, competitors and industry. By capturing and mining this "customer generated content", companies can define and refine their strategies so that their offerings and marketing messages align with the customer's evolving needs. 2) Social Communities: By creating communities, companies are making it easy for customers to come and contribute to their business as well as to other customers like them. Businesses are building two types of communities. On their 'public' on- site community, companies are exchanging information with customers and engaging them in discussion. The 'private' invitation only communities are places where companies innovate with selected customers behind closed doors. More about Private Online Customer Communities.... Within an Online Customer Community, customers are invited to participate and agree to online community guidelines. Many companies create one big space for sharing across their broader customer base and then design certain private areas for specific customer groups such as customers of a specific product or members of a certain CAB. Online customer communities can contain hundreds or thousands of customers and the size depends on the company's business objectives. Within an Online Customer Community, businesses can proactively engage their customers by: Starting a conversation on the Discussion Forums about an important business issue for customers, Sending out an online survey to a targeted segment of customers within the community (using the "user profiles") to gather specific product feedback and input, Inviting select customers to a face- to- face customer advisory meeting, to participate in customer research or to join a special customer program (beta testing program) to capture additional insight. Learn about how Charles Schwab is using their online customer community to capture input and feedback. They leverage this insight to guide their marketing strategies and invest in enhancing their customer experience online and in their retail establishments. Article Charles Schwab Online Customer Community Services

Success Strategies for Customer Engagement Stepping Stone Partners has consulted on over a half dozen different online customer communities across different industries. In addition to this hands on experience, we have conducted research with several dozen community managers to identify a set of best practices and processes for successfully launching and managing an online community with mutual benefit to the company and the community participants. We have also helped companies develop an integrated social media plan which is designed to engage their customers and involve employees. Starting with islands of social media, we have built needed bridges both across these assets and into the organization to enable managers to interact with customers for business gain. _______________________ NEW Community Success Start Workshop This workshop is designed to help you and your team devise your plan and define needed processes for collaborating with customers and internal stakeholders to drive innovation and engagement.  _______________________ Return on Community: How Brands in Different Industries Measure Business Value Companies are investing resources into building and running their social communities and in return are gaining currencies to exploit new market opportunities. Learn how these brand leaders are leveraging their communities and customer relationships to crowd source, collaborate and co-create to power their business growth. More __________________ Article: Building a Listening Post Online for Customers  "We have a fear of not being relevant any more to our customers. Three months ago, we set up an online community to listen and leverage customer insight in our product design and in our marketing strategies. We need to better understand the patient experience in order to drive innovation”, explains the VP of Marketing for a healthcare technology company. Read Article