1. FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES:
Adapting Your Online
Presence to Meet Changing
Customer Needs
Estaban Kolsky, ThinkJar
October 7, 2010

2. IN SEARCH OF
Better Online Communities
The use of social media has increased so dramatically in the past have quickly become content- and knowledge-generation
few years that it has become the fourth most popular activity in engines for organizations rather than a place to find answers.
the Internet, drawing more users than email1. A large part of this Those seeking an answer many times go away empty-handed,
move to social media and social networks has been the rush to or worse, with an escalated case moved to another channel.
join online communities — to share knowledge, achieve recogni-
What used to be a repository of useful conversations and
tion, congregate as a group, and most importantly, to gain power
live interactions became another place to simply search for
as a collective group.
answers, complementing online self-service tools. Neither
The latest Digital Future Project report from USC Annenberg customers nor businesses are entirely to blame for this. The
School of Communication2 reports an all-time-high go-to format used in most online communities — forums —
15% of all Internet users participating in online communities. Use just doesn’t work for today’s social customers.
of social networks has increased to a staggering
Organizations have tried to accommodate cus-
75% of US Households3, highlighting a customer Use of social tomers’ demands and engage with them. But
base that prefers social networks to email4.
networks has in their rush to launch their own online com-
There is little doubt that participation in social munities, they forgot a crucial detail. The basis
networks and online communities will continue increased to of establishing conversations with customers
to grow, as it has for the past 10 years (figure 1). a staggering is not about tools that create conver-
180M
Among this growth, support communities are the sations; rather it’s dependent on the
fastest rising online communities. 75% of US attitude and transparency of the orga-
These support communities draw users from Households. nization. Figuring out how to use tools
2009
such as forums to create communities
many places looking for answers that are hard to
is short-sighted and destined to fail.
find or too “new” to be properly documented by vendors. They
Companies should instead be seeking methods to
seek the expertise of other users who “have done it or fixed it be-
encourage conversations between custom-
fore.” While most of these support sites are focused on technolo-
ers as well as with them.
gy, software and hardware issues, other uses, like travel, retail and
hospitality, are beginning to appear. Whatever the topic, these
support communities all share one very important trait;
they were designed to house the most current
and most relevant information.
It’s not surprising then, that Social Network Increase
consumers have flocked to
online communities to find
80M Figure 1 - There is little doubt that participation in social networks
and online communities will continue to grow, as it has for the past
2000 10 years. Among this growth, support communities are the fastest
answers to questions. Unfor- rising online communities.
tunately, online communities
FORUMS: THE TRADITIONAL
Structured Online Communities
Among the organizations that deploy online communities today, Most resources used to deploy forums are spent on recruiting,
forums are the chosen model1. They are steeped in tradition, maintaining and growing super-users. This rare breed of con-
fairly structured and easy to control (for the organization). Plus, tributors creates content for the community without expecting
users know how they work. Unfortunately, forums have some anything in return, thereby relegating the role of community
major drawbacks. manager to a human resources function, rather than someone
who builds and promotes the community.
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 1

3. Forums are very inflexible in how they allow communities to Forums have a place in the world of online communities, but trying
happen. And, while content is the lifeblood of a forum (thus to use them for everything echoes the hammer syndrome: when
the need for super-users), not all online communities require one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When an online
masses of content. community is needed, one needs to step back and evaluate what
will be transpiring within it and then seek a tool that will accommo-
Forums are not good for simple social conversations, nor are
date all necessary activity.
they the best community model for ideation of feedback —
both common use cases in online communities.
THE NEED FOR
Online Communities
People with common interests, values and needs have always
congregated in offline communities. With the recent advent
and rapid growth of the “social customer” segment, deploying
online communities has
This new model become a viable — and
recognizes and imperative — solution.
Organizations are able
leverages the power to migrate from the
of the online com- traditional one-to-one
interaction model to
munity for both the
a socially augmented,
customer and the community-centric,
organization. one-to-many-to-one
interaction model (figure
2). This new model recognizes and leverages the power of the One-to-Many-to-One Interaction Model
Figure 2 - This new model recognizes and leverages the
online community for both the customer and the organization.
power of the online community for both the customer and the
organization.
It’s important to understand why people on both sides of a
transaction choose to engage in online communities.
Customers join communities to share power and knowl-
edge, to influence others and to be recognized. A community only works as a two-way exchange of value:
Organizations deploy communities to collect ideas, Each user must perceive that the value they are getting from
feedback and knowledge; to monitor user interactions participating is equivalent to the value they are contributing
and requests; and to get insights they could not otherwise to the community.
easily obtain.
The absence of balance sets the stage for the challenges faced
The conflict that arises from these differing goals is made in communities today: communities fulfilling the needs of the
worse by the disparity in value perceived by both customers organization, not the customer.
and organizations.
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 2

4. FULFILLING THE ORGANIZATIONS’
Need for Content
It is easy to see why organizations deploy forums when they makes the forum so easy to deploy for an organization is the
need online communities. Forums are proven to work, they are user’s worse enemy. Forums don’t work the way users work;
structured and comprehensive and they build communities they work the way organizations work. They are company-cen-
that are easily recognized and adopted by users. Above all, tric, not customer-centric. Too often, users must participate in
they are focused on the value the organization wants to get out multiple forums to find the right information in the right forum.
of the process. They
The common belief are a great way to cre-
In his book, O’Keefe goes into painstaking detail on how to
create and manage forums with a very heavy slant towards
among organizations ate content that fills
the organization. At no time does he talk about how the users
the knowledgebase.
deploying forums may benefit or leverage these communities. All that matters is
today is that the user Among other uses, that organizations save money, increase revenues and control
in his book “Manag- (very tightly) the knowledge and data in the community.
will come and use the ing Online Forums”
The common belief among organizations deploying forums
communities for lack Patrick O’Keefe5 talks
today is that the user will come and use the communities
of a better option. about forums being
for lack of a better option. And, though value exchanged in
very well suited for
the community will always benefit the organization in such a
technical support, servicing extremely large numbers of
lopsided model, it’s acceptable because the organization is the
users and accumulating knowledge about a specific topic in
one paying for and maintaining the forum.
a central location.
From this perspective, it’s obvious that a new functional
While it may be useful to find an answer to a technical ques-
model for communities is needed — one that focuses on
tion in a forum, one must know how to search for the answer.
fulfilling customers’ needs and wants while also bringing
Which forum? What keywords to use? How to filter the results?
value to organizations.
Any difficulties in negotiating this search process negate the
potential gains from a users’ perspective. The structure that
FULFILLING THE CUSTOMERS’
Needs with Outcomes
What O’Keefe and these organizations fail to realize is that this Users today are hyper-focused on having the right experiences
inside-out, company-centric approach to community is 180 — finding the right information and doing their jobs-to-be-done
degrees from where the social customer is — and what they want. in their own way. They don’t, as they did in the past, accept poor
The rules of engagement are no longer written by the company experiences and bad
and followed by the customer. They are written concurrently and processes. They are They don’t, as they did
change from interaction to interaction. The forum-driven model of vocal and they know the
communities deployed today cannot support that. influence and power they
in the past, accept poor
have. Experiences should experiences and bad
Users demand and expect better. Social Customers know the
value of using their voice and how a community aggregates those
be implemented with
processes.
them, not for them.
voices into power. Being told how to form into communities, how
to act and what community experiences to have is no longer ac- The outcome, for the users, is what counts — not the content.
ceptable to customers. Once they use the answer, they no longer care for it and will not
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 3

5. come back. To them, it is not content, it is simply an answer ally seek. They are not going to get organized as the company
(and all they are looking for). John Hagel, John Seely Brown, wants them to, but they are going to contribute in their own way
and Land Davison cover this difference between what the and add immense value.
organization seeks and what the users can contribute very well
The role of the organization is not to draw from the users what
in their most recent book “The Power of Pull”6. They say that
they think they need, but rather to provide a model for customers
people (mostly customers, but also consumers) bring the value
to contribute and for the company to receive value from
to the organization that is beyond what organizations tradition-
that contribution.
A BETTER SOLUTION
A Platform for Conversations
There is a new engagement model that allows organizations and Integrate with other networks or communities, or even
users to create and run their conversations any way they see fit. connect with enterprise systems that retrieve and store data.
It is less structured, there are no rules and there is no supervising
These are just some of the functions a platform can provide, and
entity hovering over. The organization that installs these Conver-
any user can pick the ones they want to create the community
sation Platforms benefit not only by having access to customers
they need.
and prospects freely discussing their needs, wants and desires,
but also by having a platform they can use to deploy their own Adopting a platform means that instead of deploying communi-
conversations — internally or externally. ties, organizations provide the storage space, the software
and the website, while users use that infrastructure to create
Platforms make creating new conversation simple, flexible and
the conversations they want, in any model they want, for as long
rewarding. Once a user (customer or organization) decides that a
as they want.
new forum, a new group or a new community is needed, they can
use the platform to build it to required specifications. They can, The freedom of being able to build a one-million-user, open login,
among other functions: support community next to a 20-person, closed-group, ideation
community allows organizations and customers to leverage com-
Provide open or login-only access leveraging a
munities as intended.
corporate directory
To provide the flexibility needed to build a community with as
Add guidelines and rules of access and use
many features as the user requires, the platform must have
Create a new knowledgebase or leverage an existing one three layers:
ES N
ERVIC RATIO
ITY M ON S INTEG
MUN COM
COM
1. Community 2. Common Services 3. Integration
Connectors to back-office and
The core of the solution, it These extensions, such as
strategic applications and
enables conversation creation; security directories, knowl-
data stores, the integration
manages content created, edge repositories, and many
layer makes for easy and
including comments; and other systems, make the model
powerful customization of the
delivers the basic functional- powerful.
communities.
ity used in a traditional online
community.
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 4

6. LEVERAGING THE PLATFORM TO
Deploy Multiple Conversations
When an organization wants to hold different conversations at the Deploying a Conversation Platform offers virtually unlimited
same time, it becomes clear how a platform distinguishes itself possibilities for organizations to create conversations, to offer
from traditional online communities. Forums and other styles flexibility for other users to do the same and to get the value
of structured online communities shine in a few limited cases: from the free-form feedback created in those communities.
Forums are better suited for support communities, but do poorly It also allows them to create what feel like traditional online
when faced with ideation, social engagement or even feedback communities but use them effectively for ideation, support and
interactions. Other similar models of structured communities are feedback as needed — all from a single platform.
better suited to social engagement, ideation or feedback but not
so much for support.
In the end, they all have the same problem: the interaction be-
tween users is pre-determined by the structure of the deployed
N
community. This lack of flexibility in the manner and style of the
RATIO
I NTEG
conversation ends up frustrating users who cannot get what they
ICES
SERV
MON
need out of the community.
COM
Y
UNIT
C OMM
FOOTNOTES
1. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games
dominate-activity/
2. http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/2009_Digital_Future_Project_Release_Highlights.pdf
3. http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700333
4. http://mashable.com/2009/03/09/social-networking-more-popular-than-email/
5. Managing Online Forums, Patrick O’Keefe, 2008, AMACOM (http://books.google.com/
books?id=wD1A5rrD8w4C)
6. http://books.google.com/books?id=hJvZPwAACAAJ&dq=power+of+pull&hl=en&ei=YDBsTJrRG4v2tgOAup
3Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 5

7. CONTACT US
Get Satisfaction provides a community-based software platform that helps 400 Second Street, Suite 400
companies engage online customers wherever they are—a company website, the San Francisco, CA 94107
Get Satisfaction network or inside social systems like Facebook. Get Satisfaction (877) 339-3997 Toll-Free
enables open, transparent conversations between customers and their peers, info@getsatisfaction.com
and with employees of the brands and organizations they are passionate about. getsatisfaction.com
Get Satisfaction supports more than 36,000 customer communities with more twitter.com/getsatisfaction
than 20,000 organizations participating. Companies use Get Satisfaction to
facebook.com/getsatisfaction
engage their customers in an effort to improve customer satisfaction, reduce
support costs, provide market feedback and increase online awareness. youtube.com/getsatisfaction
FROM FORUMS TO COMMUNITIES: ADAPTING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE TO MEET CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS OCTOBER 7, 2010 | 6