August 5, 2024 • 9 mins
Building a customer community has been on the goal sheet for most B2B and consumer product companies at some point or another. But do your customers really need one? And are you ready to go all in to make it work? In this episode, Micah is joined by customer community consultant Heather Foeh to break down the elements of successful online communities and some common misconceptions. With actionable strategies for starting small and scaling effectively, this episode is packed with valuable tips to help you build a thriving and engaged customer base - or avoid a potential misstep altogether.
"Customer vibe is very hard to put into an ROI. Once they feel like it's their community, that's a great tipping point. It's a good six months before that first glimmer." - Heather Foeh
Free PDF guide @ https://bit.ly/upshotsfoeh
Connect with Heather on LinkedIn.
Follow Unserious in your podcast app, at unserious.com, and on Instagram and Threads at @unserious.fun.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This is Unserious approach that you can start
using right away.
Our guest today is Heather Fay,a customer experience
consultant and advocate leadinginitiatives at places like Sixth
Sense, adobe, oracle and manymore.
Happy Monday, heather.
What are we exploring today?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Do you really need a customer community?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Do we?
I thought everybody needed acustomer community.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Everyone thinks they do, but do they?
Community is definitely one ofthose buzzwords right now and I
think people have a field ofdreams feeling like if you build
it, they will come.
It's easy.
Everyone wants one and inreality there is a little bit
more work that needs to go intoit, a little thought and how
much of a commitment you'rewilling to take.
Are you in it for the long haul?
(01:01):
Are you in it for the quickbuzzword, fast track?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, when I'm on the receiving end of those as a
customer, sometimes my innervoice is saying, like how
important do you think you areRight?
Yeah, you make a beard shampoo.
Do I really need to be in thecommunity about that?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Right?
Well, and especially in B2B,which is where I spend a lot of
time B2B tech.
You know, any given moment,someone's purchased 15, 20
different tech tools.
Are they really going to be in15, 20 different communities?
Is there a way that peoplecould consolidate?
Is there a way you can meetpeople where they already are?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
How do you approach thinking about building customer
communities?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It all starts with that very important word
customer.
What are the customers thinking?
And the only way you're goingto find that out is by talking
to them and asking them.
So any consulting gig that I do, I always say as part of it I
need to talk to preferably fiveto seven different customers,
and not all, just the most happy, wonderful customers.
(02:03):
How about a few that are maybestruggling or, you know, a
little, on the fence?
You know you're going to getthe unvarnished truth, maybe a
little bit more, from thosefolks, and so that's the primary
point is talking to yourcustomers first and hearing what
they need or want.
Do they actually need this?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
If there's actually a job there to be done.
Yep for sure what's next.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You've got to really think about your internal
resources.
Are you prepped to invest in it?
And by investing, it's not justgoing out and buying a platform
and saying you're done.
It's not an add-on to someoneelse's full-time job that they
already have.
It does need to be a very bigfocus for someone in the company
and a lot of times that's achallenge for people to be
willing to commit to that.
(02:41):
Are you ready to commit for thelong haul?
This is not a quick thing.
There's a funny thing thathappens in communities at the
sixth month mark from launchtime and it is a flywheel that
happens where customers startanswering customers.
You don't have to keep pushingthe rock up the hill day after
day and it is weird, but itreally is six months.
(03:02):
You really have to be preparedthat you're willing to put in
the big push for at least thattime to get the results.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So that's not six months of waiting, that's six
months of active work until itfinally starts taking shape and
starts to sing.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Correct, it really is .
It's day after day.
It's a lot of matchmaking.
You know, a great communitymanager is often someone who
maybe came through the ranks ofbeing a customer and knows a
bunch of people in the community.
But that person, their job, isa lot of seeing the question pop
up, tapping someone they knowwho can answer it and getting
those conversations going dayafter day.
(03:38):
Right, because the worst thingfor a community is crickets.
Someone goes in there and asksa question and they don't hear
anything for two weeks.
They are never, ever comingback to that community to ask a
question again.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, that really puts the cost benefit analysis
into an interesting place,because what you just described
is six months of work for acustomer answering somebody
else's question, so like that'snot cheaper.
Yet how long does it take?
How long does it take to payoff?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's true, but if you're seeding your community
with some good content and maybepeople find their answer
without needing to ask aquestion, right, so you do need
to seed it with some of that andthen you can get some of that
ROI earlier on.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So reducing load on support, for instance, that's
one goal, but what are some ofthe other goals that companies
might think about as theyapproach building a customer
community?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
A lot of times it's about product stickiness.
People often buy a piece ofsoftware for a very particular
need, but good softwarecompanies build software that
can do more than one thing, andso you want your customers doing
as many of those use cases aspossible so that they're sticky
in the future.
Right, they didn't just buy forone thing and then they can
(04:47):
leave when it's done.
So a good community canreinforce those ideas, show
examples of them.
Can reinforce those ideas, showexamples of them.
But I think getting people touse as much of the product that
they have purchased as possibleis a big piece of a good
community, especially in B2Btech.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean right now we're recording this over a
program called Riverside and I'min a Riverside community and
people are always bringing upnew use cases of things.
I didn't know that I could do.
That have actually made my jobon this podcast a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I love that.
See, that is the perfect usefor a community.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Okay, so tell me a little bit more about the goals.
So, if you have a goal, whatare some of your approaches to
seeing if you're on track forthat goal?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
As you hit upon.
There's sort of these long termgoals where you're the ultimate
happy spot for your community,but there's got to be some
short-term goals.
So a lot of that is aroundgrowth and the number of people
that are in there andparticipating.
How often are theyparticipating?
How often are they coming back?
If you're doing a community froma support perspective or
wanting to get a littleself-serve support going, then
(05:47):
obviously you can look atsupport case deflection and even
that's it's very hard tomeasure something that doesn't
happen Measure the number ofsupport cases that nobody
created.
You know so.
But what you can do is say,kind of look at trends in the
past of, like month over monthit was growing, growing, growing
.
Does it level off?
You know that's a great numberto take a look at right there.
There's also some soft benefits,like if you've got a user
(06:08):
conference, you can tap intopeople in there that are active
users of your community, getthem to speak at your user
conference.
You can find those realadvocates for your company who
are seeing great results, and sothat's just like one of those
little wins along the way tohelp measure.
You know, hey, look out of thisyear's conference, 50% of our
speakers were active people inour community, but it takes time
(06:29):
for that to happen.
There's something about thatcustomer vibe that's very hard
to put into an ROI, but oncethey start feeling it like it's
their community, that's thatreally.
That's that great tipping point.
And again, it's a good sixmonths before you see that first
glimmer.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, there are those measurable things that you talk
about where it's sort of abusiness advantage to the
company, a cost benefits to thecompany or a user retention
strategy for the company, butalso it's enabling new kinds of
ideas in business.
I've worked in product for along time.
Access to the customercommunity is always a challenge.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh, totally is, and I product marketers, love the
communities that I have been apart of, but it's also who
doesn't love to be asked theiropinion on something and be like
, oh, the company thinks highlyenough of me that they're going
to come ask me something.
So super big win on both sides.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, you had me doubting if we needed a customer
community for a little whilethere, and now I'm back.
I think I'm sold on all thesebenefits.
Ok, so we have the basics here.
What's the way you can reallylevel this up as you approach
your customer communities?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I think don't be afraid to start with baby steps.
You know, I had someone reachout to me and wanted to pay me
money to help them, like, get acommunity off the ground, and I
ended up turning it down becausetheir whole business is they
sell software to generalcontractors that are
construction type people out inthe field all day, every day,
(07:59):
and it did not feel like thatgroup of people based on my
initial conversations with someof them had any time to join a
community or get new ideas.
They were busy running theirbusiness.
Now, community can meandifferent things.
Maybe community just means aseries of breakfasts in cities
where you have a lot ofcustomers and getting people to
first start talking to eachother to warm them up so that
(08:21):
they're hungry for the nextthing and the next thing and the
next thing Start small and Ithink bringing in someone who is
going to spend at least 50% oftheir time thinking about this
is the best way to ensuresuccess, especially if they have
some kind of domain expertiseand can build a rapport quickly
with the others that are in thecommunity.
(08:42):
They can speak their language.
They may have some greatconnections out there and
already be able to bring somepeople in to matchmake to answer
questions, and so I thinkreally leveling up means hiring
the right person to do this, notjust the cheapest person who's
their first job out of college,not to say someone couldn't do a
great job on that but they doneed to have a little domain
(09:04):
connection to really make itsing and to ensure faster
success.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You can connect with Heather on LinkedIn on Heather
Foeh.
In the show notes we'll have alink to the PDF cheat sheet that
accompanies every Upshotsepisode.
This podcast is brought to youby Unserious Group.
We are a communications andstrategic consulting practice
that helps companies and leadersnavigate the rapidly changing
workplace by lowering the stakesand working more efficiently,
(09:33):
playfully and creatively, andwe're open for business.
So check out unseriouscom andlet's be work friends.
At Unserious, we make work play.
This is Unserious approach that you can start
using right away.
Our guest today is Heather Fay,a customer experience
consultant and advocate leadinginitiatives at places like Sixth
Sense, adobe, oracle and manymore.
Happy Monday, heather.
What are we exploring today?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Do you really need a customer community?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Do we?
I thought everybody needed acustomer community.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Everyone thinks they do, but do they?
Community is definitely one ofthose buzzwords right now and I
think people have a field ofdreams feeling like if you build
it, they will come.
It's easy.
Everyone wants one and inreality there is a little bit
more work that needs to go intoit, a little thought and how
much of a commitment you'rewilling to take.
Are you in it for the long haul?
(01:01):
Are you in it for the quickbuzzword, fast track?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, when I'm on the receiving end of those as a
customer, sometimes my innervoice is saying, like how
important do you think you areRight?
Yeah, you make a beard shampoo.
Do I really need to be in thecommunity about that?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Right?
Well, and especially in B2B,which is where I spend a lot of
time B2B tech.
You know, any given moment,someone's purchased 15, 20
different tech tools.
Are they really going to be in15, 20 different communities?
Is there a way that peoplecould consolidate?
Is there a way you can meetpeople where they already are?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
How do you approach thinking about building customer
communities?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It all starts with that very important word
customer.
What are the customers thinking?
And the only way you're goingto find that out is by talking
to them and asking them.
So any consulting gig that I do, I always say as part of it I
need to talk to preferably fiveto seven different customers,
and not all, just the most happy, wonderful customers.
(02:03):
How about a few that are maybestruggling or, you know, a
little, on the fence?
You know you're going to getthe unvarnished truth, maybe a
little bit more, from thosefolks, and so that's the primary
point is talking to yourcustomers first and hearing what
they need or want.
Do they actually need this?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
If there's actually a job there to be done.
Yep for sure what's next.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You've got to really think about your internal
resources.
Are you prepped to invest in it?
And by investing, it's not justgoing out and buying a platform
and saying you're done.
It's not an add-on to someoneelse's full-time job that they
already have.
It does need to be a very bigfocus for someone in the company
and a lot of times that's achallenge for people to be
willing to commit to that.
(02:41):
Are you ready to commit for thelong haul?
This is not a quick thing.
There's a funny thing thathappens in communities at the
sixth month mark from launchtime and it is a flywheel that
happens where customers startanswering customers.
You don't have to keep pushingthe rock up the hill day after
day and it is weird, but itreally is six months.
(03:02):
You really have to be preparedthat you're willing to put in
the big push for at least thattime to get the results.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So that's not six months of waiting, that's six
months of active work until itfinally starts taking shape and
starts to sing.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Correct, it really is .
It's day after day.
It's a lot of matchmaking.
You know, a great communitymanager is often someone who
maybe came through the ranks ofbeing a customer and knows a
bunch of people in the community.
But that person, their job, isa lot of seeing the question pop
up, tapping someone they knowwho can answer it and getting
those conversations going dayafter day.
(03:38):
Right, because the worst thingfor a community is crickets.
Someone goes in there and asksa question and they don't hear
anything for two weeks.
They are never, ever comingback to that community to ask a
question again.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, that really puts the cost benefit analysis
into an interesting place,because what you just described
is six months of work for acustomer answering somebody
else's question, so like that'snot cheaper.
Yet how long does it take?
How long does it take to payoff?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's true, but if you're seeding your community
with some good content and maybepeople find their answer
without needing to ask aquestion, right, so you do need
to seed it with some of that andthen you can get some of that
ROI earlier on.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So reducing load on support, for instance, that's
one goal, but what are some ofthe other goals that companies
might think about as theyapproach building a customer
community?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
A lot of times it's about product stickiness.
People often buy a piece ofsoftware for a very particular
need, but good softwarecompanies build software that
can do more than one thing, andso you want your customers doing
as many of those use cases aspossible so that they're sticky
in the future.
Right, they didn't just buy forone thing and then they can
(04:47):
leave when it's done.
So a good community canreinforce those ideas, show
examples of them.
Can reinforce those ideas, showexamples of them.
But I think getting people touse as much of the product that
they have purchased as possibleis a big piece of a good
community, especially in B2Btech.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean right now we're recording this over a
program called Riverside and I'min a Riverside community and
people are always bringing upnew use cases of things.
I didn't know that I could do.
That have actually made my jobon this podcast a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I love that.
See, that is the perfect usefor a community.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Okay, so tell me a little bit more about the goals.
So, if you have a goal, whatare some of your approaches to
seeing if you're on track forthat goal?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
As you hit upon.
There's sort of these long termgoals where you're the ultimate
happy spot for your community,but there's got to be some
short-term goals.
So a lot of that is aroundgrowth and the number of people
that are in there andparticipating.
How often are theyparticipating?
How often are they coming back?
If you're doing a community froma support perspective or
wanting to get a littleself-serve support going, then
(05:47):
obviously you can look atsupport case deflection and even
that's it's very hard tomeasure something that doesn't
happen Measure the number ofsupport cases that nobody
created.
You know so.
But what you can do is say,kind of look at trends in the
past of, like month over monthit was growing, growing, growing
.
Does it level off?
You know that's a great numberto take a look at right there.
There's also some soft benefits,like if you've got a user
(06:08):
conference, you can tap intopeople in there that are active
users of your community, getthem to speak at your user
conference.
You can find those realadvocates for your company who
are seeing great results, and sothat's just like one of those
little wins along the way tohelp measure.
You know, hey, look out of thisyear's conference, 50% of our
speakers were active people inour community, but it takes time
(06:29):
for that to happen.
There's something about thatcustomer vibe that's very hard
to put into an ROI, but oncethey start feeling it like it's
their community, that's thatreally.
That's that great tipping point.
And again, it's a good sixmonths before you see that first
glimmer.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, there are those measurable things that you talk
about where it's sort of abusiness advantage to the
company, a cost benefits to thecompany or a user retention
strategy for the company, butalso it's enabling new kinds of
ideas in business.
I've worked in product for along time.
Access to the customercommunity is always a challenge.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh, totally is, and I product marketers, love the
communities that I have been apart of, but it's also who
doesn't love to be asked theiropinion on something and be like
, oh, the company thinks highlyenough of me that they're going
to come ask me something.
So super big win on both sides.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, you had me doubting if we needed a customer
community for a little whilethere, and now I'm back.
I think I'm sold on all thesebenefits.
Ok, so we have the basics here.
What's the way you can reallylevel this up as you approach
your customer communities?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I think don't be afraid to start with baby steps.
You know, I had someone reachout to me and wanted to pay me
money to help them, like, get acommunity off the ground, and I
ended up turning it down becausetheir whole business is they
sell software to generalcontractors that are
construction type people out inthe field all day, every day,
(07:59):
and it did not feel like thatgroup of people based on my
initial conversations with someof them had any time to join a
community or get new ideas.
They were busy running theirbusiness.
Now, community can meandifferent things.
Maybe community just means aseries of breakfasts in cities
where you have a lot ofcustomers and getting people to
first start talking to eachother to warm them up so that
(08:21):
they're hungry for the nextthing and the next thing and the
next thing Start small and Ithink bringing in someone who is
going to spend at least 50% oftheir time thinking about this
is the best way to ensuresuccess, especially if they have
some kind of domain expertiseand can build a rapport quickly
with the others that are in thecommunity.
(08:42):
They can speak their language.
They may have some greatconnections out there and
already be able to bring somepeople in to matchmake to answer
questions, and so I thinkreally leveling up means hiring
the right person to do this, notjust the cheapest person who's
their first job out of college,not to say someone couldn't do a
great job on that but they doneed to have a little domain
(09:04):
connection to really make itsing and to ensure faster
success.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You can connect with Heather on LinkedIn on Heather
Foeh.
In the show notes we'll have alink to the PDF cheat sheet that
accompanies every Upshotsepisode.
This podcast is brought to youby Unserious Group.
We are a communications andstrategic consulting practice
that helps companies and leadersnavigate the rapidly changing
workplace by lowering the stakesand working more efficiently,
(09:33):
playfully and creatively, andwe're open for business.
So check out unseriouscom andlet's be work friends.
At Unserious, we make work play.
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