How to use customer forums to improve your business

A customer forum is an online space for customers to engage with one another about your business. Customers can use this platform to exchange tips, discuss interests related to your product or service, or seek guidance from other customers. It can also act as another customer service channel for agents to communicate with consumers and provide support. Forums help companies listen and respond in a way that creates a sense of community and increases engagement with your brand.

Building an online forum is one of the best ways to give your brand an advantage. Here are some of the notable benefits of offering a customer forum:

Lower support costs

HP has been able to achieve a 41% year-over-year reduction in inquiry resolution time and a 35% reduction in agent response time while using a customer forum. It can act as your first line of defense for customers to find relevant questions and answers from other customers who have experienced similar problems. Either a service agent has directly answered the question or in some cases, customers have provided their own solution based on their experience. This results in fewer tickets for your support team, saving time and money.

Provide 24/7 self-service

Another benefit of using a customer forum as part of your customer service strategy is its availability. An online customer support forum is accessible on the web 24/7, allowing customers to communicate questions or concerns at any time. Instead of waiting for customer support line hours to open, they can interact directly with the forum even if it’s during late hours or the weekend. This can be a huge advantage to businesses that serve customers globally across different time zones.

Gather customer feedback

Customer forums provide a wealth of knowledge related to customer sentiments, behaviors, and needs. Offering a place for customers to share their experiences provides a source of this information and feedback that you can collect. You may even be able to post surveys and ask for customer opinions on a variety of topics like your pricing and product features. This feedback can be used to help understand your audience and inform strategic decisions.

Increase brand trust and loyalty

Online forums provide opportunities for customers to engage with your business, and if managed correctly, that engagement can lead to increased loyalty and customer retention. Users who have consistent positive experiences with your business and your customer forum can turn into advocates for your brand. This not only helps to improve customer retention but can also lead to increased brand trust.

Boost brand awareness

Brand advocates are more likely to share the brand they love with others. According to Forrester, 70% of US online adults trust brand recommendations from friends and family, and 46% trust consumer-written online reviews. Having a place for brand advocates to share their experiences with your product or service online can help your business generate awareness and reach more customers.

Creating a customer forum takes time to plan and coordinate, but here are the basic steps involved.

The first step for any customer forum is to determine the purpose it will serve for your business. You will need to clearly define who your forum will serve, how it will serve them, and how those goals align with the needs of your target audience. You should put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask, “Why should I join this forum?” Your answer will help you define your forum’s purpose and ensure you maintain a customer-centric approach.

Create goals that align with your forum’s purpose. They should be clearly defined and measurable (follow the SMART goal method). Track your goals by selecting the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure you’re measuring progress correctly. Examples of good KPIs include the number of logins, number of new members, volume of engagement, or time spent on the page.

The software you choose to build your customer forum must meet your purpose and goals. You’ll want to choose software that provides structures and features that best suit your vision, and of course, strong moderation tools are a must. You’ll want to avoid vendors whose products require a lot of hands-on management. Instead, consider a community partner that offers vast options like customizable templates, automation to increase efficiency, and intuitive AI that can provide personalized guidance with the data it collects from your forum like Khoros Communities.

Guidelines are necessary to ensure you're aligning with your values and goals. They should be understandable and enforced consistently to create a safe and welcoming community. Make sure they’re displayed when users join your forum so they’re aware of what is expected of them when participating in conversations. Then keep them in an accessible place so they can easily review them when necessary, such as in the forum’s main menu, sidebar, or footer. Your guidelines should cover vital aspects of your forum such as safety, inclusivity, and how to be respectful of others.

When you launch your customer forum, you’ll want some content ready to go for people to interact with. Your first discussions should focus on topic ideas or categories that encourage users to join the conversation. Draw them in by talking about popular topics or common issues. As users engage on your forum, monitor performance and make adjustments as you go to improve the user experience and attract new users.

After launching your customer forum, here are a few best practices to help it thrive short and long-term.

A customer forum is nothing without its members. As a digital community, there are many strategies to attract new members to your site, such as:

• Adding a link on the company website

• Inviting current customers directly through email, newsletters, or texts

• Encouraging members to invite friends and family

• Posting links on your company’s social media pages

Bringing members to your website is what will make your forum valuable. The more members you have, the more eyes you have on your brand.

Be strategic with the content you offer when you first launch. A good forum will start with a selective amount of conversations, usually two or three, with plenty of room for new categories. Define your topics broadly and expect to be flexible. Forums can be reconfigured over time to meet the changing preferences of your users.

Moreover, casual members are unlikely to see an empty forum and initiate conversation. That’s why site owners need to start conversations themselves and invite members to respond. When interacting with your customers it’s important to be authentic. Authenticity is a key driver for forum growth and builds trust with members. Members are more likely to engage with a brand that reflects transparency and provides genuine connections.

Forums are a target for trolls and spambots, and protecting your community from them is essential to maintain integrity. You’ll want to focus on prevention and control. You can prevent tampering by enabling CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) or some other security system to confirm that those on your forum are real people and not spambots. On the other hand, trolls are real people who say things they wouldn’t say in real life under the protection of anonymity. You can’t prevent them from interacting with your forum, but you can take steps to control how you handle them such as:

• Having clear guidelines for appropriate language on your forum

• Establishing a commenting policy

• Approving comments before they are published

• Removing comments that violate your commenting policy

• Employing moderators to enforce the policy

• Use software that can identify and alert forum managers of abusive behaviors

• Remove them with bans

Seeing your customer forum under attack can be frustrating, but remember that how you handle these situations is a reflection of your brand. So when dealing with the unfavorable part of the internet, always kill with kindness. Respond kindly and ask for sources before slapping a ban on them.

Customers who are active within your forum are invested in your community. The more invested they are, the more loyal they are to your business. A great way to empower your active members is by recognizing them as brand advocates. A brand advocate is someone who promotes your brand to others or actively participates in conversations related to your products and services. By rewarding your brand advocates with things like badges or titles, you encourage loyalty and participation from these super users, which can help improve customer retention and increase revenue.

A crucial step to building a customer forum is conducting a forum assessment. A forum assessment looks at engagement metrics including active members, post frequency, comments, and likes to understand the current state of your forum. In addition, you should collect direct feedback from your members. You can gather input using polls or surveys that ask your customers how they feel about the forum, what works well, and what changes they want to see. This will help deepen your understanding of your target audience and guide your decision-making.

A forum manager moderates and facilitates user discussions to ensure they remain constructive and respectful. They also bridge the gap between the business and the community by directly helping to address concerns and provide feedback. By closely managing the forum, they can increase user engagement and improve the customer experience. They can also help catch issues early, reducing any customer frustration down the road.

Khoros Communities has helped leading companies like Microsoft, Visa, HP, and more build and grow their customer forums. Our forums give your customers a place to engage with other users and your brand, while also lowering support costs through peer-to-peer support. Our community management software provides everything needed to build an enterprise-class customer forum including:

• Expert-designed templates with a simple drag-and-drop interface

• Built-in two-way dialogue features

• Automation tools that filter conversations for tagging, prioritizing, routing, and removing offensive content

• AI for analyzing discussion intent and sentiment

• Gamification features motivate behaviors that fuel participation

• Community analytic tools

Khoros Communities enables businesses to build and scale customer forums quickly and easily, and our award-winning community management software can help you build a thriving customer forum for your audience.

Discover how Khoros Communities can help you build your customer forum today by taking a tour or scheduling a demo.