Online communities should not be restricted to research

Brands adopting “insight” as their mantra at your 1-2-1 Research Summit (MW 19 May) are doing so with good reason – the benefits of bringing insight into businesses, especially via customer communities, are clearly stated in the piece but I’d like to have heard more on client engagement.

RSA’s Caroline Van den Bos touched on this by pointing out that getting your entire business to buy into the benefits of insight from an online community is invaluable.

However, building and establishing ownership of online communities tends to be limited within the parameters of the research and insight team. Ideally, brand owners should look to get this buy-in and input as the community launches.

Encouraging ownership of the online communities across all relevant departments delivers demonstrable business value not only in terms of insight, but also cost efficiency.

Ultimately, encouraging community ownership from all parts of the business provides a unique opportunity to join the dots between them.

Merging purchase data, social media, complaints/ helpdesk feedback and such to the attitudinal insight from the community provides a potent combination to understand customer motivations and purchase decisions.

Barry Noble
Managing director
Tpoll