Lisa Painter is the Head of Client and Leadership Experiences at Kustomer and brings 25 years of experience to this field. We chatted about the impact of setting up special customer communities, how CX leaders can get one started, and some guidelines for success - and it’s easier than you think!
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Hope: What can brands get out of hosting their own customer community or advocacy group?
Lisa: Customer retention. When you invite someone to a community, you want to bring them additional value outside of your main product and services you provide. When they feel like they've got something special being part of the community, that helps them be loyal to your brand - which kind of goes to my kind of second value or benefit of having a community. If they've got a really great experience with you, they're going to be loyal to your brand and give you brand awareness because they're going to say great things about you. When they feel like they've got this special place to meet with peers and to be helped or help others, they will definitely be loyal to your brand.
Then another benefit of community is soft selling. If your customers are talking about what they're getting out of your product and services and kind of sharing best practices and how they're doing it, that will just organically lead to others being interested in what they're doing.
And then another kind of side benefit that I see with community is co-creation. So as you think about all the conversations that happen in the community, you will learn a lot about their business so that you can be thinking about how you can innovate and create and do things 12 to 18 months from now. So all of those things I feel like are what brings people to a community.
Hope: I love when things are a win-win. So I'm wondering if you could speak to some of the things that the group members get out of participating.
Lisa: People in decision-making roles, they love to come to community meetups and get strategy insights. They may have big bets for the next 12 to 18 months. To be able to come and hear what others are doing is very valuable in a community setting.
And then peer validation. If you've got something that you're considering, being able to throw it out to your peers and get validation or other things to consider, that’s very valuable.
Then mentorship and growth. Having that opportunity to lean into someone that's in a service leadership role that may be newer to the role is very validating. But then we're also always learning, right? And finally, one of the things we definitely tend to do is treat our community members as VIPs. Anytime we're doing an event, we'll make sure that they know that they're very special to us.
Hope: Right. And as you mentioned earlier , one of the benefits that the business gets is customer loyalty, and this is a great way to show that it's not just a one way street.
So then let's dig in. How can CX leaders start a group for their customers or clients easily or efficiently, if they just want to get something off the ground - how would you recommend that someone start?
Lisa: So you want to understand the persona. You may be going for multiple personas, but always make sure that you segment those communities.
Executives want to show up and have a conversation and not be muddied down with details that are really important to say an admin - which is very valuable, and that community needs to talk about admin features and product specifics - but you always want to keep those communities separated by persona.
Then, value messaging. Make sure they understand what's in it for them, who else will join? That goes back into making sure that your personas and making sure your communities are segmented in a way so that they'll know they’ll meet peers and get valuable insights.
Then, consider the time commitment.
Hope: That makes a lot of sense to get your own plans in order of what this is going to look like and then make that clear, so that way everyone knows what they're signing up for. So then next up, what is the optimal group size ? How many members should someone invite for their first group?
Lisa: When I think about an actual meeting happening, and we do ours over Zoom , we really want it to feel not overengineered. They're gonna pop into a Zoom and meet some peers.
I always try to have about 25 at each of those meetings. So when you start to think about how many to invite and how many might actually say yes, you should have your goals in mind. But I would say , percentages have been pretty consistent for me. So about 20% of those people that you invite, they're gonna be your they come to every single meeting. Then about 30%, they'll come about every other meeting.
About 50% of the people that you invite are actually going to be active members, and then 50% of those active members will actually show up to your meetings. And so I feel like those are really good numbers to kinda go off when you do your math and then making sure that you're hitting your goals.
I definitely recommend don't try to invite the world. Be really targeted about who you invite.
Hope: Obviously inclusion is great, but when you are trying to get rich qualitative feedback from customers, you can only really do that with so many people at once. It makes sense that you may need to shoot a little bit higher knowing that not everybody will engage.
Then next, I'm wondering how frequently should these groups meet?
Lisa: For executives, once a month. We tend to do Zoom. They want to talk and interact and see each other or do it in person. I also tend to set up a Slack community since most people use Slack, and so they're already in there. They're doing their work in there and they can just pop over into our workspace, maybe connect with a peer or post a question.
Hope: For the Zoom-based cohort rather than more of a passive online community, how long should that membership be? Should it be ongoing or a finite time period?
Lisa: About every two quarters I'll go and look at our members. And if I notice there are members on there that haven't attended a meeting , I'll just reach out and ask, are you still interested in being part of our community? Would you like me to take you off of our communications and take you off the invites? And 90% of the time , they're like, no, please don't take it away! Because people love to be included in something that's really unique and curated to them and what their needs are.
But definitely you should do some spring cleaning every couple quarters.
Hope: Right, like we prune our flower bushes! Maybe they just need a little reminder to show we thought about you and we really do want you specifically there. Finally, can you share any other tips that you'd like to share for a successful customer or client community?
Lisa: You do not want to overengineer or it may not feel like this is a safe space to be talking Also customer driven engagement - 95% of the talking and the conversation should be the customer and between the customers.
We're going to need to be the host and set a foundation and kind of ground rules for each of those meetings, but we want them to be connecting and sharing with each other. It has to be someone who really enjoys connecting people with others.
If it starts to kind of be going the wrong direction, you have to take action and explain the ground rules of the community so that they'll truly get what you say you're they're gonna get.
The last thing I would say is capturing what we learn from each of those and then sharing the key takeaways or really valuable sound bites. Everything we learn from that community, if we can put that back into the business, then we are doing everything that a business community is set up for.
So I would say those are kind of my three main tips. I hope this has all been valuable.
Hope: It sounds like the key thing is to have the right amount of structure like a plan, but not overdoing it on the technical side. This is great because everyone's already got some kind of video conferencing tool. We all have these resources at our disposal.
Thank you so much, Lisa, for taking time to share with our audience and speak with me. I know I learned a lot. Hopefully CX leaders feel inspired to take this on as an initiative as they're doing their planning for the rest of the year!
