People love to talk about the things they're most interested in with other people, whether it's in person or online. That's why so many people go to community forumswhen they need help or information from their favorite brands.
These online platforms are where people can come to ask questions, debate, share knowledge, and talk about things they have in common. Most of the time, users can get information about how a product works or ask questions about certain features. Community forums also give customers who need help a way to help themselves and are a great source of customer feedback.
Indeed, community forums have a lot of advantages. They pay for themselves by giving your businessvaluable information about what your customers want and how tosolve their problems, all while taking very little of your company's time and money.
The Benefits Of Having A Community Forum
Let’s look at some of the advantages you can expect when you successfully implement a community forum.
Improve Customer Service
There are forums where people can ask about problems that have already been solved. If they find the right answer, they won't have to call your customer service. They won't have to. There is more time for your support staff to work on more difficult cases because of this.
The community forum can also go beyond the often technical focus of customer support, which can be very different from what the forum is about. It's also possible for people to talk about and share their own ideas, tips, and tricks.
Customer Loyalty And Engagement Can Be Increased
A report in the journal Internet Research found that co-creation was an important part of the user's experience. It makes people more involved in the community and spreads the word more.
Get Great ROI
It turns out that the average community forum had a return on investment of 4,530 percent in 2020. First, it's 1,469 percent in the first year, and then it rises to 5,315 percent after ten years. According to this, the cost per user goes down a lot as the site gets older.
Inform Customers
Forums usually have a start page with a search function and a list of the different forums. The start page is a great place to tell people about upcoming changes, make announcements, and show off events.
Improve Your SEO
Some customer-facing community forums require users to sign in before they can see them. You can also choose to make the forum public and let people search for it on Google. Forums that are open to the public boost organic traffic and direct people who have looked up your questions to your answers.
Get New Ideas Based On What People Want
90% of people who took part in a survey of communities said that they had used suggestions to improve their product or service.
The forums are a great place to gather feature requests, get help deciding which projects to work on first, and get feedback on ideas from a group of people who are very loyal to your company.
Source Customer Success Stories
In order to find customer success stories, you need to look for them on. A community forum is a great place to look for satisfied customers to use in case studies and testimonials. You can either talk to people who are excited about your product or you can use a discussion thread to ask them to get in touch with you.
Wrapping Up
A community forum can help you get more customer engagement, cut down on customer service costs, and get important product feedback. This makes the forum even more powerful when it's used with a knowledge base.
This article talked about some useful features for community forums. Many of them are important for a knowledge base, too, like good search tools, easy ways to add and change answers, and advanced analytics, but they also need to be there.