Building a community for your customers, members or employees can be a benefit to your organization.  Communities are a great way to:

• Facilitate open, two way dialogue with your audience
• Obtain direct and immediate feedback about your product or services
• Extend product reach and open new market opportunites
• Deliver information to customers and partners quickly and efficiently

By creating a community, you have the ability to not only reach your target audience and encourage the interaction listed above, but establish yourself as a leader and a thoughtful innovator of customer service and relations.

Communities offer a wide range of functionality from Community groups within an organization that can interact amongst the group members themselves, to a larger scale communities which includes forums, blogs, and community member interaction.

Determining which is best for you and your organization goes a long way in determining the best type of community set up and software. There is a wide range of paid and free community software packages available. Deciding which one is best for your organization can be overwhelming if you don’t have a good sense and idea of your community goals.

Establish these goals first, what do you want your community to do, who do you want to reach with your community, and what type of interaction do you want your community members to have?  These are all important aspects of being able to set up the correct community for your organization to further your web presence and customer interaction.

A few open source communities that I’ve recently interacted with and have found to be terrific are:

While Ning offered a great community structure previously, the changes that they are undergoing currently will provide an even better community structure in the future. Check out the proposed changes at: http://about.ning.com/announcement/

DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke) also offers a great open source structure that provides you with the ability to add and purchase modules according to your needs and customize as needed with a developer.  The support by the DotNetNuke module developers is also excellent and they can assist with alterations if necessary depending on your needs and the module.  I’ve found them to be more than willing to assist.

Communities allow you to reach your audience and interact in a larger and much more open way. Adding this ability onto your website and/or establishing a separate community site is a terrific way to engage your audience and members and provide them with a vehicle for quick and easy interaction.

It amazes me how little large, well known companies focus on customer service.  Is this because they feel that their name is branded and that they’ll receive sales regardless of their customer service or because they just don’t care that you’re spending your hard earned money at their company?

Recently, I had two different experiences with 1) a well known internet company and 2)  a company that isn’t so well known.  I made purchases that were “guaranteed” to arrive by a specific date.  Due to weather in the Eastern US the items were delayed.  Surprisingly, I had two very different customer service experiences.

From the well known internet company -  I never received any notice/warning, communication about the delay. The items just didn’t show.  I had to keep checking the tracking information in order to determine when I would be receiving the items (which was a moving target due to delays, etc.). I realize with weather related issues it really isn’t in the control of the company, but according to the delivery tracking information, the packages didn’t even leave their facility prior to the weather issues.  Basically, the packages left late in the first place.

From the not-so-well-known internet company – I received an email 2 days before the impending weather hit the East Coast warning me about the possibility of a delay and informing me that I could contact them and cancel my order.  I then received daily updates via email from this company on the status of my order and they also upgraded the shipping type to a higher level in order for me to receive the package sooner than the level that I purchased. At no charge.

The final outcome, my packages from the well known company were over a week late and I never received any type of notice or communication from them at all.  The package from the not-so-well-known company was a few days late and they have a customer for life.  I find my self more apt to read their advertising emails when they arrive, look at their site, recommend them to my friends and family, and place orders for items not really needed. Yes, I am admitting to ordering a few things that I really don’t need.

As far as my continued support of the well known company, I don’t spend any time looking at their advertising emails or visit their site to see what they have that may be of interest.  Just not interested in giving them my money any longer since they don’t seem to value me as a customer.

Customer service plays a very important role on not only current, direct sales, but future sales as well.

No customer service = No sales.

What are your doing to ensure that you have a customer for life?

The cell phone industry is growing daily with new types of cell phones (called smartphones), applications and new technologies that enable us to stay in contact easily with this very portable device.  As the HTC “You” commercial says, it’s the first thing we see in the morning, it is always within arms reach and the last thing we see at night.

With this in mind, technologies are evolving to include group activities for your cell phones. Group activities will include creating groups (i.e, family group, marketing group, new prospect groups, etc.) and then being able to either send a text to that group, leave a phone message for each individual within the group, email the group, or schedule a conference call for the entire group to attend directly from your cell phone.

This ability presents itself with endless possibilities and ideas on how to stay in contact with your members, prospects, family, etc.  Business will be able to use this ability easily for quick messages to members, updates, and meeting information. Small businesses will be able to connect to their sales and prospects with marketing items, etc. and staying in touch with family and friends will be more efficient.

Which cell phone carriers and when will this be available?  Unfortunately, this hasn’t been released as of yet, but the idea and concept presents itself with ideas and opportunities that will be beneficial to those who embraces new technologies.