Corporate Community Channels
Large corporations can drive profitable revenue growth by implementing a “community channel” capability. Many corporations are considering the implementation of a “community site” where their customers can exchange ideas, information and feedback with the company. The ESI approach goes one step further. It adds the collaboration functionality needed to transform a basic community site into a powerful new revenue-generating channel with an order-of-magnitude greater productivity than traditional advertising, direct mail, call center and email channels.
There are two core components to this ESI-enabled “community channel”. First, customers are given the traditional social networking capabilities required to enable them to collaborate with the sponsoring company as well as each another. Collaborating with their customers in this manner can enable companies to drive bottom-line results by:
- Gathering the data needed to understand the profiles of current and potential customers
- Receiving invaluable member feedback and idea generation for product and service innovation
- Conducting online surveys at no cost with thousands of community members to evaluate new offerings
- Generating “pre-demand” for new product introductions from members particularly interested in their arrival
- Reducing customer service and support costs by providing members with online self-service tools
- Supporting members in value-creating peer-to-peer networking and knowledge sharing
- Retaining customers by establishing a relevant, ongoing permission-based dialog with each member
The second core set of collaboration functionalities on the ESI community platform enable the company and customer to go beyond simply exchanging ideas and information, to exchanging value. Using ESI’s Collaborative Exchange Optimization Environment, community members willing to consolidate more of their business with the company (and its suppliers) can exchange their enhanced patronage for special insider privileges and benefits only available to consumers registered in the community.
Companies can use this functionality to engage with individual customers in a highly responsive, permission-based dialogue focused on identifying “win-win” relationship value exchange improvements. Collaboratively developing these “win-win” agreements will increase customer satisfaction and value while also driving significant near-term profit improvement for the company. This one-to-one collaboration capability will uncover a wide range of previously unexploited exchange improvement opportunities:
- A high value prospect invited to join the community by the company can qualify for relationship discounts unavailable in other company channels if they agree to shift their business from a competitive service provider
- A community member can agree to charge more on a store credit card in order to receive special interest rates and payment terms in return
- The company can offer discounts to community members who agree to refer new friends/customers
- A member can agree to consolidate more of their business onto the company in order to earn advance purchasing privileges on new high profile product releases
- A member who has not previously used a particular suppliers’ product can agree to try the product in return for manufacturer-funded rebate
