Customer Communities

Make community building your ultimate business growth strategy

In Customer Communities: Engage and Retain Customers to Build the Future of Your Business, Nick Mehta and Robin Van Lieshout deliver an actionable playbook on how to cultivate meaningful communities that fuel quantifiable business growth. In the book, you’ll learn how to capitalize on this new growth strategy to scale your company and develop excitement around your products and your firm.

The authors outline the 10 foundational Laws of Community, explaining why community development does not need to be expensive and how to integrate community in the heart of your customer journey. You’ll also find:

• Strategies for creating a cross functional customer engagement team
• Techniques for building community in places that aren’t the web or on social media
• Ways to bring your organization’s culture and values into your community with a human-first alignment

An essential roadmap to community development for customer success, marketing, support and product teams, and other entrepreneurs, founders, and executive business leaders. Customer Communities will earn a place on the bookshelves of anyone with a stake in organizational growth and resilience.

Foreword ix

Preface: Two CEOs Growing Up Lonely xi

Acknowledgments xv

Part I Community Is the Future of Your Business 1

Chapter 1 An Introduction to the World of Communities 3
Creating a Sense of Belonging

Chapter 2 Communities as a Business Growth Strategy 9
The Only Sustainable Long-Term Differentiator Companies Have

Chapter 3 How the Next Generation of Communities Drives Success 29
The New Company-Wide Strategy to Drive Net Revenue Retention

Chapter 4 A Community for Customer Success, Support, Marketing, and Product Teams 41
How Every Department Can Benefit from a Next-Generation Community

Part II The 10 Laws of Community Building 55

Chapter 5 Law 1: You Can Start Anytime 57
It Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive and Everyone in Your Organization Can Help

Chapter 6 Law 2: You Have to Own the Platform 65
Engage Your Customers Beyond Borrowed Ground

Chapter 7 Law 3: Community Should Be the Heart of the Customer Journey 75
Activate and Engage Your Customers at Scale

Chapter 8 Law 4: Create Content That Educates and Inspires 95
Be the Best Thought Leader You Can Be

Chapter 9 Law 5: Build on Your Advocates 109
Your Most Loyal Customers Are the Gateway to Success

Chapter 10 Law 6: Everybody Owns the Customer 121
Community Is a Company-Wide Strategy, Not a Department

Chapter 11 Law 7: Offline Counts More Than You Think 139
An Online Community Is Strengthened with Offline Events

Chapter 12 Law 8: Tie It All Together in One Customer Hub 153
Prevent a Disjointed Customer Experience by Integrating Engagement and Content

Chapter 13 Law 9: Community Should Drive Real Business Outcomes 171
Don’t Get Fooled by Vanity Metrics—Demand Real Business Metrics

Chapter 14 Law 10: Bring Your Culture and Values to Your Community 183
Build with a Human-First Mindset

Part III How to Get Started 195

Chapter 15 Building Blocks to Successfully Starting a Community 197
Putting Together a Strong Strategy in Five Steps

Chapter 16 Common Objections and How to Overcome Them 209
Answers to Nine Common Objections

Epilogue 217

References 219

Index 225

NICK MEHTA is CEO of Gainsight, a leading customer success company, and the bestselling co-author of Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue.

ROBIN VAN LIESHOUT is CEO and Founder of inSided, a leading community software company.

The most resilient and popular products rely on communities of enthusiastic evangelists to tout their benefits, spread positive word-of-mouth, and drive reliable growth. Now, a team that includes the bestselling co-author of Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue shows you how to create one of those communities dedicated to your own organization.

In Customer Communities: Engage and Retain Customers to Build the Future of Your Business, a team of award-winning CEOs deliver an actionable playbook that explains exactly how to cultivate the meaningful communities that fuel measurable and exponential business growth. In the book, you’ll discover how to leverage this new growth strategy to scale your firm and develop enduring excitement around your products and your company.

Authors Nick Mehta (CEO of Gainsight) and Robin Van Lieshout (CEO of inSided) explain the 10 foundational Laws of Community that underlie every vibrant and healthy community environment. You’ll learn why community development does not need to be expensive, arduous, or time-consuming, and how to integrate your community into the heart of your customer journey.

Customer Communities walks you through how to create a cross-functional customer engagement team and the techniques you’ll need for building community in places that aren’t on the web or social media. It also describes how to bring your organization’s culture and values into your community with a human-first alignment.

A can’t-miss roadmap for community development, Customer Communities is an essential read for customer success, marketing, support, and product professionals. It will also prove invaluable to entrepreneurs, founders, and executives in high-growth companies, as well as anyone else with a stake in organizational growth and resilience.

Praise for CUSTOMER COMMUNITIES

“For over a decade the Gainsight team has pioneered community approaches which have launched and scaled hundreds of successful brand communities. Customer Communities is amongst the best collection of modern practices to building thriving communities which actually succeed today. Buy it, read it, apply it.”
—Richard Millington, Founder, FeverBee

“Nick Mehta has collaborated with communities around the globe to create an eye-opening body of work that every leader must take to heart. Customer Communities presents a new paradigm for success defined by the interdependence of company, customers, and the world around us. It returns us to the fundamental truth that ‘we are all in this together.’”
—Maria Martinez, Chief Operating Officer, Cisco

“Customer communities are much more than online message boards run by one department. This book explains why connecting stakeholders online and offline in meaningful ways creates massive leverage across every part of your company. Best of all, you can do it without community members feeling your org chart.”
—Jim Roth, President of Customer Success, Salesforce