Customer.Community

The Internet is the world's largest marketplace and provides businesses with the ability to interact with their market in a much more direct and tailored way than ever before. Customer.Community takes a new look at online communities as a source of value for both customers and businesses; it shows how to build an online "customer community" that gives customers a reason to stay loyal. Drew Banks and Kim Daus explain exactly what the customer community is and then reveal the tenets that will make it strong: sustainability, size and scalability, social connectivity, and soul. The authors show how to "communitize" commerce, build a solid base of repeat customers, and create value for the customer, and they explain how to manage a site in a cost-effective way. Customer.Community will help cultivate a mind-set to leverage the collective, untapped power of your customer base.Heute tobt ein harter Konkurrenzkampf. Deshalb braucht der Kunde auch einen guten Grund, warum er einem bestimmten Produkt treu sein soll. "Customer.Community" zeigt Managern, wie sie direktes Feedback von ihren Online-Kunden erhalten. Hier lernen Manager, wie sie eine Online Community aufbauen, die auf den Grundlagen historischer Gemeinschaften basiert, die den Wert des Menschen als Individuum respektiert und die ihren Unternehmen die Mittel an die Hand gibt, das Grundgeschäft zu verbessern. Ausgehend von einem neuen thematischen Ansatz, betrachtet dieser Band Online Communities als eine Quelle der Wertschöpfung für Kunde und Unternehmen gleichermaßen. Am Beispiel von Amazon.com und des Harry Potter Phänomens wird untersucht, warum diese beiden Online-Community Modelle so erfolgreich sind. "Customer.Community" - ein nützlicher Ratgeber für die Praxis! Foreword: The Right Thing to Do (Scott Cook).

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction: The Customer-Community.

Is Commerce Antithetical to Online Community?

Part One: Why Customer-Community?

1. The Business Case.

How Customer-Communities Advance.

Your Business Goals.

2. The Customer Case.

E-Commerce Experiences That Span.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Individual, Social, and Spiritual.

Part Two: Customer-Community Basics.

3. Twelve Principles for Building Community.

The Foundation for Strong Communities.

4. Customer-Community Profiles.

Ten Types and Thirty-Five Examples of Customer-Communities and Their Defining Characteristics.

5. Growing Your Community.

Overcoming the Inherent Challenges of Large-Scale Communities.

6. Understanding Community Bonds.

Discovering the Intrinsic Bonds Within Your Customer Base.

Part Three: Customer-Community and the Bottom Line.

7. Creating Value from Customer-Communities.

Sixteen Bottom-Line Possibilities.

8. Organizational Issues and Roles.

Aligning Strategy, Structure, Communication, and Leadership.

9. Before You Start.

Ten Questions to Help You Think Through the Issues.

Afterword: Turning Customer-Communities into Gold, Harry Potter Style (Michael Lowenstein).

Notes.

Index.

The Authors. "...I am quite impressed with this book...well written, easy to understand guide to the world of the internet and business..." (M2 Best Books, 3 September 2002)

Drew Banks is an independent management consultant and former vice president of Community at ThirdAge Media. He has also served as director of Worldwide Performance Support and Employee Communications for SGI. Kim Daus is director of organization learning and communication at Intuit and former vice president of content and community at ThirdAge Media. Banks and Daus are co-authors (with Markos Kounalakis) of Beyond Spin: The Power of Strategic Corporate Journalism (Jossey-Bass, 2000). Through the Internet, businesses now have an unprecedented opportunity to find out who their customers are-not by collecting data but by listening and talking to customers. These online communities provide a place for businesses to receive and direct feedback from their customers and offer those customers a chance to participate in a community of interest, not just in a transaction. Customer.Community examines the business benefits that can be achieved through igniting the collective potential of your customer base. Drawing from the lessons of the successful online commerce communities of companies such as Amazon.com, EBay, and the Harry Potter phenomenon, authors Banks and Daus offer a provocative argument for building, leveraging, and sustaining a customer community that will increase the bottom line.

The authors explain the basic characteristics of a customer community; examine foundations, growth, and sustainability; and detail twelve proven principles of community building. They analyze ways to overcome long-time barriers to successful large-scale community building and tackle the business model head on, showing how companies make financial sense of the customer community concept. Revealing how the concept is clearly linked to creating value and making money, authors Banks and Daus offer numerous recommendations for organizing and managing a customer community cost-effectively. They review organization structure, interdepartmental efficiencies, required infrastructure, and an intra-customer community leadership structure and offer several questions to guide businesses in jump-starting their own customer community program.

Customer.Community is ultimately about understanding what your customer community is and can become. It is about broadening the scope of what your customers can do for you-from lowering the cost of customer acquisition, to generating demand, to peer-to-peer customer service. The Internet is the world's largest marketplace and provides businesses with the ability to interact with their market in a much more direct and tailored way than ever before. This book takes a new look at online communities as a source of value for both customers and businesses; it shows how to build an online "customer community" that gives customers a reason to stay loyal. Drew Banks and Kim Daus explain exactly what the customer community is and then reveal the tenets that will make it strong: sustainability, size and scalability, social connectivity, and soul. The authors show how to "communitize" commerce, build a solid base of repeat customers, and create value for the customer, and they explain how to manage a site in a cost-effective way. Customer.Community will help cultivate a mind-set to leverage the collective, untapped power of your customer base. "EBay-like peer-to-peer marketplace dramatically increase the exchange off value between a business and its customers. Customer.Community shows how any company can leverage this dynamic to drive loyalty and profitability."
--Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder and GM of ELance

"The term "Virtual Community" carries so much baggage that many people forget that community, at its essence, is simply people interacting with other people. Underscoring some basic principles of community building, Banks and Daus show how paying attention to the interaction between your customers can affect the bottom line."
--Cynthia Typaldos, cofounder of GolfWeb, founder of RealCommunities, and president, Typaldos Associates

"Customer.Community is a great look at how online Community really works. I tell people that if you want to save the world, well, you don't get to do that, but improving customer service really helps. This book brings you far in that direction."
--Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist

"The concepts in Customer.Community present a way to understand what customers really need and want. The very existence of public discourse in commerce creates a discipline that results in happier customers."
--Scott Cook, cofounder, Intuit

"Companies who have focused on he individual customer in the past must also now focus on the collective-the customer-community-to be successful."
--Michael Lowenstein, coauthor, Customer Winback