Online customer communities are everywhere — you just have to look for them — sometimes in unlikely places. Because they are dedicated to serving customers, often they are not evangelized to the general public or consumer audiences. But they are alive, well and thriving within many enterprises.
By way of definition, when we say “online customer communities,” we mean an interactive, often gated, website that a company sets up for customers to collaborate on topics of mutual interest.
And, we are NOT including customer service websites; e-commerce sites where goods and services are bought and sold; online customer panels that focus on customer research; online publications that let readers comment on articles; or blogs, twitter and general use of social media broadcast tools. These styles of interactive interplay are an important aspect of the evolving web 2.0 world, but are not, by definition, online customer communities.
We’ve also been doing the research, gathering an extensive list of online customer communities and developing a suite of case studies about some of the more innovative examples. So without further ado, here’s our initial list from the Customer Community Project — seventy-one of our top picks — so far.
- Adobe Learning Communities
- American Express Business Travel Connexion
- American Express American Express Open
- Avnet Partner Community (gated community)
- Bank Of America Small Business Community
- Bloomberg BusinessWeek Business Exchange: Online Community Management
- BT Radianz Financial Services Community
- BT Transform operational capabilities in defence (gated community)
- Building.co.uk Building Network
- Caterpillar Caterpiller Community
- CHCA CHEX Knowledge Exchange (gated community)
- cio.com Executive Council (gated community) (gated community)
- Cisco Learning Network
- Cognizant Cognizanti eCommunity (gated community)
- Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champions network
- Cortera Community
- CSC Meaningful User Community
- CWFM Connect with FM (Facilities Managers)
- Dell Small and Medium Business
- Diversified Communications Integrative Practitioner
- Dow Jones Dow Jones Communities
- EMC ECN Community Network
- EMC Customer Council Connect (gated community)
- EMC EMC-SAP Ecosystem community
- EMC Networker Online Community
- EMC TheCircle (gated community)
- EMC Velocity Partner Xchang (gated community)
- Flexera Software Community
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise Business Community
- Hewlett Packard Business Support Forums
- Hewlett Packard Software Solutions Community online forum
- Hewlett Packard Live Network (gated community)
- HSBC Business Network
- IBM Communities
- IBM Center for CIO Leadership
- IDC IDC Insights
- InfoGroup Exchange Exchange – Powered by Infogroup (gated community)
- Institute for Human Resources (Many different HR topics) Community Home Page
- Intel Intel Software Network Communities
- Intuit Intuit Community (many different Intuit support communities)
- Intuit Accountants Community for QuickBooks Practitioners and Accounting Professionals
- Intuit Developer Network (gated community)
- Jigsaw Jigsaw Community
- Kinaxis The Supply Chain Expert Community (gated community)
- Kodak Grow Your Biz
- LexisNexis LexisNexis Investigators Network (gated community)
- LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Connected
- Mathworks MatLab Central
- Microsoft (UK) Microsoft Small Business Community
- Microsoft Microsoft Developers Network
- Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics Community
- Motorola Enterprise Mobility
- NAHB Reshaping and Enriching our Communities
- NetPromotor Blogs
- NetApp New Products for Building a Shared IT Infrastructure
- NetApp University
- NetApp User Groups
- Oracle Community
- Oracle Enterprise Manager
- Oracle CFO Central
- Palladium Group XPC
- Pitney Bowes User Forum
- SaaS4Channel.nl SaaS4Channel.nl
- Salesforce.com SalesForce Discussion Forums
- SAP Community Network SDN Community
- Sage Group Act! Community
- Sermo MDs-only Community
- Spiceworks IT Community
- Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum
- Taleo Customer Executive Council
- TCN The Construction Network
This list is just a start, so feel free to post a comment about them. If you run, manage or participate in an online customer community and would like to be included, please take a moment to add your community.
Hi Vanessa
this is an interesting list.
It is worthwhile to look at what makes a successful customer community. From my experience, when customer communities are driven by the company as part of its marketing strategy, the community info can be biased and often filtered propaganda channels.
When it is run as part of a customer service strategy with significant genuine input from both happy and unhappy customers then the community tends to be more valuable.
What do you think?
Cheers
Richard Keeves
Digital TrendCatchers
Hi Richard,
I couldn’t agree with you more – the why is even more important that the who. To that end, as I began the research project of identifying and compiling successful b2b online communities I also began to note patterns about what criteria for online customer communities tends to yield the best results.
From customers, to customer problems to market conditions all play a role in determining whether a customer community is right for an organization.
Here is the writeup- http://bit.ly/eAeJOD
best
Vanessa
Very intresting, any suggestion on some customer community platform to use ?
Thanks