What is a CUSTOMER ADVOCATE COMMUNITY?

An online customer advocate community represents a group of people interacting, sharing, and working ,over the internet, towards a common goal. 

For your customers, an advocate community represents an online space dedicated to them, where relevant information, fun challenges, rewards and social interaction related to a favorite product or service are available.

For your company, a well-managed advocate community can be the company’s go-to source when you need anything from referrals to references or reviews, to candid feedback on your product or services directly from the customers.

In an advocate community, customers can easily help each other by answering questions. There you share tips, tricks, examples of solved problems and more. One of the main features of this kind of community is the ability to engage the customers directly by offering incentives and challenges that will encourage them to represent and promote your product or service online and offline.

An advocate community is like a home base for your customers, where you can strengthen their connection to your product or service and drive positive word of mouth. 

What is the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER?

The voice of the customer is a research method where the expectations and preferences of a customer are captured.

It is a data-driven feedback that provides the company with information about the customers’ feelings and experience that they have had while dealing with your company’s products and services. This process helps the company improve their reputation and products, as well as understand why customers make the choices they do.

You can use various tools to gain the voice of customers such as:

• A customer survey – to ask questions important to your brand. Surveys can be more elaborate and consist of several parts.
• Voice of Customer alert – to receive notifications about customer feedback
• Creating reports – to allow monitoring and analyzing what is happening.

Voice of Customer comprises of all of the feedback that you receive from customers regarding their needs, their expectations and their feelings towards your products and services.

What is CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT?

Customer engagement refers to all the ways your company interacts with customers.

These interactions should make customers feel and act positively towards your product/service. It may refer to what customers do to interact with your brand as well as how loyal they feel about your brand. 

Customer engagement unfolds in stages in your relationship with your customers:

• Lead acquisition: a prospect first becomes aware of your brand
• Purchase: a prospect buys your product and becomes a customer
• Onboarding: a customer first uses your product
• Adoption: product usage grows
• Escalation: a customer has issues with your product
• Retention: a customer becomes a loyal buyer

Customer engagement focuses on value creation to deliver an end-to-end customer experience. It isn’t about revenue extraction. It’s about great content, interactivity and real-time customer support.

A strong customer engagement strategy fosters customer loyalty and sales growth.