Five Trends That Will Transform Customer
Communities
Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer, Lithium Technologies
Community 2.0, San Francisco, May 12, 2009

Lithium Technologies
 140 customers  20M registered users
 200 communities  1B page views/month

Five trends
From …
community to network

fragmented to integrated

intuition to measurement

listening to responding

practice to discipline


From Community to Network
Trend
Customer communities are reaching out to social

networks and incorporating some of their
features.
Threat
Lose visibility, lose influence, lose members.

Opportunity
Broaden your reach, fuel your growth, keep up

with the competition.

Web 2.0 Abroad

Web 2.0 At Home
Most common errors of the Web 2.0
community makeover:
 Landing page dominated by “what’s new”
91% of users don’t care what’s new

 The “ghost-town” effect.
“Halloween is over.”

 Highlighting “friending” over “finding”
 “I’m not a teenager and this isn’t MySpace. I just
want an answer to my question.”
Most community users still value speed and
ease above all other attributes.

From Fragmented to Integrated
Trend
Customer communities are integrating their

disperse elements (blogs, forums, etc.) and
integrating with other enterprise systems.
Threat
Lose control over member experience.

Opportunity
Improve overall customer experience.


Integration Is the Thing This Year
Create Integrate Extend
CRM
CRM
2008 2009 2010
Creation of stand- Integration of Extension of
alone community community elements community across the
elements on the and business systems. social web.
website.

Why Is Integration Happening?

Web Analytics + Community Analytics
Integrating web and community analytics helps you to
identify the community content and users that drive
business outcomes.
Shown: Omniture-Lithium Integration

From Intuition to Measurement
Trend
Customer communities are now run on data

rather than a sense that this is “a good thing to
do.”
Threat
Let data make decisions rather than letting people

make decisions.
Opportunity
Ensure community is sustainable in the future.


Three Kinds of Measurement
Health Return Insight
CRM
A measure of success A measure of success A measure of what
for customers/users. for the business. customers are thinking.
UNIVERSAL AND
UNIVERSAL TYPE-SPECIFIC
TYPE-SPECIFIC

The Discipline of a Weekly Report

From Listening to Responding
Trend
Today’s focus on listening will soon give way to a

need to change the way companies do business.
Threat
Set unrealistic with customers that create

dissatisfaction.
Opportunity
Use customer wisdom to prevent problems and

exploit opportunities.

A Transformation Affecting Every Business
Interact Listen Respond
1995-2005 2005-2015 2015-2025
Enabling interaction Listening to customers Dynamically creating
so that customers and addressing their products and processes
can help each other. needs one by one. in partnership with
customers.

Why Idea Engines Matter

From Practice to Discipline
Trend
Community management is changing from an ad

hoc practice to a defined discipline.
Threat
More competition and pressure on community

managers.
Opportunity
More knowledge and more tools available to make

your community successful.

What’s in Your Toolbox?

Thank You
Joe Cothrel
joe.cothrel@lithium.com