By Taylor Allis, Executive Director of Product Marketing, TeleTech

In the best-selling book Groundswell, authors Li and Bernoff discuss the phenomenon of social communities, in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. Thanks to social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Yelp and others, consumers have a stronger voice than ever and can share their thoughts, feelings and feedback with a very wide audience. In doing so, consumers – and businesses too – often improve not only their own customer experience but raise customer experience standards for other customers as well.

What Defines Social Communities?
Social communities range from large, public sites like Facebook to private invitation-only communities which are typically targeted toward a specific area of interest. Whether public or private, large or small, social communities provide participants with the opportunity to discuss shared topics and issues, learn from each other, solve problems and voice feedback on companies, products, politicians – the list goes on. The power of the Internet has given more power back to the people and smart companies are engaging their customers and participating in the conversation. And they are doing this by either creating their own customer-focused social community or engaging in existing communities where their customers are already participating. Both of these environments foster better customer experiences.

Engaging Social Communities
By engaging customers through a community, you are communicating that you care enough to listen to what your customers have to say, and that you also want to share ideas, ask for feedback and help solve problems. And in many cases, your customers are doing all of that for you. These dynamics undoubtedly benefit customers, but they also allow companies to be more efficient and encourage increased investment in products, innovation and new solutions. Why? By harnessing community resources to serve customers and solve problems, companies are can invest more in new products and innovation and deliver market-ready solutions faster than ever before.

An excellent example of the value of community forums is the Logitech social community, where highly active users spend countless hours answering customer questions, solving problems and evangelizing on behalf of the Logitech brand.

Social Communities as a Replacement for Traditional Channels
Clearly, social media has exploded and yet it is still in its infancy. Here are some startling statistics:

• 126 million – the number of blogs on the Internet
• 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands
• 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14 percent trust advertisements
• 50 million – the number of tweets on Twitter per day
• 500 million – people on Facebook
• By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….and 96 percent of them have joined a social network

As these numbers grow and more customers are migrating to social communities to discuss products, experiences and preferences, those companies ignoring this groundswell will pay the price. Companies can enhance their customers’ experience by listening to and participating in the conversation, learning how to improve their product or service, engaging in ideas and solutions and sharing successes within social communities. Customers will reward those companies who participate by demonstrating brand loyalty, referring friends and family and sharing their positive experiences with anyone that will listen.