Below are some of his salient points. Finding the right starting point . To answer this we need to delve into why are we considering this investment. Developing online communities encourages return visitors. Over the life of a customer relationship, this increases our margins on online customer acquisition costs.
Community encourages loyalty.
What we are selling can become less of a commodity. Also, often these customers become our knights against consumers who flame the community with complaints about us and respond in ways far more inspiring than anything we can do. Community addresses increasingly higher customer expectations. In this age of cell phones and e-mail, all customers can be more exacting in quality and value in a purchase situation. Community can actually reduce our cost of interacting with our customers.