Launch a customer community council.
Invite your customers to join your council community council. Every 4 months the council is flown (expenses paid) to meet the CEO, R&D and marketing teams to improve the company for the community.
There are 5 council spots available. Any customer can put themselves forward. They register on your site, gain support of members and are voted in.
Lets take this further. Every council member will have a direct line to a senior customer-service member. Disgruntled customers can contact council members for help or grievences.
It shows you care and jump-starts your community efforts.
One interesting issue to come out of the Online Community Unconference East was the issue of volunteers or community members with 'responsibilities' being legally considered as employees.
The more rewards and responsibilities you assign your members, the higher the risk of them being considered as employees (or even suing for employee benefits).
Your description of flying members for meetings with the CEO and having them deal with disgruntled customers certainly makes them sound more like employees and less like community members.
Just something to be aware of - as I understand it, we are still waiting for a precedent to be set.
- Martin
Posted by: Martin Reed | Friday, 13 February 2009 at 13:56