Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

The Futility of Benchmarks

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

Benchmarks from other organizations don’t usually tell you how you’re doing, they only tell you what’s possible.

If you want a 100% accepted solution rate to every question, that’s not possible (without removing the questions which don’t get a solution, but I digress).

But if Dropbox, Airbnb, or GiffGaff get that number up to 75%, then you can study them to see how they did it.

Comparing yourself to other organizations is a dangerous game. A product with thousands of customers will have VERY different benchmarks from one with millions of customers. They develop at different speeds too (broadly, more people = faster process through the lifecycle).

And passion for the product or problems with the product vary greatly. A buggy product used by millions may have a seemingly better community than a great product used by the same numbers.

I get the temptation to compare your community to others, but try to resist it. It’s rarely a fair comparison. A better comparison is whether your community is better today than yesterday, if not, what will you do about it tomorrow?

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