VoIP Providers Should Build Online Communities

Why Aren’t Service Providers Better At Creating Communities?

Two recent posts, one by Russell Shaw, and the other by Hugh MacLeod, two of my favorite bloggers, got me thinking about the lack of community building in the Voice over IP space. For an industry that prides itself on disruptive, innovative, and visionary technologies, it is severely lacking the very same qualities in their marketing - especially in the ability to build customer loyalty and foster customer evangelists.

I have known about the Vonage Forum far before Russell’s post, but the irony in the size, activity, and value of the forum never quite hit me until today. You see the Vonage Forum is not own by Vonage. It is own by an independent third party, and while its 40,000 users represents less than half of a percent of the total number of Vonage customers, the forum serves as a place where Vonage users can go and get the help they need…that they are not getting from Vonage directly.

Vonage does not have a forum. Vonage does not have a blog, a MySpace profile, a Sqiudoo lens, etc. Vonage does however, have the churn rate that proves they have no customer loyalty and very few evangelists.

Offering Something Useful

Sure, being able to make a cheap call is great. But is making a cheap any more useful with one service versus another? Not really, unless you have something else “there.” So if your service is no more useful than another’s, you must spend on getting attention in order to gain customers. Being visible and getting attention will attract customers, but will it keep them - forever? No. As Hugh points out,

“Buying space in someone else’s brain is far harder than buying space in someone else’s media.”

What does he mean? Anyone can buy a commercial, a magazine ad, or a banner ad, but no one can buy a loyal customer. Loyal customers, loyal communities, and successful services are built through community development and continuous delivery of useful offerings into that community.

What VoIP service provider has truly created a community?

Skype

For all of the heat Skype gets from many of us in the blogosphere for not getting things right from time-to-time, they have gotten “useful” and community development right.

Skype doesn’t have a blog. It has blogs. Skype doesn’t have a forum. It has forums. Skype has public chats. Skype has useful services, outside of IP voice. Skype has built customer loyalty. Skype has built a legion of fans. Skype is profitable. Skype is a success.

Service Providers - Start Building a Community Around Your Service

Not everyone can be Skype. But you do not have to be Vonage either. Starting a company blog, launching a company forum, or wiki, and delivering useful services, features, and functionality to customers is not as daunting of a task as it seems - and it is much cheaper than marketing and advertising campaigns. This blog costs me nothing but time and hosting costs each month - but it makes me thousands each month and has built me a network of contacts, readers, etc. that is priceless…and I don’t even have a service.