Reflection Two

In chapters 5 through 8 of Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, we learn the importance of talking with, listening to, and energizing the groundswell.  Li and Bernoff also provide us with helpful advice on how to successfully use a variety of tactics to tap into the groundswell to market our brands.  These chapters include a lot of very helpful advice, but I am going to focus on 3 main points from this chapter that I think are the most important in marketing our brands today.


First, we need to make an effort to listen to and energize the groundswell.  Li and Bernoff state that one way we can listen to the groundswell by setting up a private community.  As mentioned in my post last week,  Zox is one company which set up private communities for their customers.  Harley Davidson is a second brand that has created a community specifically for customers, the Harley Owners Group.  Membership is reserved for Harley owners and riders and includes many benefits including access to the members-only website, H.O.G. merchandise, and admittance to exclusive rallies and events, to name a few.  These private communities are a place for us to listen to our customers in a 'mini-groundswell' while connecting with and energizing our most loyal customers.

Second, Li and Bernoff explain the value in energizing the groundswell by encouraging our promoters to market our brand through word of mouth.  In the digital age, trust comes from the ground level, so word of mouth is very important in marketing our brands.  One way to build connections with our promoters is through ratings and reviews.  Including a ratings and reviews system has many benefits from increasing purchases to providing feedback to your company on their products and services.  According to Li and Bernoff, 96% of customers use online reviews to help make purchases (p. 138) while 62% of online North American consumers trust ratings and reviews (p. 132).

Amazon is one company which utilizes ratings and reviews for their products.  Not only can customers view the total star-rating for a product, but they can also view star-ratings by feature or ratings from certain customer groups.  For example, take a look at the rating breakdown for a JanSport Right Pack Laptop Backpack.

In addition to Amazon's rating feature, they have introduced the ability for customers to ask and answer questions regarding the product.  This feature takes the ratings and review feature one step further and allows customers to directly ask questions they have prior to purchasing the product in question.

Finally,  implementing support forums is one tactic to help the groundswell support itself.  According to Li and Bernoff, an average customer support call costs an organization 6 to 7 dollars while a technical support call costs between 10 to 20 dollars.  In addition, customer support lines can be incredibly frustrating for customers.  Community support forums are one option we can consider to reduce the volume of support calls while still ensuring customer's questions are answered.  PlayStation is one company that has implemented community support forums for their products. 

I personally use the support forums anytime I have a technical issue.  As a result, I personally have never had to pick up a phone and actually call for technical support.  The ability to ask questions on the community support forum saves PlayStation money on support calls and saves customers the frustration of having to deal with customer support lines.

Do you know of any other brands who have used one of these strategies? Were they successful? Share your thoughts below!