What do you call the community of customers who use your
product and services? True that may be you can take a step back and ask
yourself whether you nurture a community of customers in the first place or
not, may be you are focusing so much on treating every customer as unique
individuals that you are moving your sight away from the combined whole – a community.
I think the trick lies in striking a balance so that your customers feel to be treated
as a unique person with unique needs and requirements from your business but at
the same time can feel part of a bigger community of users with whom they can
share their experience of using your services and products.
I am sure you are aware that Lady Gaga fondly calls her fans
and followers as ‘Little Monsters’ whereas Justin Bieber has labelled his army
of mostly teenage girls as ‘Beliebers’. May be the kind of business you are in,
you don’t need to label the community of your customers as anything at all. But
do give it a thought whether it would make any business sense of branding the
community of your loyal users with a name or identity with which they can
easily connect to and more importantly feel very proud about it to the extent
that they will happily share your business accolade to their peers, friends and
families.
Again, if you are producing Pran products, don’t end up
calling the community of consumers ‘Prani’, likewise don’t call all who
subscribe to Grameenphone as ‘Grameen’ only – there is no harm to be creative
and relevant. But yes, in my opinion I still call those who use Robi as Robiuls as I humbly don’t like the name for a telecom operator. Well again that is my
personal and may be partial opinion. But coming back to the main proposition - try treating your customers as a community at times, then think of certain rituals that they can follow during certain times of the year and feel part of something bigger than their usual self.
