Online Communities (sometimes called MROCs) have evolved from experimental forums to a mainstay for customer insights. In fact, about half (46%) of the world’s biggest brands now leverage some form of insight community, with usage projected to climb even higher (GRIT Insights Practice Report, May 2024).

These private online communities are managed either by research agencies or by client insight teams (and often by a combination of both). The essence of communities is that they bring organisations together with their customers for ongoing engagement, feedback, and co-creation. By hardwiring customer voices into decision-making, companies can move faster and make smarter decisions.

In this post we explore how insight communities are facilitating and delivering smarter decisions across product development, communications testing, and brand strategy, with examples from Australia, France, and the USA.

Smarter Product Development

A great example of the way communities help smarter decisions was given by Australia’s Scentre Group and its Westfield destinations.

“Customer feedback from our research community has underpinned our planning process, ensuring we deliver activities and experiences that customers really want. It also allows us to test and measure our communications and initiatives, developing a deep understanding of what resonates with our customers. In turn, this encourages them to visit our Westfield destinations more often and for longer." - Emma Gillingham, Group Manager Research, Scentre Group.

In a similar example from the USA, DeWalt the power tools manufacturer, built an insight community of over 12,000 customers (8,000 professional tradies and 4,000 hobbyists) to source product ideas and test prototypes (braineet https://www.braineet.com/blog/co-creation-examples).

In France, the food manufacturer Sodebo, uses a consumer community to keep ready meals popular and relevant in perhaps the most discerning food market in the world – it needs its decisions to consistently be smart decisions. As Hervé Morice from Sodebo said:

“We gain considerably in efficiency and autonomy in our ways of interacting with our customers… It is a real saving of time and money. Studies that cost us 100[K](prelaunch), cost us 30[K] today.”

(https://www.platform1.cx/customer/sodebo)

With faster speeds and lower costs there is more opportunity to get things right.

Smart Decisions Need Quality Insights

When available, online communities provide a strong alternative to online panels. The research can be conducted faster, with lower per project costs, and with fewer challenges in identifying good quality sources.

Unlike industry panels, online communities are based on your customers, they have a real relationship with you and your brands. Not only that, but you can measure and build their usefulness over time, using them for a mix of qualitative and quantitative projects. As the Australian insurance company IAG says:

“Our customer panel is an extremely valuable source of insight for us and we believe the quality of the insights gained are far more considered than panel participants because they have ‘skin in the game’ and, because membership is by invitation only, there is a greatly reduced risk of bots and ‘professional respondents’, whose main motivation is to sign up for the rewards rather than contributing to valuable insights, which help inform business decisions.” - Sarah Dixey, Principal, Customer Research & Insights, IAG.

A Smarter Journey

The key to continued success is to create a process that keeps delivering. Occasional flashes of wisdom are great, but they don’t lead to a culture of making smarter, customer-centric, evidence-based decisions. This is highlighted by Amy Saha, Head of Insights at Tip Top, a George Weston Foods company:

“At Tip Top, our Bakery Conversations community is the beating heart of our insights strategy, bringing together passionate bakery enthusiasts to shape the future of our beloved brands. This vibrant community allows us to develop a deep understanding of our categories, vet new concepts, and refine marketing campaigns with real-time feedback. By leveraging the low costs and high speed of this iterative approach, we can make evidence-based decisions that keep us agile and responsive to consumer needs for over 10 years, at a healthy clip of 4 projects a month on average.”

Smarter decisions come from embedding communities in the process and making them widely available to the organisation.

Over time the responses of the community are monitored to ensure the customers co-creating the insights are providing useful information and the composition of the community is kept fresh and relevant through targeted recruitment.

Three key points for smarter decision-making

1.       Involve your community early and iterate your solutions.

2.       Recruit the right customers and keep them engaged.

3.       Ensure that the power of the community is available to the whole business.