When is the right time to start a customer community for a SaaS product?

Sathish Nagarajan (SNR)
3 replies
Customer community helps in collecting product feedback, brainstorming feature discussion, helping customers, customers supporting each other, creating a platform for customers and partners. How can we decide what is the right time to create a customer community - based on revenue or number of users or it is necessary from day 1.

Replies

John Stewart
I would say the right demand completely dictates what the 'right time' is. Which of course will change with different audiences and different motivators. If your clients are in a position where they need a community platform then it can be as early as day one, if you need to warm them up to a customer community it can be a much longer process.
Sathish Nagarajan (SNR)
@john_stewarttgm True, if the customers doesn't have a need to collaborate with other customers the community won't be useful. What I also think, it also depends on the product nature, if it is a product that requires learning and if that learning is going to give direct benefit to the customer they would prefer a community
John Stewart
@sathish_nagarajan1 Definitely, I think overlooking clients passion is unwise when creating an online community. If your audience is engaged there's likely to be a pool of people that want to participate in a community to learn more about a subject that they enjoy and work in. People like to know more about the subjects or field of work that they excel in. Which could result in a demand much sooner for online communities.