Vanessa DiMauro

71 Top Online Customer Communities: The Big List

Posted by Vanessa DiMauro on February 16, 2011
comments 3 comments  |  4141 reads

Online customer communities are everywhere -- you just have to look for them -- sometimes in unlikely places. Because they are dedicated to serving customers, often they are not evangelized to the general public or consumer audiences. But they are alive, well and thriving within many enterprises.

By way of definition, when we say "online customer communities," we mean an interactive, often gated, website that a company sets up for customers to collaborate on topics of mutual interest.

And, we are NOT including customer service websites; e-commerce sites where goods and services are bought and sold; online customer panels that focus on customer research; online publications that let readers comment on articles; or blogs, twitter and general use of social media broadcast tools. These styles of interactive interplay are an important aspect of the evolving web 2.0 world, but are not, by definition, online customer communities.

We've also been doing the research, gathering an extensive list of online customer communities and developing a suite of case studies about some of the more innovative examples. So without further ado, here's our initial list from the Customer Community Project -- seventy-one of our top picks -- so far.

  1. Adobe Learning Communities
  2. American Express Business Travel Connexion
  3. American Express American Express Open
  4. Avnet Partner Community (gated community)
  5. Bank Of America Small Business Community
  6. Bloomberg BusinessWeek Business Exchange: Online Community Management
  7. BT Radianz Financial Services Community
  8. BT Transform operational capabilities in defence (gated community)
  9. Building.co.uk Building Network
  10. Caterpillar Caterpiller Community
  11. CHCA CHEX Knowledge Exchange (gated community)
  12. cio.com Executive Council (gated community) (gated community)
  13. Cisco Learning Network
  14. Cognizant Cognizanti eCommunity (gated community)
  15. Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champions network
  16. Cortera Community
  17. CSC Meaningful User Community
  18. CWFM Connect with FM (Facilities Managers)
  19. Dell Small and Medium Business
  20. Diversified Communications Integrative Practitioner
  21. Dow Jones Dow Jones Communities
  22. EMC ECN Community Network
  23. EMC Customer Council Connect (gated community)
  24. EMC EMC-SAP Ecosystem community
  25. EMC Networker Online Community
  26. EMC TheCircle (gated community)
  27. EMC Velocity Partner Xchang (gated community)
  28. Flexera Software Community
  29. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Business Community
  30. Hewlett Packard Business Support Forums
  31. Hewlett Packard Software Solutions Community online forum
  32. Hewlett Packard Live Network (gated community)
  33. HSBC Business Network
  34. IBM Communities
  35. IBM Center for CIO Leadership
  36. IDC IDC Insights
  37. InfoGroup Exchange Exchange - Powered by Infogroup (gated community)
  38. Institute for Human Resources (Many different HR topics) Community Home Page
  39. Intel Intel Software Network Communities
  40. Intuit Intuit Community (many different Intuit support communities)
  41. Intuit Accountants Community for QuickBooks Practitioners and Accounting Professionals
  42. Intuit Developer Network (gated community)
  43. Jigsaw Jigsaw Community
  44. Kinaxis The Supply Chain Expert Community (gated community)
  45. Kodak Grow Your Biz
  46. LexisNexis LexisNexis Investigators Network (gated community)
  47. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Connected
  48. Mathworks MatLab Central
  49. Microsoft (UK) Microsoft Small Business Community
  50. Microsoft Microsoft Developers Network
  51. Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics Community
  52. Motorola Enterprise Mobility
  53. NAHB Reshaping and Enriching our Communities
  54. NetPromotor Blogs
  55. NetApp New Products for Building a Shared IT Infrastructure
  56. NetApp University
  57. NetApp User Groups
  58. Oracle Community
  59. Oracle Enterprise Manager
  60. Oracle CFO Central
  61. Palladium Group XPC
  62. Pitney Bowes User Forum
  63. SaaS4Channel.nl SaaS4Channel.nl
  64. Salesforce.com SalesForce Discussion Forums
  65. SAP Community Network SDN Community
  66. Sage Group Act! Community
  67. Sermo MDs-only Community
  68. Spiceworks IT Community
  69. Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum
  70. Taleo Customer Executive Council
  71. TCN The Construction Network

This list is just a start, so feel free to post a comment about them. If you run, manage or participate in an online customer community and would like to be included, please take a moment to add your community.


Republished with author's permission from original post by Vanessa DiMauro.

Vanessa DiMauro

Vanessa DiMauro is CEO of Leader Networks, a research and strategy firm that helps organizations create enterprise-level online communities. She is an Executive In Residence at Babson College, and serves as a Research Fellow for the Society of New Communications. She works with leading companies to create social media strategy and align with operations for positive results.
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3 comments »

Richard Keeves

Richard Keeves

February 21, 2011

Online Communities

Hi Vanessa
this is an interesting list.

It is worthwhile to look at what makes a successful customer community. From my experience, when customer communities are driven by the company as part of its marketing strategy, the community info can be biased and often filtered propaganda channels.

When it is run as part of a customer service strategy with significant genuine input from both happy and unhappy customers then the community tends to be more valuable.

What do you think?

Cheers

Richard Keeves
Digital TrendCatchers

Vanessa DiMauro

Vanessa DiMauro

February 23, 2011

what makes a b2b community a success?

Hi Richard,
I couldn't agree with you more - the why is even more important that the who. To that end, as I began the research project of identifying and compiling successful b2b online communities I also began to note patterns about what criteria for online customer communities tends to yield the best results.
From customers, to customer problems to market conditions all play a role in determining whether a customer community is right for an organization.

Here is the writeup- http://bit.ly/eAeJOD

best
Vanessa

Joseph bouhadana

Joseph bouhadana

June 29, 2011

Very intresting, any

Very intresting, any suggestion on some customer community platform to use ?

Thanks

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