5 Benefits of an Online Community (That Aren’t About Engagement)
When most people think of online communities, engagement is usually the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the most visible and immediate benefit—when users are actively participating in discussions, sharing content, and interacting with each other, it’s easy to see and measure.
But this narrow focus on engagement overlooks a much bigger opportunity. By doing so, the deeper, more strategic business benefits—like driving demand, accelerating product innovation, and reducing cost-to-serve—can be easily missed or undervalued.
Here are five ways an online community creates business value that you might not have considered.
1. Turn community-led customer support into your competitive moat.
In a crowded market where everyone offers similar features and pricing, outstanding customer support can set you apart. Investing in an online community is one of the best ways to enrich and expand your support experience. Communities combine the convenience of self-service, the utility of prescriptive help, and the empathy of people who get it. The result? A support system that solves problems efficiently while building a sense of belonging and trust. Here’s how:
Provide personalized, scenario-based assistance.
Most products serve a range of use cases. Depending on a user’s role or project, they might be looking for creative ideas to meet their goals or ways to tailor standard features to their specific needs. When brainstorming solutions with the depth, nuance and context that customers require, a community’s collective intelligence offers insights that your internal team (and ChatGPT) just can’t match. Each user brings their unique experiences and problem-solving strategies, offering multiple potential solutions for any given issue. This diversity of input allows users to compare approaches and select the best fit for their situation.
Reduce dependency on your support staff.
When users encounter a problem, they often prefer the immediacy of finding answers on their own. A well-maintained community with a rick knowledge base and FAQs allows them to quickly find what they need. Users can continue their work uninterrupted while they search for solutions, rather than being tethered to a phone call or chat session.
Deliver around-the-clock support.
Give your customers the freedom to find solutions whenever they need them with a community that’s always active. With global reach, help is available anytime, regardless of time zones or business hours.
Simplify access to information.
Online communities act as a one-stop shop for support docs, Q&A, and discussions. This central hub makes it easy for customers to find answers quickly, cutting down on repetitive tickets for your support team. With federated search, users can look through multiple databases at once, finding what they need without digging or navigating to multiple sites.
Community example: Bitdefender
More and more companies are catching on to the power of community-led support. Bitdefender, a leader in cybersecurity, is a prime example of how to do it right. By building an active online community, they’ve turned it into the first stop for users looking for answers—long before they even think of reaching out to support.
Alexandru Leucea, Bitdefender’s Community Manager, explains: “In many cases, our community is now a buffer for our support team, which was one of our main goals. We wanted to take some of the pressure off. The community has become a go-to resource for our users to get answers. There are so many contributors in the community that when a hot topic or a frequently asked question arises, solutions are often already discussed. This means users often don’t need to contact support because the information is already available.”
2. Build a more competitive and forward-thinking product.
Want to stay ahead of the competition? Start by listening to your customers. Create a space where they can share what they love, what they need, and how they actually use your product. This isn’t just about making them happy; it’s about gathering the insights that will drive your next big update.
When you know what your customers really want, you can prioritize the features and improvements that matter. This leads to better product-market fit, satisfied customers, and stronger loyalty. In the end, you’ll have a product that truly resonates with your audience, keeping you one step ahead of everyone else. Here’s how:
Reduce time to market with faster product iterations.
Speed up product development by getting your community involved. Previewing new features and asking for feedback allows for quicker implementation of updates based on real-time user input. Users can identify pain points and areas for improvement that might not be apparent to your dev team, avoiding costly and time-consuming fixes down the line. The result is a more polished and reliable product at launch, and a community that feels integral to your success.
Anticipate market changes and adapt proactively.
Keeping an eye on community discussions and sentiment can clue you into emerging trends, common pain points, and what customers really want. This kind of foresight lets you innovate faster than your competitors, rolling out features and solutions just as users start looking for them.
Bring novel products or services to market faster.
By tapping into the community’s shared knowledge, you can generate a swarm of creative solutions and breakthrough ideas quickly. Developing prototypes based on this input enables you to be a first mover, capturing market share ahead of competitors.
Crowdsourcing from your community also allows for early validation of concepts. This reduces the risk of investing in ideas that may not have market appeal, as crowdsourced ideas often come with built-in feedback and support from users.
Foster customer investment through collaboration.
Communities are ideal for hosting user groups, offering a space for ongoing, in-depth conversations where members can engage at their own pace. This leads to more meaningful interactions and stronger relationships both with your company and among your customers.
Plus, these groups can easily scale as your user base grows. Whether you’ve got a dozen members or thousands, a community platform can handle it without sacrificing the quality of interactions. These groups become a breeding ground for brand advocates who champion your product both inside and outside the community.
Community example: Quicken
Quicken, one of the leaders in financial management, has found a smart way to stay in tune with what their customers really want—thanks to their active user community. By leaning into this resource, they’re able to collect valuable feedback and get it straight to their product team.
Kathryn Bergeron, Group Manager of Digital Care at Quicken, breaks it down: “Our community makes it easy to capture and filter user suggestions and pass them to our product team. This helps them prioritize what they develop next. We can close the loop by informing users that their contributions directly influence the product.”
3. Reduce cost to serve.
By embracing the scalability, extensive reach, and peer-to-peer support of online communities, your organization can cut down on its service costs. Here’s how:
Decrease support costs.
Support centers are expensive to run. One way to reduce these costs is by using a community as a first line of defense. Most of the time, your customers’ questions have already been answered by someone in the community. Whether they stumble upon those answers through a Google search or an on-site search, you save them a call or email to support. This frees up your team to handle the trickier, more complex issues that need extra attention and multiple touchpoints.
Plus, when a support agent answers a question in the community, that answer keeps on giving—helping countless others with the same problem. This cuts down on repetitive inquiries and lets your support team run leaner. As your customer base grows, your community scales with it, all without needing to beef up your support staff.
Lower marketing expenses.
Marketing budgets are always getting squeezed, so it’s important to make every dollar count. That’s where online communities help. They drive organic marketing by tapping into user-generated content and peer reviews, which expand your brand’s reach without extra spending. Prospects trust their peers for recommendations—it’s real, credible, and way more convincing than anything coming from corporate marketing.
Community example: F-Secure
F-Secure, a top name in cybersecurity, is reaping the rewards of its self-service strategy, with a 20% increase in call deflection savings year after year. They empower users to find answers on their own, and it’s paid off in a big way.
4. Generate higher NRR.
Net revenue retention (NRR) is a key indicator of how much your customers value your product and the results they’re getting. A customer community can take that value to the next level. When members jump into the community, they can quickly learn the ropes from peers, getting the most out of your product faster. They stay engaged with a constant stream of helpful content and support, and they connect with others who are on the same path. This speeds up value realization and keeps them coming back for more, creating a richer overall experience. When customers feel supported and part of a community, they’re more likely to stick around, giving your NRR a solid increase. Here’s how:
Scale customer success to all users.
Online communities are one of the most effective ways for customer success teams to provide coverage across their entire customer base. Communities create a self-sustaining system where users can seek help, share insights, and learn from each other without directly involving the CS team in every interaction.
Instead of running countless one-on-one onboarding sessions, CS teams can point users to community resources like step-by-step video tutorials, getting-started guides, and interactive checklists that walk them through the product’s core features. As users engage with the product, they continue to learn and grow through the community, picking up new tips and discovering different use cases shared by their peers.
This increased self-reliance reduces the demand on the CS team for basic support, allowing them up to focus on critical accounts and tackle high-risk churns. Plus, the insights gathered from community interactions feed directly into customer health scores and highlight emerging needs, empowering CSMs to deliver timely, proactive support.
Improve upsells and cross-sells.
Active community members are often the earliest adopters of new features or products, and when they share how they’re using these upgrades, it creates genuine, peer-driven endorsements. Potential buyers get to see real-world examples and benefits, which makes them more likely to consider upgrading themselves. By encouraging customers to share their positive experiences and tips, companies can generate valuable, authentic content that naturally sparks interest and drives sales, creating a more organic path for expansion.
Inspire brand loyalty through personal connections.
Online communities bring a human touch to your brand. By highlighting the people behind the scenes, sharing real stories, and engaging in honest conversations, your company shows transparency and authenticity. These personal interactions build trust, making customers feel more comfortable sharing feedback and suggestions, which helps push the company forward.
Regular, meaningful interactions within the community also create a sense of belonging among customers. Whether it’s answering questions, joining discussions, or simply acknowledging contributions, these moments build goodwill over time. Customers start to see your brand as a partner in their journey, not just another vendor.
Increase your brand’s perceived value.
When you offer your community members special perks like early access to new features, exclusive discounts, or members-only content, you show them they matter. This makes them feel valued, which encourages engagement and builds a tight-knit community that serves as social proof of your brand’s quality and reliability.
Community example: ChurnZero and F-Secure
ChurnZero, a customer success company, has seen firsthand the benefits of an engaged community. By connecting their community and customer data, they found that their active members submit 67% fewer support tickets, use the platform twice as much, and are 13 times less likely to churn.
Similarly, F-Secure’s community strategy is having a notable impact on sales. Nearly half of their customers, 47%, say they plan to purchase because of the community. That’s a huge win and a clear sign that a well-managed community isn’t just about support—it’s a powerful sales driver too.
5. Drive demand and leads.
Online communities do more than just support your current customers—they can also attract new ones, turning into a steady source of referrals and qualified leads. In a world where people are bombarded with ads and have learned to tune them out, recommendations and insights from peers in a community stand out.
These spaces offer real use cases, honest reviews, and genuine support that carry serious weight. Potential customers see this trust in action, making them more likely to explore and purchase products endorsed by their peers. It’s the kind of credibility that drives higher demand and fuels growth. Here’s how:
Generate social proof and word-of-mouth marketing.
An online community serves as a hub for organic testimonials, where members share positive experiences and success stories. As members become more vocal advocates, they naturally extend the brand’s presence and influence, driving new customer acquisition and creating a loop of ongoing engagement and loyalty.
Increase organic traffic.
An active community attracts more visitors, increasing web traffic and brand visibility. With fresh user-generated content, frequent updates, and backlinks from community discussions, your search engine rankings get a lift, making it easier for potential customers to discover your brand and what you offer.
Take Bitdefender, for example. Their community has become a major traffic driver, with over half of their web visits now coming from organic search. “When people have a problem, they type in a few keywords, and the search engine delivers the most relevant results. More and more, our community content is popping up in those results because of its relevance,” says Alexandru Leucea, Community Manager at Bitdefender.
Create content that converts.
User-generated content captures real-world experiences and uses natural language that mirrors how customers genuinely talk about and interact with the product. This authenticity helps others see themselves in similar situations, making the content feel more like a chat with a peer than a polished marketing message.
Communities are the engine for this content, where your most passionate and informed members share their insights and experiences. When customers discuss specific product use cases, your marketing team can turn those conversations into practical how-to guides that drive better product adoption. By keeping tabs on industry-specific topics within communities, you can create highly relevant content tailored to your prospects’ interests. Plus, you can repurpose all this content to kickstart conversations across other channels.
Enhance brand equity.
Communities offer a space for people to connect over shared interests and meet others who feel the same way. And it doesn’t have to be just about your product. You can create dedicated groups where people with similar professions or from the same geographic region can chat. Many even use the community to set up in-person meetups.
Sharing excitement with others who are just as passionate can be incredibly fulfilling, and it’s important to facilitate those kinds of interactions. Providing your customers with value beyond your product builds deeper, intrinsic value around your brand.
Community example: Foundant
Foundant, a leading software provider for foundations and nonprofits, has seen a big spike in interest after launching its community. “Since we introduced our community, we’ve seen more and more prospective customers showing interest in Foundant’s products and services,” says Kara Adams, Community Manager at Foundant. “In fact, many have indicated they’re ready to take the next step with us after getting special access to preview community discussions.”
The compound effect of community
Communities do more than bring people together—they turn individual expertise into something everyone can access. This is the compound effect of community. Rachel Happe, founder of Engaged Organizations, describes this as “networked value,”—the strength that comes from collective intelligence, growing as more people share their insights.
It’s like compounding interest, but for your organization’s knowledge. The more people contribute, the smarter, faster, and more innovative your entire organization becomes. By embracing community, you’re not just solving today’s challenges; you’re setting up your organization for lasting success and growth.