Online Community
Terms and Definitions

Customer support is the actions you take to troubleshoot customer problems. Good support streamlines the customer experience and ensures that technical issues don’t stop your customers from using your product.

Customer success is when you proactively help customers use your product or service to reach their goals. By helping people get value from your product, you encourage them to stick

Customer Success is the business methodology of ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes while using your product or service. When you give customers the necessary tools they need to succeed,

Customer engagement in B2B is all about customers experiencing a real partnership. When customers feel listened to they tend to share their opinions and experiences with you, and each other,

A customer community is a space for your brand’s customers to interact with each other and your internal team. Communities enhance the customer experience by making it easier for users

The act of collecting, organizing, and sharing content. This can be done via a blog, social media, or an email newsletter.

Crowdsourcing refers to the act of soliciting ideas or content from a group of people, typically in an online setting.

An engagement profile. Members of a community who have started a discussion, a chat or a blog post or participated in community leadership activities including content moderation, welcoming members or

Conversation threading is a feature used by many email clients, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and Internet forums in which the software aids the user by visually grouping messages with their replies.

An engagement profile. Members of a community who have commented on a blog, discussion thread, document or other item but don’t start discussions. They may also bookmark, rate, share or

The content created on the community can be categorized by topics and also posted to specific groups or channels to drive focused discussions. Here are the types of content that

A content management system (known more frequently as a CMS) is the backend software that manages content published on a website or community platform. That includes the resources, articles, and

While companies can utilize many go-to-market strategies, a community-led growth approach focuses on a group of brand advocates and supporters to help market a product or service. Generally, this approach

The terms community software and community platform are one in the same. They both essentially describe a virtual space where an online community comes together. At present, most community software

A community of practice is a space where people with similar skills gather. These communities often form around professions—you’ll find Communities of Practice in most industries where people benefit from

These individuals keep the community alive by doing a little bit of everything. Their main goal is to keep the forums or questions from going off-topic or becoming toxic. Other

This person will be responsible for handling how the community behaves, what each member is doing, what they are posting and more. Overall, you (or your community manager) will be

The community life cycle refers to the stages of growth new communities go through. In our experience, there are five growth stages: development, inception, expansion, maturity, and autonomy. We find

Community guidelines are the rules that direct how users should behave in your community. They should encourage valuable discussion and ensure everyone knows what is expected of them. Guidelines also

Your rules of engagement. A list of encouraged and discouraged behaviors you share with your community members. A place to define which behaviors are expected and express the community’s core

Community flywheel is the idea that by introducing customers into a community, they become central to your brand’s growth efforts. In a traditional sales funnel, the journey ends when the

Community engagement, in a nutshell, is all about crafting a coherent set of processes to nurture the members and investing in member development. This boosts the number of active people

Community engagement, in a nutshell, is all about crafting a coherent set of processes to nurture the members and investing in member development. An engaged community drives stronger relationships and

The ability to represent the needs of the community and provide support or recommendation for it in a variety of situations

As the popularity of online communities continues to grow, organizations that run these digital environments are continually looking for ways to better moderate the occurring conversations and activities. One way

A specific member engagement profile. Refers to the type of community member who collaborates in the community (i.e. creates value — this could be training materials, code/apps, events, product specs,

Online coaching is coaching that takes place over the internet versus in-person. It can be done via a video or audio connection, or even through a messaging platform. Some coaches

An acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”. Generally, a CAPTCHA is a image you must read and type into a text box to