Value
An online community is the best medium for your customers to share best practices with each other. Customers can engage in meaningful long-form discussions with each other which result in them getting more out of your products and thus getting more value for the money.

Emotional Connection
An online community brings a social aspect to your customer’s experience. The feeling of belonging to a group of people who share something in common can help incorporate your brand into the customer’s personal or professional identity. The community is also a place where you and your staff have direct one on one interactions and create personal connections with customers.

Better products
It’s a cliche to be told to ‘know your customer’ but it can be difficult to get deep insights from a broad base of customers. A community is a great resource for product management to get nuanced feedback that can’t be obtained by looking at support tickets or doing the usual win/loss analysis.

Summary
While knowledge bases and social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook have their uses, a customer community forum should be at the heart of your social customer experience strategy especially if you want to drive brand loyalty.