Online Communities and social tools can be used by organisations to gain valuable Customer Insight and listen in to the conversations that customers, business partners and competitors are having.  Customer Insight, when acted upon and used well, can help organisations tailor products and services and identify areas of excellence or areas which need improvement.  There are many ways in which online communities and social tools can be used by an organisations.

Private customer communities are hosted and moderated communities of between 300 and 500 customers, who are asked to participate over a period of time – this maybe for a discrete project or on an ongoing basis.  The community is generally hosted by a third party who manages and moderates the community for their client under agreed guidelines.  Participants are often rewarded through gift certificates.  Successful Private communities have helped companies:

           Redesign their web site
           Identify new products or services
           Introduce a new line of products
           Create new services

Private communities can be expensive to setup, but once they are in place, they provide extremely valuable insight for an organisation.