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Community: The New Business Imperative – Insights from Commune Inc. and Nikkei Research Inc.

Written by Yuya Takada, Founder & CEO at Commune

In today’s dynamic business environment, understanding and implementing effective community has become a cornerstone for customer engagement and success. Commune Inc., a leader in community platform SaaS solutions in Japan, and Nikkei Research Inc., jointly conducted a survey on community solutions and published the results of the survey.

The Evolution of Community Engagement

Communities encompass a broad spectrum of activities aimed at fostering communication between businesses and their customers, as well as among the customers themselves. This includes social media interactions, member-exclusive initiatives, and both online and offline community events. Our recent survey reveals a notable trend: a significant number of businesses have recognized and are actively utilizing the community to enhance customer engagement.

Survey Highlights

  • Active Engagement: 37.9% of respondents  have already embarked on community.
  • Motivation: The primary driver is the significance of collecting customer needs and insights, with the highest percentage at 54.0%.
  • Concerns and Challenges: The main concern is cost-effectiveness, with 56.8% expressing this worry.
  • Pandemic as a Catalyst: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of community engagement, with 49.6% starting their initiatives post-2020.

The survey indicates either considering, planning, or currently implementing communities is 67.2%. Among communities, online community management emerged as a significant area of interest.

Across all employee size categories, nearly 30% are actively engaged in community.

The main reason for interest in community was the importance of gathering customer needs and insights, cited by 54.0% of respondents.

The most anticipated benefit of community was building a continuously approachable customer base, at 59.6%.

The primary concern regarding the implementation of community was cost-effectiveness, at 56.8%, followed by a lack of expertise in managing communities, at 43.4%.

49.6% stated that the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 marked the beginning of community implementation.

Survey methods (Sampling)

Internet survey using Nikkei ID research service provided by Nikkei Research Inc.

Survey area

Japan

Survey respondent

Those who work for a company with more than 10 employees and are in or in charge of the public relations, advertising, sales, sales, planning, research, and marketing departments, and are in charge of marketing, branding, public relations, advertising, and customer success in their work.

Number of responses

744

Survey period

June 16 – 20, 2023

Survey company

Nikkei Research Inc, Commune Inc.

The Universal Appeal of Community

Communities are not confined to any specific business size or type; they have been universally acknowledged and adopted across various sectors. Businesses are drawing significant attention on building and maintaining strong customer relationships through these strategies.

The Future of Customer Engagement with 'commune'

At Commune Inc., we are committed to driving this transformation through our all-in-one AI-powered community success platform, ‘commune’. Designed for seamless integration and user-friendly experience, ‘commune’ enables businesses to easily create and manage custom community spaces with no-code.. This platform serves as a one-stop solution for enhancing customer communication, increasing engagement, and building a loyal customer base, thereby contributing to sustained revenue growth.

Discover how ‘commune’ can revolutionize your customer engagement approach. Visit our website.

About Commune Inc.

Commune is an all-in-one AI-powered community platform.

We support hundreds of customers and help SaaS companies seamlessly scale their customer success. We offer no-code, customer-status-based community experience control, a communication workflow, and a 24/7 monitored secure platform — an exceptional value for our customers.

Curious about whether a community portal can work for you?

You can book a demo right here.