Community forums have become a great way for consumers to ask questions, voice their opinions, help other consumers, and just learn more about the brands and their products. Community forums have become an essential part of a brand’s website and provide companies with an advantage over their rivals. There are many advantages of having community forums, some of which I will discuss in this post.

Through well-developed and popular community forums, brands can significantly reduce their customer service costs. This is one of the biggest advantages of having an online discussion forum. Community forums allow for other users, whom may be more experienced, to provide help to others on the forum with questions or concerns. By helping others online and by answering their questions, the experienced consumers can get some sort of status on the forum, something similar to badges on FourSquare. This now creates this “gamification” aspect within the site. By doing so, consumers are more willing to give advice, answer questions, and help users. A great example of this is Apple’s community forum, where most questions or concerns regarding products get answered by other users on the discussion forum. It reduces customer service costs because Apple doesn’t need to have many call centres operating to answer basic questions. This is where the major costs savings take place.

The second advantage of community forums is that it helps foster and build brand loyalty. While it is true that a product plays a large role in that, the services offered by a company, whether offline or online, also play a role. A brand that has a well-developed community forum fosters brand loyalty because many customers are inclined on not leaving the brand for another, as they know they can always get help from the online forums without having to wait on the phone for hours trying to speak to a customer service representative. Thus, customers are less likely to leave the company. A great example of this is Apple.

While many more advantages exist, these two are the most important advantages as they help foster brand loyalty and assist brands increase their bottom line.