“We can sell our product – but our retention rates are low.”

Having had retention as a core KPI in past work, my programs have generated 7-figure annual increases in retention revenue. Not just traditional communities, but features to make your product more interactive.

“Customers are struggling to successfully use our product.”

A customer community is great, but you’ll only unlock the full impact on customer success when you routinely pull insights out of the community and share them with new customers, as part of an integrated program.

“Our product development doesn’t feel like it reflects the needs of our customers.”

Whether it does or it doesn’t, having people dedicated to your community and interaction efforts provides you with experts that will help you figure it out.

“I’m worried that our community will become toxic or unsafe.”

Through people, policy, and product, I’ve routinely created safe, healthy spaces online.

“The metrics on interactive products and communities seem soft. I don’t know how we’ll determine our success.”

They don’t have to be. I’ve designed metrics programs for multiple companies with different goals, aimed at identifying the health of the product and then tying that to revenue goals.

“Internally, we lack the expertise to build a successful team of community-focused leaders.”

At multiple career stops, I have scaled community, moderation, trust, and safety teams of senior managers, managers, moderators, and coordinators. Salaried, volunteer, remote, hybrid, global, and otherwise.

“We want to add this new interactive feature, but we aren’t sure how to grow the initial interest in it.”

Having launched multiple new communities and products from scratch, there are tried-and-true methods of generating initial interest.