Ran D. St. Clair
Member
You need a permanent section in the forum for FT products, that is things that you sell, or have ever sold. Within that section there needs to be a sticky thread for each of the individual products, like the FT Gremlin, or the FT Explorer, for example. That way, when people have problems, questions, or suggestions, about something they bought from FT, they have a first place to go to get community help. FT customer service people can also monitor these threads for repetitive issues and decide if they need to alter the products, offer better user instructions or warnings, etc.
When you go into the store and find an item to buy, there should be a link to the corresponding forum thread. That way prospective buyers can ask questions about the product to better decide if it is right for them. This could also drive more FT business as many questions would be things like, what battery do I need for this?
The first post in these various product related threads should be from FT itself, and can be continually updated with things like user manuals, recommended associated parts, where to find replacement parts, what repair service is available if any, links to related build videos, etc. FT customer service may respond to some of the posts directly, and when they do they will be helping many more people than just the one who asked the original question. In many cases the answer would be a link to an earlier forum response. All of these things would leverage your limited customer service resources.
Forums like this can be the first layer in a multi-layer customer service strategy. It costs you (FT) almost nothing to leverage the helpful nature of your community and have them handle many of the common issues that come up over and over again. It is not the only layer of customer support though. In this day an age where user manuals seem to be a lost art, replaced by videos, Google searches, quick start guides in broken English, or most often nothing, you need to find a better way to connect to your customers. You transmitting all the time isn't going to cut it. You need to think about how to better organize and respond to customer feedback.
When you go into the store and find an item to buy, there should be a link to the corresponding forum thread. That way prospective buyers can ask questions about the product to better decide if it is right for them. This could also drive more FT business as many questions would be things like, what battery do I need for this?
The first post in these various product related threads should be from FT itself, and can be continually updated with things like user manuals, recommended associated parts, where to find replacement parts, what repair service is available if any, links to related build videos, etc. FT customer service may respond to some of the posts directly, and when they do they will be helping many more people than just the one who asked the original question. In many cases the answer would be a link to an earlier forum response. All of these things would leverage your limited customer service resources.
Forums like this can be the first layer in a multi-layer customer service strategy. It costs you (FT) almost nothing to leverage the helpful nature of your community and have them handle many of the common issues that come up over and over again. It is not the only layer of customer support though. In this day an age where user manuals seem to be a lost art, replaced by videos, Google searches, quick start guides in broken English, or most often nothing, you need to find a better way to connect to your customers. You transmitting all the time isn't going to cut it. You need to think about how to better organize and respond to customer feedback.
