Building Customer Loyalty in Community Networks
Ars Portalis Research Study
Susan Myrland
Interactive Media Management
Funded by
The Center for Civic
Networking
and the
The
U.S. Department of Commerce Technology Opportunities
Program
Executive Summary
The Ars Portalis project on Customer Loyalty was designed to examine the relationships between community networks (CNs) and their customers, and to identify techniques that CNs could use to improve customer recruitment and retention. The project began with a review of customer retention techniques shown to be successful in for-profit and public broadcasting environments, followed by a series of telephone interviews with eight CNs representing a mix of urban/rural and established/lesser-known projects. Five other CNs were contacted but did not respond. Completed interviews formed the basis for a short online survey conducted between June 10 and June 23, 2001. The survey was promoted on listserves for community networks including the Association for Community Networking, Community Technology Centers' Network, Benton Foundation "Up For Grabs" and Benton Foundation Digital Divide Network. Fifty-three people responded. Preliminary results were presented at the Community Technology Centers' Network conference in June 2001. Key findings are:
The process produced a glimpse into new possibilities for community networks, and laid the foundation for future action. Many thanks to the Center for Civic Networking and the Technology Opportunities Program for the valuable opportunity.
Background
This study began with the assumption that community networks (CNs) need to build customer loyalty in order to achieve sustainability. A more accurate statement would be that all CNs can benefit from customer loyalty, but it is necessary for CNs that require income. Some CNs are sustained through the goodwill of volunteers, donated space, and donated equipment. Their low overhead enables them to survive regardless of the number of people they serve, and customer loyalty is "nice to have" but not essential. The findings from this study are more applicable to CNs that pay staff or offer services that require upkeep. For them, customer loyalty translates into lower turnover costs, stable revenue, and evidence of an established constituency.
During this project it became apparent that some community networkers react negatively to the terms "customer" and "market." They believe it implies they must charge fees, or that they cannot take a broad view of a community and social change. This is unfortunate, because the principles behind "good customer service" get lost in such arguments. Whether they are called customers, clients, constituents, community members or participants, a market-driven perspective puts the needs of the end user before the needs of the service provider. A market-driven perspective forces a service provider to understand what makes a group distinct from all other groups, and to be responsive to those needs. A community member should not have to pay to be considered a customer, and a CN that offers one-size-fits-all content – and isn’t concerned about whether people keep coming back – should question whether it is truly serving the community.
Several of the CNs interviewed for this study have inspired customer loyalty. However, few set out to do so as a strategic goal. They focused first on providing a good service at an affordable cost. While these are prerequisites, it may not be enough to sustain loyalty in an environment where commercial providers offer a viable alternative. A frequent response from survey respondents was, "We hadn’t thought about trying to reward or encourage loyalty, but that’s a good suggestion. We should consider it."
Why has customer loyalty not been addressed until now? One reason may be that funders and nonprofits have previously measured success in terms of the total number of people served. This can create a disincentive for CNs to build or track repeat business. Both funders and CNs would need to begin valuing returning users as much as "unduplicated" headcounts, and CNs would need to have better mechanisms in place to know who they’re serving and why. There is no doubt that the efforts needed to maintain and measure customer loyalty are time-consuming and costly – the majority of respondents in the online survey cited "Funding" and "Staff/Time" as the primary barriers to collecting information that would help them know their customers. The reverse argument is that it is more expensive to continually launch new CNs that never achieve critical mass.
What is a CN? Is it like public broadcasting?
Community networks exist somewhere between for-profit and public service web sites; somewhere between volunteer community development and retail business. Some CNs are commercial enterprises with a social flavor; others are as passionately nonprofit, grassroots and activist as a Berkeley community radio station. Some are pure online content while others offer low-cost or free Internet access and in-person training. Depending on the definition, there are a few hundred community networks, or several thousand.
Furthermore at the start of this study it was assumed that most CNs operate in a "one-to-many" or business-to-consumer model. In fact, that does not appear to be the case. CNs – always diverse – are now even more so, driven by the need to develop revenue. They are branching into technical consulting, web hosting, web application development, and other environments that more closely resemble a one-to-one or business-to-business model. These situations call for a different approach to customers. The Center for Civic Networking and the Technology Opportunities Program may wish to track these CNs to see if they ultimately develop a more loyal constituency, and if they can scale those personal relationships into a community-wide network.
Heterogeneity has made it difficult for CNs to articulate, as a whole, what it is they do and who they serve. They are defined more by a common ideology than by specific services, since each CN adapts to fit the services needed by its particular community – just like any good entrepreneur. But at the end of the day CNs will put public service ahead of profit, which makes them more like public broadcasting than AOL. Indeed, segments of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 sound remarkably like the environment in which CNs operate today.
It is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of … media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes; It is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of nonbroadcast telecommunications technologies for the delivery of public telecommunications services;
Expansion and development of public telecommunications and of diversity of its programming depend on freedom, imagination, and initiative on both local and national levels;
The encouragement and support of public telecommunications, while matters of importance for private and local development, are also of appropriate and important concern to the Federal Government;
It furthers the general welfare to encourage public telecommunications services which will be responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States, which will constitute an expression of diversity and excellence, and which will constitute a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens of the Nation;
It is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities;
…Public telecommunications services constitute valuable local community resources for utilizing electronic media to address national concerns and solve local problems through community programs and outreach programs…
It is in the public interest for the Federal Government to ensure that all citizens of the United States have access to public telecommunications services through all appropriate available telecommunications distribution technologies…
Edited from The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
http://www.cpb.org/about/history/uscode.html
However unlike cyberspace, the broadcast airwaves are a finite resource. That’s why Congress designated a section of the broadcast spectrum to be set aside for the public good, and that’s one of the reasons people contribute to public broadcasting to help preserve it. This underlying structure permeates all aspects of the industry from the existence of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting down to the specific appeals used in a membership drive. Pay-per-view and "walled gardens" are beginning to threaten public cyberspace, but it hasn’t happened yet. The environment that CNs operate in today is one where the customer has literally millions of choices competing for their attention – and the distinction between "community content" and "commercial content" is not as clear.
Additionally, in television and radio the communications mechanism is owned by a small number of information providers and the cost of entry is high. People may contribute to public broadcasting because they feel it represents their voice in a medium where they have limited access. On the Internet, almost anyone can become an information producer. There is no need to give money to an intermediary for one’s voice to be heard. Consequently the relationship between CN and customer is far more transactional – people are looking for a service rather than upholding a passionately-held social cause. This may explain why CNs that have tried fundraising "Friends of…" programs have met with little success, with some notable exceptions. New Mexico’s La Plaza Telecommunity originally offered dial-up accounts for free. When faced with the need to improve cash flow, Executive Director Judith Pepper said to customers, "We want to provide the best Internet service in New Mexico. We cannot do that and give it away. However, your support will help fund our other programs that reach people who cannot afford to pay, such as our public access terminals and training." The response was positive, and the project now has 2,200 dial-up users contributing 68% of La Plaza’s income, or approximately $420,000 per year. The Eugene Free Community Network (EFN) uses a similar approach, offering "basic accounts" for $12 a month and "supporter accounts" for $17 a month. Both CNs successfully packaged a commercial product (Internet access) with a social goal (help low-income neighbors). Key to their success was making a direct appeal, which public broadcasting experts David and Judith LeRoy call "a universally accepted best practice" in on-air membership drives. EFN and La Plaza appealed to customers who wanted Internet access. When bundled with the promise of good quality and the reward of being a good citizen, how could anyone refuse?
Comparisons between public broadcasting and CNs are less strong when one considers public broadcasting’s ability to control the communications channel to recruit members. Customer loyalty in public broadcasting is created by programming (the ability of the station to attract and keep a large number of listeners/viewers through program selection and scheduling), working in conjunction with development and membership activities (the ability of the station to turn listeners/viewers into contributors through on-air membership drives, and then to retain those contributors and encourage more donations via follow-up telemarketing, direct mail, and personal cultivation.) When a listener or viewer tunes into a station during membership drives, s/he cannot avoid listening to the appeal without turning off the set, changing the station or turning down the volume. While membership drives have been shown to annoy listeners/viewers, their efficiency outweighs the irritation – it is a cost-effective way to reach a large number of people with a compelling message that gets results. The Internet equivalent is the pop-up window that won’t go away, an intrusion that most web users would probably find unacceptable. Not only is a pop-up window less compelling than a genial on-air personality, but Internet users expect to have more control over their environment than radio listeners or television viewers.
While CNs cannot reach and recruit large numbers of new members in the same way as public television and radio, they can begin to build relationships at the personal moment of customer interaction – for example, when a user is registering for an email account or web hosting. CNs that depend on fee-based income should consider asking someone new to the organization to serve as a "mystery shopper," browsing through the site and providing feedback on navigation, tone, services offered and ease of ordering. In past years some CNs were able to maintain a niche providing "low service for a low price." Now that commercial ISPs also compete on price, CNs should re-examine whether they are offering something attractive.
Get to know your customer
Public broadcasting gives CNs a starting point to define standards. Public radio measures customer loyalty using the terms core and fringe. Core listeners spend over 70 percent of their radio listening time with public radio. Fringe listeners are less than 30 percent loyal. Radio also measures by generational cohort – Mature (pre-1933), Silent (1933-1945), Boomer (1946-1964), Gen X/Y (post-1964) – with Matures being the heaviest public radio listeners and Gen X/Y the lightest. This framework could translate to community networks, if CNs had reliable standards to measure usage. Here CNs that offer dial-up accounts appear to have an advantage over CNs that are pure web content or public access terminals. CNs with dial-up accounts can track the length of time that customers use the service. Some CNs track the length of time that customers spend on the website – La Plaza knows that people will spend up to 45 minutes on the site and ORION knows that the average visit is seven minutes, for example. Most interviewees knew which segments of their site were most popular, but few tracked the frequency of repeat visits. More extensive research would place this knowledge in the context of a customer’s overall Internet usage – such as knowing what percent of Internet time was spent on the community network or whether customers logged onto the site every day. The former would help CNs determine how deep the content needs to be, the latter would determine whether the cost of daily updates is warranted.
In the online survey, respondents were asked to rate how important it was to know certain information about their customers. Three aspects that they felt were "extremely important" to know were (1) the length of time spent using the community network, (2) the motivation for using the community network, and (3) whether customers have a computer in their homes. Rated "somewhat important" by most of the respondents were age, income, zip code, education level, employment, charitable donations, time spent volunteering, time spent reading the newspaper, and time spent using the Internet. Rated "not at all important" by most respondents were ethnicity, marital status, voting patterns, and time spent watching television. Hobbies were voted "somewhat important" and "not at all important" by an equal number of respondents.
The community networking movement would benefit from greater discussion of these responses. It appears that CNs do not know what demographics and lifestyle patterns can predict whether one becomes a CN customer.
Both public television and radio draw the majority of their financial support from Americans with college degrees. Public radio also tracks customer loyalty using the VALS (Values and Lifestyles) psychographic segmentation system developed by SRI Consulting. According to a 1998 study conducted by Audience Research Analysis, VALS Actualizers and Fulfilleds account for 72% of all public radio listening and over 80% of all listener income.
Actualizers Actualizers are successful, sophisticated, active, "take-charge" people with high self-esteem and abundant resources. They are interested in growth and seek to develop, explore, and express themselves in a variety of ways – sometimes guided by principle, and sometimes by a desire to have an effect, to make a change.
Image is important to Actualizers, not as evidence of status or power but as an expression of their taste, independence, and character. Actualizers are among the established and emerging leaders in business and government, yet they continue to seek challenges. They have a wide range of interests, are concerned with social issues, and are open to change. Their lives are characterized by richness and diversity. Their possessions and recreation reflect a cultivated taste for the finer things in life.
Fulfilleds
Fulfilleds are mature, satisfied, comfortable, reflective people who value order, knowledge, and responsibility. Most are well educated and in (or recently retired from) professional occupations. They are well-informed about world and national events and are alert to opportunities to broaden their knowledge. Content with their career, families, and station in life, their leisure activities tend to center around the home.
Fulfilleds have a moderate respect for the status quo institutions of authority and social decorum, but are open-minded to new ideas and social change. Fulfilleds tend to base their decisions on firmly held principles and consequently appear calm and self-assured. While their incomes allow them many choices, Fulfilleds are conservative, practical consumers; they look for durability, functionality and value in the products they buy.
Source: SRI Consulting
http://future.sri.com/VALS/VALSindex.shtml
Actualizers and Fulfilleds are what VALS calls a "high resource" group, with resources defined as "the full range of psychological, physical, demographic, and material means and capacities people have to draw upon. It encompasses education, income, self-confidence, health, eagerness to buy things, intelligence, and energy level. It is a continuum from minimal to abundant. Resources generally increase from adolescence through middle age but decrease with extreme age, depression, financial reverse, and physical or psychological impairment."
When Los Angeles Free-Net conducted member surveys in its early years, they found that 75% of their users were Caucasian, 40% had post-college degrees, 30% earned over $100,000 a year, and half were over 50. Clearly LAFN was drawing from high-resource groups. Those who would criticize LAFN for this would miss a fundamental point: High-resource groups have the income and influence to sustain social causes.
CNs that see their role as bridging the digital divide are likely to be working with "low resource" groups: Strugglers, Makers, Strivers or Believers.
Strugglers Struggler lives are constricted. Chronically poor, ill-educated, low-skilled, without strong social bonds, elderly and concerned about their health, they are often resigned and passive. Because they are limited by the need to meet the urgent needs of the present moment, they do not show a strong self-orientation. Their chief concerns are for security and safety. Strugglers are cautious consumers. They represent a very modest market for most products and services, but are loyal to favorite brands. (emphasis added)
Makers Makers are practical people who have constructive skills and value self-sufficiency. They live within a traditional context of family, practical work, and physical recreation and have little interest in what lies outside that context. Makers experience the world by working on it – building a house, raising children, fixing a car, or canning vegetables – and have enough skill, income, and energy to carry out their projects successfully. Makers are politically conservative, suspicious of new ideas, respectful of government authority and organized labor, but resentful of government intrusion on individual rights. They are unimpressed by material possessions other than those with a practical or functional purpose such as tools, utility vehicles and fishing equipment.
Strivers Strivers seek motivation, self-definition, and approval from the world around them. They are striving to find a secure place in life. Unsure of themselves and low on economic, social and psychological resources, Strivers are concerned about the opinions and approval of others. Money defines success for Strivers, who don't have enough of it, and often feel that life has given them a raw deal. Strivers are impulsive and easily bored. Many of them seek to be stylish. They emulate those who own more impressive possessions, but what they wish to obtain is often beyond their reach.
Believers Believers are conservative, conventional people with concrete beliefs based on traditional, established codes: family, church, community, and the nation. Many Believers express moral codes that are deeply rooted and literally interpreted. They follow established routines, organized in large part around home, family, and social or religious organizations to which they belong. As consumers, Believers are conservative and predictable, favoring American products and established brands. Their income, education, and energy are modest but sufficient to meet their needs.
Source: SRI Consulting
http://future.sri.com/VALS/VALSindex.shtml
These profiles indicate that digital divide CNs don’t necessarily need to change their customer base in order to develop loyalty – but "good customer service" might involve consideration of the psychological needs of low-resource groups.
Other studies split the VALS psychographic profiles into even more detailed segments. However, what the Ars Portalis telephone interviews and online survey showed is that while CNs that serve nonprofit organizations (business-to-business model) may have a feel for their customer’s demographics and psychographics, those that are offering community-wide services (business-to-consumer model) have not scratched the surface of customer knowledge. CNs are limited in their ability to use techniques from other professions because they lack valid data to know who they are serving.
While many CNs conduct user satisfaction surveys or needs assessments, none of the CNs interviewed for this study were collecting customer demographics in a sustained or comprehensive manner. None had a reliable, in-depth profile of their users. More importantly, there is no knowledge base to guide them in the questions to ask. Data exists on who uses the Internet and why, but CNs do not have the tools they need to isolate which of those "connected" are likely to become participants in a community network, and which of those "disconnected" are good candidates for the future. Public broadcasting managers know who listens, who watches, who becomes a member, why they become a member, and who might become a member later on. They know the age, income and educational level of people who hold values congruent with public broadcasting. In other words, they know how to put their message in front of people who are receptive rather than wasting resources "spamming" people who aren’t. Lacking similar data for CNs, Ars Portalis survey respondents were understandably reluctant to ask questions perceived as personal. There is no data to show which answers would matter.
This suggests a few scenarios for the years ahead. In the first scenario, business-to-consumer CNs continue as they do now – going on gut instinct about their customers, perhaps guided by feedback forms on websites, ethnic surnames from dial-up accounts, or observations at public training sessions and public access terminals. This bootstrap method appears to be sufficient for CNs that support a base of hundreds or even thousands of users (Eugene Free-Net has 6000-7000 users with 4000 paying customers; Los Angeles Free-Net has 5,000 paying customers, although at its peak it had 15,000.) This is the scenario expressed by one survey respondent who stated, "We've NEVER tried to collect any information on our customers. We don't need it to provide good service, and I can't see doing this in the future."
A second scenario is that funders or advertisers begin to demand more precise accountability and CNs embark on basic customer research. Each CN collects ad-hoc data on its particular users but a lack of standards precludes industry-wide interpretation. Thus, CNs and CN funders are still left to guess whether the experiences of Taos and Seattle can be translated to Austin and Los Angeles.
A third scenario is that a group of CNs and funders pool resources and begin to produce valid data on customer motivations, demographics and usage patterns. While this would entail a significant financial commitment and a longer period of time, the Ars Portalis study provides a foundation to get started.
In this last scenario, both funders and CNs have to recognize that the answers may lead them in new, possibly contentious, directions. The impact of market research has provoked intense discussion and disagreement in public broadcasting. A May 2001 article in Current, public broadcasting’s newspaper, noted the controversy surrounding an award given to Richard H. Madden, Vice President of Radio for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Madden was a strong advocate for public radio’s move away from the "smaller is better" mindset and towards the use of ratings as a standard for success (often described as "significant programs for significant audiences.") Stations that support this approach argue that higher ratings mean more people are being served, and it is the responsibility of the station to be a good steward of limited resources by maximizing reach. The opposing viewpoint holds that public broadcasting’s niche lies in underserved audiences, and that an emphasis on ratings pushes programmers towards the same mass appeal as commercial stations. A few comments posted in the Ars Portalis online survey indicated that community networkers will likely argue the same points.
Learning from AOL
In the commercial sector, profitability equals sustainability, and few commercial web sites are profitable. The top ten sites – heavyweights such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, Excite and Amazon – were responsible for 71 percent of all advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2000 according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. In Business 2.0, consultant Rick Bruner at IMT Strategies admits, "The God’s honest truth is that no one has figured out the publishing model online. If only the top 20 are making money, well, a 20-person club is not an industry."
So it’s no wonder that e-businesses are looking beyond marketing and advertising to other ways to make money. Customer loyalty is becoming linked with the latest buzzword, customer relationship management, which EntreWorld.org defines as "the process of developing and maintaining a relationship with customers through interactive technology, loyalty reward programs and direct mail messages, in order to encourage repeat business." This perspective frames loyalty as a strategic and comprehensive action that goes beyond the point of sale, beginning with marketing and brand management and continuing through follow-up activities and continued interaction. (In contrast, many community networks believe that simply providing good service when the customer needs it is sufficient.) Customer loyalty is taking on new importance for dot-coms trying to stay alive. The Industry Standard and the consulting firm Digital Idea report that loyal customers visit almost twice as often and spend one-third more than the casual visitor – statistics that resemble the core listener in public radio.
Digital Idea is one of several consulting firms specializing in developing and measuring customer loyalty to web sites and e-businesses. Digital Idea defines loyalty as "the intensity of positive feelings toward a site" resulting from six components: relative uniqueness, likelihood to recommend, ability to build a relationship, how the site compares to competition, whether the site meets expectations, and overall customer satisfaction.
Digital Idea then goes a step further, identifying industry-specific loyalty drivers such as key problem areas (shipping, order-taking, site navigation, access to human customer support, customer complaint resolution) along with the variety and quality of the information, products or services; ability to personalize the site; feedback mechanisms; ease of purchasing process; presence of a frequent buyer program; and whether the site is entertaining. Digital Idea collected evaluations from 75,000 individuals viewing more than a thousand sites in the categories of Auctions/Group Buying, Automotive, Books/Music/Videos, Clothing/Shoes, Financial Services, General News, Healthcare Information, PCs/Hardware/Software, Toys, Travel, Search Sites/Portals, and Sports News Information. They found that across all industry categories measured, only 10 to 15 percent of customers were loyal. The highest rated site, Babycenter.com, attained a 35 percent loyalty rating. The majority of online customers would not recommend sites to their friends and felt no affiliation with online brands. Why? In addition to low scores on the factors mentioned, Industry Standard also attributed the lack of loyalty to the number of shoppers and the overall newness of e-commerce.
Since all of the community networks interviewed cited "word of mouth" as a source of new customers, it is in their best interest to examine the techniques recommended by Digital Idea. Moreover the variety of CN services may help them build relationships better than their commercial competitors. As shown in the examples of La Plaza and Eugene Free-Net, they can be seen as "doing good for the community" and "being a good citizen" while establishing frequent points of contact through volunteer programs and public training. Most of the CNs interviewed use some type of personal referral system – as simple as handing out business cards at a community event and asking people to pass them on. A few CNs reward customers for referring others. For example, La Plaza launched a "family and friends" program in which customers save $5 by referring other people, bringing in an average of 10-15 new users a month.
Some CNs have experimented with advertising to draw in new customers. Not surprisingly, these efforts did not produce results. CNs do not have the marketing budget to launch the type of sustained, ubiquitous advertising necessary to change consumer behavior. A more workable approach is being tried by EFN and its parent, Oregon Public Networking. They traded dial-up accounts in exchange for underwriting on a Spanish-language public radio program, as part of an overall strategy to reach out to the Hispanic community. EFN complements its radio underwriting by appearing at Hispanic community events and offering a Spanish-language version of its website.
CNs should also consider two more lessons from the for-profit sector – the importance of branding, and the unreliability of Net statistics.
Branding draws a visitor to the site in the first place, and many community networks fare poorly at this technique. Marketing guru Al Ries identified "22 immutable laws" that apply to large and small businesses, whether online or bricks-and-mortar. Law #5 is "The Law of the Word: A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer…. A word that nobody else owns." His examples are Mercedes-Benz (prestige), Volvo (safety), Kleenex (tissue), Rollerblade (in-line skates), and FedEx (overnight). What word does CNs own? For a short time it may have been the word free, but that position is now most likely owned by Hotmail. In rural communities it might be the phrase local online content – but not in urban or suburban areas where newspaper websites dominate. Do CNs even own the word community – or is that place occupied by churches, adult education centers, and community tech centers? Individually and as a movement, CNs have to find a niche. And they have to express that niche in a name, logo and user interface that are memorable and distinctive.
Once into the public consciousness, CNs face another difficult barrier – proving it. The nationally-recognized web statistics, Nielsen/NetRatings and Media Metrix, don’t count users logging in from schools, and may count multiple library and business users as one site. In the March 2001 article, Traffic Jam, eCompany states that the margin of error on these services runs 20 to 40 percent. But with the exception of the $500 Log Analyzer from WebTrends, the cost of most site-metric software would probably exceed the total annual budget of some CNs – and wouldn’t even be 100 percent accurate. ECompany’s advice has clear implications for CNs that are affiliated with schools and libraries:
Who are you calling competitive?
Some community networkers are uncomfortable with the idea that they may be competing with their nonprofit brethren or other providers, seeing competition as divisive and destructive. Competition for limited grant funds has certainly created tension, and policy that discourages cross-sector collaboration has contributed to that tension. Viewed from the customer’s point of view though, CNs compete with other online information sources, other ISPs, other media, and other volunteer or charitable causes. And more competitors are likely to appear as more newspapers, radio and television stations, small businesses, and individuals see the value in providing local online content. Indeed, 68% of the respondents to the Ars Portalis online survey said that for-profit providers offer similar services to their CN.
Online Survey Question: Who else provides these services in your area?
|
|
Number of responses |
Percentage Answered |
|
For-profit provider |
32 |
68.1% |
|
Nonprofit provider |
12 |
25.5% |
|
Library |
19 |
40.4% |
|
Government |
7 |
14.9% |
|
School district |
16 |
34% |
|
No competition |
6 |
12.8% |
In short, CNs are in a competitive environment whether they like it or not, and they must consider what role they want to play in the future. Even if community networks were to disappear, the drive to create public cyberspace – the philosophy behind community networking – will not go away. CNs must decide if they will yield this cause to other providers, or continue to "keep a dog in the fight." Here, public broadcasting offers a strategic model of a mature industry. Over thirty years, hundreds of stations have joined together into national and regional networks, investing considerable dollars in legislative advocacy, brand development and customer research, achieving an economy of scale that produces high-caliber national and local programming, and building an audience of 22 million listeners and 28 million viewers who contribute $400 million in support each year, complemented by $250 million a year from Congress and $500 million a year from state and local governments. Where will community networks be in thirty years? Or twenty, or ten?
That personal touch
Most survey respondents rated web-based content, dial-up Internet access, web hosting, in-person training, technology consulting, and user-generated content as "extremely important" to building customer loyalty, with the largest percentage of responses in favor of user-generated content. Public access (community technology centers and public kiosks) was rated "extremely important" and "somewhat important" by an equal number of respondents, and email-based content (listserves, newsletters) and online training were rated "somewhat important." Although these represent the plurality, it should be noted that a significant number of respondents rated technology consulting, online training, dial-up access and public access as "not at all important" to customer loyalty. Without further detail, it is hard to know whether this means CNs have offered these services and found that they don’t build loyalty, or that some of the respondents haven’t offered them yet.
Perhaps more revealing are the comments made through the online survey and through the telephone interviews. They illustrate a CN’s ability to put a human face to technology.
Online Survey Question: Other key services that create customer loyalty to a community network?
- A real office with real people willing to take the time to answer simple questions makes a big difference. We place a very high emphasis on customer service.
- Backwards compatibility with older hardware/software platforms
- Good, low-cost, personal services – that is, systems administrators respond quickly to problems and requests for new or improved services. We truly want to help our customers.
- Minimum cost to connect.
- Networking meetings person to person available monthly.
- One-to-one assistance, coaching, help and support.
- Person to person service.
- Photos of the area - especially for those who have moved out of state. Community Calendar. Links to local news sources. History of the area. Genealogy resources.
- Open to input from customers; roles for volunteers.
- Reliability!
- The stories about the people, how they are succeeding because of the technology.
- If we prove to be trustworthy, they (by and large) will be loyal.
- Respond to each of them as individuals and treat them all with dignity and respect.
- We pay attention to our customer's other affiliations and try to bring those organizations that they are interested in into our 'umbrella' - the value being a wider audience for them.
This personal contact could be community networking’s strongest attribute and its competitive advantage in the years ahead. As Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and others lose the romance of being "garage startups" and come to be seen simply as large national companies interested in buying and selling customer data, CNs can become the trusted neighborhood business that knows its customers and builds long-term relationships. They may come to fit the picture described by Judith Pepper of La Plaza, who talked about knowing and satisfying one’s customers in a rural environment – "in a small community it’s a duplication – your customer and your board member and your funder are all the same person, and you see them everyday at the corner grocery store, so if something goes wrong you know about it right away." While CNs have historically emphasized geographic community over a community of interest, urban CNs in particular are beginning to identify communities of interest – niche markets – within geographic communities.
Where do we go from here?
CNs can continue without customer loyalty, and without detailed customer research. They can survive by keeping costs low or being housed at an organization that provides ongoing institutional support. They can do so and still provide an important service to the community. To some extent they will resemble public radio in the 1970s, described by David Giovannoni in his keynote speech to the 2001 Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference. In 1972 public radio was a $20 million industry with most licenses held by universities who provided financial backing. Giovannoni noted that "five out of six dollars were subsidies… and the work we did was its own reward." This continued throughout the 1980s, a time period described by the Station Resource Group as a "slow-growth plateau. There was just no need to… mobilize the kind of financial resources needed to address long-term development issues."
In 1994, public broadcasting was changed when politics made self-sufficiency an imperative and new federal funding made deeper research possible. In the words of the Station Resource Group, "Gingrich got our attention, but the Future Fund got us to act. A large investment of federal dollars moved the system forward in a way that would be difficult – if not impossible – without that investment. The availability of significant investment capital creates a sense of opportunity. It creates urgency. It disrupts system inertia. It gives shy people the courage to do what needs to be done."
The Ars Portalis study has identified new areas for further action in community networking. If CNs are to thrive and compete as self-sufficient organizations in the future, they have to avoid inertia, move forward, and find out who they are serving. Most importantly, they need to know what will keep those customers coming back.
References and Resources
Bailey, G. (1999) The Public Radio Tracking Study: Trend Report Winter-Fall 1999. Greenbush, WI: Walrus Research. More information about public radio and public Internet research available at [http://www.aranet.com/3know/321.htm]
Behrens, S. (2001, May 28) Award honors not only a leader, but also a philosophy of service. Current, 20 (10), 1- 22. More information about technology and public broadcasting available at [http://www.current.org/topics.html]
Bulik, B. (2001, February 12) Not By Ads Alone. Business 2.0
Available at [http://www.business2.com/magazine/2001/02/27793.htm]
Caulfield, B. (2001, March) Why Your Site Traffic Numbers Are Out of Whack. ECompany, (2) 2, 122-124. Available at [http: http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/0,1640,9319,00.html]
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Available at [http://www.cpb.org/about/history/uscode.html]
Daly, J. (2001, January 8) Measuring Customer Loyalty. Business 2.0 Available at [http://www.business2.com/ebusiness/2001/01/24172.htm]
Giovannoni, D., Peters, L., & Youngclaus, J. (1999) Audience 98: Public Service, Public Support. Washington, DC: Corporation for Public Broadcasting. More information about public radio and public Internet research available at [http://www.aranet.com/3know/321.htm]
LeRoy, D. & LeRoy, J. (2000) Pledge for Everyone. Tucson, AZ: TRAC Media Services, Inc. More information about public television research available at [http://www.tracmedia.org]
Ries, A. & Ries, L. (1998) The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. New York: Harper Collins.
SRI Consulting (2001) Business Intelligence Center — Values and Lifestyles. Available at [http://future.sri.com/VALS/VALSindex.shtml]
Station Resource Group (2000) Brilliant on the Basics. More information about future courses for public radio available at [http://www.srg.org/bob/ and http://www.srg.org]
Thank you to the following community networks for their time and knowledge
Activist San Diego
http://www.activistsandiego.org/
Austin Free-Net
Eugene Free Community Network
La Plaza Telecommunity
Los Angeles Free-Net
Oregon Public Networking
Ozarks Regional Information Online Network (ORION)
RTPnet
SnoNet