Top Free Customer Success Communities (+How To Build Your Own)

Are you looking to harness the full potential of customer success communities? Joining the right community is essential for career development, networking, and staying ahead in the customer success realm.

This article covers the top customer success communities to join - each providing unique opportunities for collaboration and learning. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the field, our handpicked selections will help you take your customer success game to the next level.

What we will explore together:

• Customer success communities provide professionals with key networking opportunities, skill enhancement, and access to the latest industry trends via associations, Slack communities, and other networking groups. Popular names include Customer Success Association, SuccessHacker, and Gain Grow Retain.
• Membership in these communities benefits individuals with professional growth through knowledge sharing, tailored assistance via programs like Thrive Network and Coaching Corner, and access to a trove of resources such as eBooks, events, and job boards.
• The future of customer success communities involves embracing digital transformation, focusing on continuous revenue generation, and enhancing customer experiences. Key anticipated trends include increased importance during economic downturns and a strategic emphasis on customer success.

You are probably curious, what is Customer Success? It is a business strategy that focuses on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a company's products or services. It involves understanding customer needs, guiding them to use the product effectively, and ensuring their satisfaction and success.

This approach fosters customer loyalty, improves retention, and promotes business growth. Customer success teams actively engage with customers, providing support, education, and resources to enhance their overall experience.

There are three pillars of customer success: strategy, customer goals, and playbooks. These elements are crucial for creating a foundation for scaling up a customer success motion. Customer success is a long-term endeavor with outcomes that may not be immediately apparent.

Now that you are informed about customer success, let's delve into the customer success community.

What is a Customer Success Community?

Customer success communities are dynamic networks of dedicated professionals, united by their commitment to excel in their customer success roles and support clients in reaching their desired goals. These communities, which include professional associations and Slack communities, serve as indispensable hubs for networking and professional development.

However, the limited availability and publicity of these communities can make them challenging to find, necessitating proactive searching by professionals.

By actively seeking out and participating in these communities, customer success professionals, including customer success managers, can enhance their skills, expand their network, and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices.

Who participates in these communities?

Here are the prospects of the best customer success communities and their "titles", with a focus on customer success, customer relations, support, and management:

• customer success professionals
• customer support, customer success managers
• chief customer success officer
• VP of Customer Success, Head of CS
• relationship manager, customer relations manager
• user support, customer representative

The significance of these communities cannot be overstated. They provide a platform for professionals to share knowledge and experiences, fostering professional development and enhancing customer satisfaction. Joining one of these communities typically entails a straightforward registration process, although certain communities may also necessitate approval from an administrator.

Before engaging with these communities, reviewing the guidelines and regulations, especially those relating to product promotion and interaction, is advisable. This ensures that you understand the rules of engagement and can make the most out of your membership.

Why Join a Customer Success Community?

Membership in a customer success community yields numerous benefits, including networking, knowledge sharing, and professional growth. Platforms like Slack offer a space for professionals to engage in discussions, share best practices, exchange ideas, and access job posting capabilities, all of which are essential for success in the field. By joining customer success slack communities, you can further enhance your professional development and connect with like-minded individuals.

Joining a customer success community offers many benefits, including:

• Integration into a vibrant professional ecosystem committed to mutual growth and success
• Access to a treasure trove of resources, insights, and opportunities
• The potential to propel your career to new heights

These communities, known as customer community, employ a range of strategies to facilitate business growth, such as harnessing customer data, aligning customer success and marketing teams, reducing churn rates, customizing the customer experience, and fostering customer engagement. Furthermore, they offer a secure platform for experience-driven discussions, organizing informational sessions and resource guides, and enabling members to connect.

The Future of Customer Success Communities

Experts are forecasting an optimistic and progressive future for customer success. These leading communities are anticipated to adopt groundbreaking strategies such as:

• Ensuring effortless access to a wealth of customer success content
• Fostering growth through the power of innovation
• Cultivating strong and interactive customer communities
• Dedicating specific resources for the enhancement of customer success

The role of digital evolution is pivotal in shaping this future. It empowers organizations to give top priority to digital customer experience and transformation, leverage digital education for boosting efficiencies, and deploy digital strategies for scalability.

Recent advancements, such as a stronger focus on net revenue retention, the introduction of a customer success funnel, and the recognition of customer success as a strategic discipline, are expected to redefine the contours of these communities.

The future trends predicted for customer success communities include:

• Greater importance during economic downturns
• Heightened performance expectations
• Emphasis on using digitalization, technology, and artificial intelligence
• Priority on contributing to continuous revenue generation

Here comes Disco, an all-in-one community platform for customer success communities! Disco has everything that a community needs to thrive and succeed in this accelerated world with technology. With Disco's AI-powered tools, automation, integration, and the chance to scale--customer success communities have all the things they are looking for the sustain their community and grow it to the next level.

Apart from that, Disco is the most trusted software of the world's top online communities from learning communities, brand communities, professional associations, accelerator communities, and Slack communities. If these world's top communities succeeded with Disco, you can also do it too! Let's discuss how you can do it in the next sections.

Top Free Customer Success Communities You Shouldn't Miss

Now that you understand the value of the CS community for CS professionals, let’s explore some of the top ones you shouldn’t miss. These communities, as part of the global community, also provide a range of resources, including articles and blogs, courses and certifications, online forums, books, templates, guides, webinars, live events, and conferences.

1. Gain Grow Retain (Free)

Gain Grow Retain is a free community tailored for customer success leaders who are part of B2B SaaS organizations. It’s designed to support and connect professionals in this field. The community organizes a diverse range of events aimed at engaging its members on various topics, including key metrics and best practices in customer success.

The content disseminated through its customer success forum and online community platform, podcasts, and weekly calls covers topics such as frameworks for client management, reasons for customer disengagement, and the creation of customer success plans. It offers support to leaders in the industry through avenues for leadership dialogue, job boards, and insights on crucial inquiries regarding best practices and strategies.

2. SF Customer Success (Free)

SF Customer Success is the largest Meetup group in the world dedicated to the field of customer success. Its mission is to bring together the customer success community, providing a platform to share learnings, and best practices, and to foster a stronger, more connected community.

The group is not only for customer success professionals, but also for anyone whose role involves ensuring customer success, product management, lifecycle marketing, or making their organization more customer-centric. The community meets monthly on the 3rd Wednesday of every month in San Francisco, California, offering a great opportunity for networking, food & drink, and learning.

They also try to record their meetup events and post the videos on their YouTube channel when possible, making it a valuable resource for those unable to attend in person.

3. Women of Customer Success (Free)

Women of Customer Success is a unique community dedicated to empowering women in customer success roles. This community serves as a platform for women to share experiences, insights, and advice, fostering professional growth and collaboration.

4. Customer Success Leadership Network (Free)

The Customer Success Leadership Network is a global platform where customer success professionals can collaborate, share best practices, and stay informed about industry advancements. The primary communication channels utilized by members are LinkedIn and Slack communities, facilitating easy and efficient communication and collaboration.

Creating Your Own Customer Success Community

Do you want to build your own customer success community rather than joining one? While establishing your own customer success community might seem daunting, platforms like Disco make the process effortless.

Disco supports the establishment of customer success communities by offering a centralized platform for members to connect, collaborate, and share their experiences.

The platform allows a long list of features and tools to provide you and the users with the best member experience. Here are a few:

• Personalize messages with AI
• Segment messages into different groups
• Customize their communities
• Tailor community engagement and learning experiences to meet the specific needs and interests of their members
• Improve member engagement by enabling community managers to develop tailored onboarding experiences
• Deliver relevant and meaningful interactions
• Furnish a space for Q&A, support, and engagement

Creating your own customer success community, while more challenging, can provide a unique platform tailored to your specific needs and goals, offering a level of control and customization that joining an existing community may not provide.

Disco: The #1 Platform Elevating Customer Success Communities

As we explore the world of customer success communities further, the role of platforms that facilitate these communities deserves emphasis. One such platform is Disco, which is revolutionizing online learning and community engagement. The platform provides a convenient avenue for creators to:

• Establish and expand their learning communities
• Develop live, cohort-based experiences
• Gather crucial information and insights to enhance their events and courses.

Setting up a customer success learning community can be a rewarding endeavor, fostering professional growth and collaboration. Here are the 11 steps to do it:

1. Identify your target audience and their needs
2. Define the purpose and goals of your community
3. Choose the right platform for your community (like Disco)
4. Customize your community space to reflect your brand and goals
5. Develop a community engagement strategy
6. Create valuable content and resources for your members
7. Promote your community to attract members
8. Develop a member onboarding process
9. Foster engagement and interaction within your community
10. Continually monitor and adjust your strategy based on community feedback and performance
11. Celebrate successes and milestones with your community

By following these steps, you can create a dynamic and engaging customer success learning community that provides value to its members and helps them achieve their professional goals. Now, let's take a look at On Deck's Customer Success community. On Deck uses Disco to scale their accelerator program:

Use Case: On Deck's Customer Success Community

On Deck's Customer Success Community is a premium, curated community, and fellowship program that offers significant value for executives, VPs, or department heads in the field of customer success.

On Deck's success story with Disco is a testament to the transformative power of a robust community platform. Leveraging Disco's features, On Deck managed to scale an 8-figure learning community, offering cohort-based courses to over 10,000 members.

Disco's AI-powered tools, automation, and integration capabilities played a pivotal role in facilitating this exponential growth. The platform's ability to personalize messages, segment different groups, and customize the community significantly enhanced member engagement and learning experiences.

As a result, On Deck could establish a vibrant, interactive space for Q&A, support, and engagement, thereby fostering a thriving customer success community.

Wrapping Up...

In conclusion, customer success communities are invaluable platforms for networking, professional growth, and business expansion. Whether you’re a customer success professional seeking to enhance your skills or a business leader looking to drive growth, these communities offer a wealth of opportunities and resources.

Platforms like Disco are revolutionizing these communities, facilitating engagement, collaboration, and success in the customer success industry. Start your journey of community building by signing up for a 14-day free trial with Disco, and experience the platform firsthand with our product tour!