Getting Closer To Customers with a "Collegial Atmosphere"

Collaborative working is an aspect of the collegial environment. The collegial environment is an approach to customer relationships that encourages friendly cooperation and involvement, rather than the traditional supplier/buyer relationship. Informal collaboration may result from a collegial environment, although full collaboration is a more formal relationship that will be covered by contractual agreements.

Building a collegial atmosphere can help position your company as an influential, trusted resource. Your marketing communications work from a solid foundation of experience and expertise, because you have earned the trust and respect of industry colleagues and customers. You can speak as an industry leader with a bright, concise collegial tone, and you involve and empower your target audience. You understand their preoccupations and priorities and you help them see how they might relate to your organization and its activities. You demonstrate how you can help them do more.

The language you use should create a sense of partnership and camaraderie with your audience. Your tone of voice conveys warmth, enthusiasm, and a sense of fun. Your copy should speak in a conversational tone, addressing your audiences directly, and speaking on their level—not above, not below, but as a trusted and respected colleague, eye to eye. Most important, your copy should always keep your audience's interest and priorities in mind. The conversational tone conveys partnership and helps your audience understand you clearly. That means language should feel is uncluttered, unfussy, easy, and unpretentious. It should be personal and direct, not stuffy and institutional. It will project a familiar quality that reflects confidence and trust.

To build a collegial environment, you need to communicate in the same confident, involving way with decision makers at every level by adapting the messages to individual needs and concerns.

A collegial atmosphere is particularly appropriate for conferences, workshops and other customer events. The ideal conference would have the feel of a reunion, characterized by involvement and a sense of being among old friends. The event would be productive and collaborative, with shared information and involvement by people who are glad to be participating, and who enjoy working together in a spirit of fun and liveliness. The conference should present delegates with the latest products, identify the most important issues, provide ample networking opportunities, and allow them to get involved with the industry's leading innovators in a forum that features a high level of interactive participation.

To add to the collegial atmosphere at conferences, hold a preconference event for delegates with complementary food and drink and an opportunity to network informally before the main event. You can also run an end-of-conference social event for selected groups. You can also set up a networking area near the main conference area where delegates can relax, catch up on news, enjoy refreshments, or hold informal meetings.

A collegial atmosphere does not have to be completely democratic—you can offer levels of privilege to delegates who have been involved in previous events or play a proactive role. For example, a founders' group, open to delegates who have attended all events, could receive special perks at the conference such as a special lounge, preferred keynote seating, and a celebratory lunch.

You can increase involvement by introducing events to your conference that feature your delegates. An example might be an innovation showcase where delegates can present projects that they have worked on, with a panel of judges selecting the best entries for an innovation award. Competitions, in which delegates take on relevant technical or business challenges can also encourage involvement.

You can extend the collegial environment by setting up a virtual community on the Internet to support electronic interaction between people with a common interest. Facilities to support the community could include, newsletters, discussion groups, and information. You can also use your online community facilities to allow members to join an online club and enjoy privileged services, using the membership database to offer personalized incentives and promotions.

An online discussion group gives users the facilities for posting messages on your site. The messages should represent helpful information and may include requests for help or further information. Some sites set up facilities for feedback or product review, introducing an opportunity for objective, independent comment. The objective is to encourage other members of the community to suggest answers, provide help, or contribute to the discussion of a specific issue. Discussion groups help to build credibility for the site and strengthen the relationships that are essential to the collegial environment. In the early stages of a community site, it is important to have good content, so that visitors can get a feel for how they are expected to act. Set up some initial threads and encourage "friendly" members to start discussions.

You can encourage good contributions by recognizing and highlighting the best your community has to offer. This can be especially useful if your community is growing and you want to keep members involved. A "Hall of Fame" that presents examples of the best contributions can encourage wider participation. You can enhance the collegial atmosphere by allowing the members to pick their own favorites.

The strongest example of a collegial environment is support for collaborative working. Many companies are finding that, to compete in the increasingly global marketplace, they need to involve specialists outside their own organization in the product development process. By collaborating and creating efficient joint teams, they can tackle key challenges in the product development process, reduce time to market, improve the success rate of new products, and grow market share and revenues. By using collaborative technologies, they can share accurate, up-to-date digital product information across different companies as well as across different functions like design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing sales, and purchasing. They can include suppliers, partners, and customers in an "extended enterprise" with the goal of creating higher-quality products, increasing innovation, and reducing development lead times.

Your virtual community could be used to support this type of collaborative working. Customers and other members answer each others' technical questions and help each other out, publicly, on the community Web Site. The site could also provide shared access to design and technical tools that customers can use on their own projects. As part of the collegial environment, you could set up virtual project rooms where teams from different organizations can collaborate on a project using the site database and pull in third-party resources as they need them. Secure communication systems and sophisticated collaboration tools mean that dispersed team members can work together effectively in a "virtual enterprise."

Creating a collegial environment takes time. It does not happen at one conference or through a single visit to an online community. All of your marketing communications should help to build the environment with language that is friendly and welcoming and content that empowers your customers.

Kim, Amy Jo, Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities. Peachpit Press, 2000.

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