Do you offer anything to your customers to post on your forum?

[BlackStorm]

Do you offer anything to entise your customers to make good use of your forum?

I do offer incentives to mine if they post on the forum, although its nothing big really.
I try reward customers which are helping others out but lately I havent been using my company forums much because I havent had much time.

I have done a little work on it now though and Im looking to get customers using it again, I think having an active forum is great to show prospective customers

 

[eMax]

I've given a few members some extra storage for doing a few how to's for me.

Besides that nothing much more is given.

 

[Anjay]

Currently, my company has no client forum - however, when it did, I didn't give them any extras or frills for posting on the forums. It was there choice, if they wanted.

Some posted on the forum because they saw someone was on-line and wanted a response then and there - while others used the ticket system; however many many used the on-line chat service to request support as then they received an answer instantly.

I thought about offering them specials for posting in the forums, however decided not to - I was not desperate for them to post in the forums, and I realised in the end it would have sounded as if I were desperate for them to post in the forums if I e-mailed them offering specials and so on - so I decided to not bother as I wasn't desperate.


Personally I don't see any point in offering them specials and so on, but there are companies who really would prefer their clients to post in the forums than anywhere else.

 

[imported_maxhest]

Anjay,

Welcome back! Haven't seen ya in a bit buddy! I don't offer a forum either, but I use email to communicate specials to my customers. Works well.

 

[Leo]

I dont think hosts should give anything to customers to post in the forum.
I wouldnt expect anything to use a forum

 

[Anjay]

Anjay,

Welcome back! Haven't seen ya in a bit buddy! I don't offer a forum either, but I use email to communicate specials to my customers. Works well.

Hi there Max, glad to be back.
It'd be nice to get in touch again. It's nice to see that your company is doing well. If you don't mind letting everyone know, what sort of specials do you offer?


I dont think hosts should give anything to customers to post in the forum. I wouldnt expect anything to use a forum.

That's very good Leo, however unfortunately not all clients are that friendly and nice. Many don't want to use the forums and can become sometimes quite angry when you offer them things, while others will only bother posting when you do offer them things.

 

[imported_HadleyHost]

I can't say I do but then again I haven't been in the hosting industry for very long.

 

[RobAPI]

Do you have a forum on your site yet Mark?
Also, are you advertising on HostingRefuge?
Your site name seems familiar
I don't have a forum but wouldn't offer anything to customers if I did.
I know I wouldn't make my forum public until it was a little larger though

 

[WHW-Rob]

We used to give incentives for those who posted in our forums. It was never anything real big or great, we always just randomly picked 3 customers a month and gave them a free month of hosting.

It was our way of saying thank you for supporting the community. We never had any customers post just to get a free month.

 

[RobAPI]

Rob, Did you have many people posting on the forums?
When you stopped offering an incentive for posting, did you notice any change in the number of posts?

 

[WHW-Rob]

ya know... it didnt seem as if the incentives actually did anything either way.

There wasnt many posts then, and there still isn't now.

However i refuse to give up on it.

 

[gglobehosting]

I don't give extras, the forum board itself is an extra. Not all hosts have forums. If they help moderate or something, than yeah give me more bandwidth or something.

 

[gooooogle]

I've seen a host with a points system. When a user reached 1000 points they got one months free hosting added to their acount.

 

[imported_HadleyHost]

Sounds like the point system here