Overview
What It Is
An automated system that analyzes customer community activity to identify expansion opportunities (users asking for more features), churn risks (frustrated users, declining engagement), potential advocates (highly engaged, positive users), and product feedback themes—turning community conversations into actionable revenue intelligence.
Why It Matters
Your community is a goldmine of customer intent data. Users discuss pain points, ask about features you could upsell, express frustration before churning, and champion your product to peers. Mining this systematically drives retention and expansion.
Who It's For
- Customer success managers expanding accounts
- Community managers measuring impact
- Product teams gathering feedback
- Sales teams identifying upsell opportunities
Preconditions
Required Tools
- Customer community (Slack, Discord, Circle, Discourse)
- Common Room or Orbit (community intelligence)
- Gainsight or ChurnZero (CS platform)
- OpenAI API (for analysis)
Required Fields/Properties
- Community user → account mapping
- Product/feature tagging in conversations
- Sentiment classification
- Engagement scoring by user
Definitions Required
- Expansion signal keywords/patterns
- Churn risk indicators
- Advocate criteria
- Alert routing rules
Step-by-Step Workflow
Map Community Users to Accounts
Goal: Connect community activity to CRM accounts
Actions:
- Export community member list with emails
- Match to CRM contacts/accounts
- Enrich with account metadata
- Handle unmapped users (prospects vs customers)
- Set up ongoing sync
Implementation Notes: Identity matching is critical. Use email domain + name matching. Flag high-value accounts for priority monitoring. Track prospect activity separately.
Build Signal Detection Engine
Goal: Identify expansion, churn, and advocacy signals
Actions:
- Define expansion signal patterns
- Define churn risk patterns
- Define advocate identification criteria
- Build NLP classification pipeline
- Test and tune detection accuracy
Implementation Notes: Start with keyword patterns, then add ML classification. Balance sensitivity—too many false positives create alert fatigue. Track which signals convert to outcomes.
Calculate Engagement Scores
Goal: Quantify user engagement and identify advocates
Actions:
- Define engagement metrics (posts, replies, reactions)
- Weight different activity types
- Calculate rolling engagement scores
- Identify top engagers per account
- Detect engagement trend changes
Implementation Notes: Not all activity is equal—helping others is more valuable than asking questions. Track both volume and quality. Flag sudden drops as potential churn risk.
Build Alert and Routing System
Goal: Get signals to right people in real-time
Actions:
- Route churn signals to CSM immediately
- Route expansion signals to CSM + AE
- Route advocacy signals to community manager
- Route product feedback to product team
- Create aggregated reports
Implementation Notes: Churn signals need immediate attention. Expansion signals can batch daily. Use account tier to prioritize—enterprise accounts get faster response.
Create Intelligence Dashboard
Goal: Visualize community health and opportunities
Actions:
- Build community health overview
- Show expansion pipeline from signals
- Display churn risk accounts
- Track advocate funnel
- Aggregate product feedback themes
Implementation Notes: Dashboard should show both tactical (today's alerts) and strategic (trends over time). Make it easy to drill from signal to conversation to action.
Implement Advocate Program Integration
Goal: Convert community advocates into program participants
Actions:
- Define advocate program tiers
- Auto-enroll qualifying advocates
- Track advocate activities and rewards
- Measure advocate-influenced revenue
- Build advocate leaderboard
Implementation Notes: Advocates are your best growth engine. Recognize and reward them systematically. Track their influence on deals and referrals.
Templates
Community Signal Definitions
| Signal Type | Keywords/Patterns | Priority | Route To | |-------------|-------------------|----------|----------| | Seat expansion | "more users", "add seats", "whole team" | High | CSM + AE | | Tier upgrade | "upgrade", "enterprise", "advanced" | High | CSM + AE | | Integration need | "integrate", "connect", "API" | Medium | CSM | | Cancel mention | "cancel", "cancelling", "end subscription" | Critical | CSM + CS Lead | | Competitor eval | "looking at", "evaluating", "alternative" | Critical | CSM + AE | | Frustration | "frustrated", "disappointed", "unhappy" | High | CSM | | Advocate behavior | "love", "amazing", helps others | Low | Community Mgr |
Churn Risk Playbook
**When Churn Signal Detected:** 1. **Immediate (within 1 hour):** - CSM reviews community message context - Check account health score and recent activity - Review support ticket history 2. **Same Day:** - Reach out to user directly (don't mention monitoring) - Ask: "How can I help? I noticed you might be having some challenges." - Document conversation in Gainsight 3. **Within 48 Hours:** - Schedule call if issue is significant - Involve support/engineering if technical - Update health score based on conversation 4. **Follow-up:** - Track resolution - Monitor for repeat signals - Consider executive outreach for high-ARR accounts
Advocate Program Tiers
| Tier | Engagement Score | Benefits | Expected Activities | |------|------------------|----------|--------------------| | Bronze | 50-69 | Swag, early access | 1-2 community answers/month | | Silver | 70-84 | + Advisory board access | Reference calls, feedback sessions | | Gold | 85+ | + Conference ticket, referral bonus | Speaking, case studies, referrals |
QA + Edge Cases
Test Cases Checklist
- Verify user-to-account mapping accuracy
- Test signal detection catches known patterns
- Confirm alerts route to correct CSM/AE
- Validate engagement scores calculate correctly
- Test advocate enrollment workflow
Common Failure Modes
- Poor user mapping: Community users not matched to CRM accounts. Improve matching logic and manually review unmapped users from key accounts.
- False positive alerts: Too many signals that aren't real risks/opportunities. Tune detection patterns and add human review step.
- Creepy outreach: Reaching out makes it obvious you're monitoring. Train team on natural conversation starts.
Troubleshooting Tips
- If mapping rates are low, add more matching criteria
- For noisy signals, adjust confidence thresholds
- If CSMs don't act on alerts, simplify and reduce volume
KPIs and Reporting
KPIs to Track
- Expansion from Community Signals: >$200K ARR/quarter
- Churn Prevented: >5 accounts/quarter
- Active Advocates: >50 in program
- User-to-Account Mapping Rate: >85%
Suggested Dashboard Widgets
- Signal Volume: Signals by type over time
- Community Health Score: Aggregate sentiment and engagement
- Expansion Pipeline: Potential revenue from signals
- Advocate Leaderboard: Top advocates by activity