Customer experience has moved from company, to content, to community: from customers contacting a company one at a time, to finding answers in its content, to building relationships with each other around the brand. Most brands are at the content stage. A branded online community is how many take the next step.
Why is customer experience changing?
Technology has handed customers unprecedented power: they now set the rules for dealing with the brands they buy from. Used to digital natives such as Google and Amazon, they expect the same immediacy, personalisation and convenience from established companies, and often from smaller ones.
Companies once stood out by product or quality; now, increasingly, by an engaging, frictionless customer experience. The changes the coronavirus pandemic forced on everyone showed how fast that is evolving.
How has customer experience evolved?
Customer to company. Before the information age, customers could deal with a company only directly, by phone, email or in person, one at a time, with a few people in customer service or sales on the other end. That is personal, but slow, and it can't scale to the immediacy customers now demand.
Customer to content. Then customers began researching online before they bought and wanting online self-service support, and content became quick to create and maintain. Customers engage through a company's website, emails and videos. Most companies are here, the more advanced with chatbots and self-service channels such as knowledge bases. It is a big step forward, but it lacks what customers value more than ever: meaning and connection.
Customer to community. In the last stage, customers have a meaningful relationship with the brand's whole ecosystem: they talk to other customers, connect with the brand's purpose and collaborate, giving feedback on its products. Many companies start with a branded online community.
Why build a community?
It meets customers' growing expectation of meaningful connection: a space to talk to like-minded people, share their passions and connect on a deeper level. Members become partners, which is how customers want to feel, especially when the brand's purpose matters to them. How 4 Roads supports MyOlympus, a community of 410,000 photographers.
And from the way members talk to each other, a company can learn what customers might expect from its products and services five years from now. That is how to get ahead of their changing needs.
Where is your customer experience?
Most brands rely on customer to content. That investment isn't wasted: each stage builds on the one before, and the best strategy adapts to each customer rather than replacing one kind of interaction with another.
But a brand that doesn't move on to community misses the chance of stronger bonds with its customers, and between customers themselves. How 4 Roads builds online communities.
Updated on 19 September 2026.
