We all know that the era of staying employed at the same company for 30 years is gone.
It’s not how the world works anymore.
If you want to grow your career and find exciting new job opportunities in 2024, networking and continual learning are absolute necessities.
The statistics overwhelmingly demonstrate the significance of networking. For example, Zippia’s research found that:
- 85% of jobs are filled through networking with personal and professional connections.
- Up to 70% of employees received their current company position through networking.
- 79% of Americans agree that networking plays a vital role in their career progression.
Networking is vital—and for customer service (CS) and customer experience (CX) professionals, that’s where customer service communities fit in.
Online communities for customer service professionals
A customer service community offers a place to network, get ideas, share skills, and offer support to each other in the fast-paced customer service world we live in.
They’re the purr-fect way to accelerate your career growth.
One of the key advantages of networking is the opportunity for learning and skill development, and customer service communities offer these in spades.
Interacting with a diverse network of other CS professionals exposes you to new ideas and perspectives. The wealth of experience will challenge your existing beliefs, stimulate creative thinking, and accelerate your career growth.
We’ve got six great online communities here for you to join for some peer to peer support:
- Support Driven
- Quality Tribe
- The Zendesk Slack Community
- Customer Success Leadership Network
- Preflight
- North American Customer Service Management Association (NACSMA)
Support Driven
Support Driven is an online customer service community dedicated to customer support as a career. Their online community is based in Slack and has over 10,000 CS professionals.
Support Driven excels at pushing the thought that customer service is an essential part of driving business growth. With thousands of CX professionals thinking the same thing, Support Driven is the place to find support with anything related to customer service.
They’ve got a #bulletin-board channel where you can ask for feedback on a product or ask your colleagues to take a survey. There are a ton of more niche channels as well related to specific categories, like the #customer-experience or #ai-technology channels. They even have a manual to help you get the most out of the Support Driven community.
You can check out Support Driven and join the Slack community on the Support Driven website.
Quality Tribe
Quality Tribe is a customer service community run by the cool cats (yes, that’s us). It’s an online forum with CX professionals from all corners of the customer service world, from general support agents to managers, QA coordinators, and support team leads.
Quality Tribe takes our mantra you can drive revenue through exceptional customer service and turns it into a community of like-minded support folks. Quality Tribe lets you:
- Connect with and learn from experienced customer service professionals.
- Follow the topics that interest you the most.
- Ask questions and share ideas.
There’s a job board, a section for questions and requests, an “interesting content” section for sharing helpful content across the internet. If that sounds interesting, head over to join Quality Tribe right meow.
The Zendesk Slack Community
Zendesk has phenomenal resources for startups, but where CX professionals can get the most out of Zendesk is their Slack community.
Zendesk’s Slack community is purpose-built with CX professionals in mind as a way to get real-time quality engagement with other CX leaders as well as founders and creatives.
What sets Zendesk apart from other communities is their focus on “as many different views and opinions as possible in this community.” They want to be the go-to place for support & customer success professionals to share resources, bounce ideas between leaders, and provide a forum for open communication and questions.
You can sign up for the Zendesk Slack Community here.
Customer Success Leadership Network
The Customer Success Leadership Network is a self-organized group of CS executives, consultants, and practitioners dedicated to creating CS content and connecting CS leadership. They stress that everyone is welcome to participate, even if you’re not a CS leader specifically.
The CS Leadership Network has a website filled with blog posts and webinars to help you develop your customer service skills. But where you can find the biggest networking opportunities is in their dedicated customer service community in Slack.
Currently sitting at almost 8500 members, this customer support community has Slack channels dedicated to customer success, events, CS ops, hiring, and even aspiring CSMs looking for a career change into customer service.
You can join here.
Preflight
Preflight is an incredible customer service community with a ton of great resources for sharing your ideas, learning best practices, and developing your career. Especially if you’re interested in proper onboarding, customer retention, and excellent customer service. Like a lot of the others on this list, the community is based in Slack, but they also have an entire website filled with events, blog posts, and podcasts.
What stands out about Preflight is that they have an entire mentorship program built into their customer service community platform. They help CX professionals connect with industry leaders and consultants in a 16-week, one-on-one peer coaching program.
In order to join Preflight, you put your information into their online form. They review your submission, and then they send you a personalized invite. This provides a layer of security, so you know you’re joining a customer service community that serves only relevant CX professionals.
The form for joining is located on the Preflight homepage.
North American Customer Service Management Association (NACSMA)
The North American Customer Service Management Association (NACSMA) is a non-profit association supporting customer contact organizations and the vendors that serve them. The NACSMA website has great resources for developing your workforce and leadership, and they have even more resources in their LinkedIn customer service community.
Membership to the LinkedIn community is free to join. Members of the community have access to exclusive content, training resources, and plenty of networking opportunities with other members. If you’re on LinkedIn frequently, this is the customer service community to join.
Thriving customer community in a remote world
In our remote world, community is more important than ever.
As many of us no longer see our colleagues in person, networking naturally every day, we need to be intentional in the way we interact with our fellow customer service cats.
Customer service communities offer a place to do that, with the addition of resources like articles, training content, and even humor. Communities for customer service professionals provide the best way to get connected with others in the customer service world.
Plus, if you’re ready to get started learning and networking, you can join Quality Tribe today!
