The Emerging Role of AI in Online Communities: Our 2020 Research

Coauthor: Brian Pagels

AI adoption in the enterprise is entering the mainstream. It’s time for community teams to get on board.

In our second round of research on the role of AI in online communities, we expanded the scope of our study to look beyond the current practice of community leaders. We wanted to also understand the attitudes of executives, and the practices of peers on adjacent teams (like marketing and customer success). While we found evidence that executives are increasingly making AI a priority, and that many customer-facing functions are actively experimenting with AI, community leaders remain apprehensive about AI. In particular, the majority of community leaders we surveyed and spoke with were concerned about creating negative member experiences and were unsure how to articulate the value proposition for AI.

Structure3C has conducted ongoing research about the role of AI (and related technologies) in online communities since 2018. We were surprised to see that priorities and practices for community leaders remained steady with 2018 trends, while the overall adoption of AI accelerated — essentially all around the community team.

According to Deloitte’s 3rd annual State of AI in the Enterprise report:
“It appears that AI’s ‘early adopter’ phase is ending; the market is now moving into the ‘early majority’ chapter of this maturing set of technologies. In fact, IDC forecasts that spending on AI technologies will grow to US$97.9 billion in 2023 — more than two and a half times the spending level of 2019.”

We see the following opportunities for AI with communities:

• Community Data: The use of community data for training ML models;

• AI as a Team Member: Moving beyond rudimentary task automation to a relationship with AI as a team member that progresses over time — from assistant to partner, and in some cases, coach;

• Insight and Predictive Analytics: Deepening insight into customer behavior and establishing (or adding to) predictive models via community behavior;

• Radical Customer Experience Improvements: Ranging from improved content personalization and recommendations to creating context and organizing meaning*;

  • *Friend and colleague Venessa Paech is exploring this frontier in her work and PhD research

• AI as a Catalyst for Organizational Integration: Community teams, and the community function have long been isolated in the organization. We see AI as a means to weave threads of community into the fabric of the organization through the points mentioned above.

Community Leader Research

We fielded the initial Communities & AI, Agents and Automation survey in early 2020, and launched a second survey in May. We also conducted follow up interviews with select respondents.

Observations:

• Respondents are most concerned (by a large margin) about AI’s potential to diminish the “human experience” of communities and associated positive traits such as authenticity, empathy, and trust;

• Many are not convinced of and/or comfortable articulating the value proposition for AI, agents, and automation, and are concerned about cost and LOE (which is at odds with executive priorities);

• Respondents see AI-enabled scale and efficiencies as the primary potential benefits;

• Personalization and content recommendation engines are also attractive because of the potential positive effect on CX/UX;

• Respondents are yearning for better and more advanced analytics ;

• Respondents are most excited about the potential to integrate community across their organizations, though they note that platform limitations are currently preventing many from doing so;

• Several also see an opportunity to better define, and educate stakeholders about community value
  

Use of Technology
Since our 2018 research, we’ve used “Advanced Technology” as an umbrella term to include technologies and capabilities that are generally beyond the scope of stock community platforms. The intention is to name specific applications and functions in order to understand the sophistication of the deployments, as well as the level of sophistication of the strategies driving budgets and developments.

• All respondents, or significant majorities, either currently use or plan to use community management automation, automated email campaigns, and personalization

• The largest gaps between interest in and use of technologies are the advanced analytics solutions, personalization, and chatbots

• There’s a significant level of interest in AI-enhanced content management though only 3% of respondents reported using it

Note: In the graph above, the blue bar indicates “currently using” responses, while the red bar indicates an “intend to use” response

Community Platform Vendor Innovation

Community platform vendors are a critical component of advancing the use of AI in online communities. We wanted to understand from community leaders how responsive and innovative they felt their respective platform vendors were.

• The majority of respondents thought their platform vendors were not “keeping up” with current needs

• Still, 45% thought their vendors were ahead of the curve and pushing innovation

In upcoming posts I will go deeper into our review of management literature and the tool landscape, highlight relevant best practice examples, and offer our recommendations for moving forward with your AI journey.

Our Research and Community Leader Mastermind

The full AI & Communities report is available to our Cohere Mastermind members. The Cohere Mastermind is a select group of community leaders pushing past best practice and developing future-state community experiences, programs and business models. The Cohere Mastermind meets regularly online, and twice annually in-person (when it is safe) at select member locations.

If you are interested in learning more about our research, or the Cohere Mastermind, please reach out — bill@structure3c.com