Running BX testing via at-scale customer communities: Everything you need to know

Ever wonder what customers think of your brand? Well, it’s time to stop shooting in the dark.

Brand experience (BX) and customer experience (CX) are a culmination of the emotions, reactions, and sentiments associated with customers’ experiences of your brand. Too often, these reactions are only gathered through crumbs of feedback here and there, not collated into one cohesive picture of the customer experience. A review on your app store, an angry email to customer service, a positive comment on your social media. All of these touchpoints are invaluable - but scattered. 

Brands need more than drip-fed feedback on BX and CX. They can’t sustain true customer empathy without a more informed and comprehensive understanding of customer touchpoints and the impressions they leave. 

The solution? Building consumer communities. With a centralised feedback hub, brands access a well of insight with consistent, always-on consumer truths.

These dynamic, online communities are reshaping the way brands test, iterate, and optimise their products, services, and interactions. With the integration of CX expertise and customer collaboration platforms, the potential for BX and CX testing is greater than ever.

What are customer communities?

Customer communities are groups of highly engaged consumers who are brought together by brands to share their insights, ideas, and feedback. They’re the brand’s innermost circle of brand fans, consumers, and influencers, providing vital data on the ways brands are experienced and their products are consumed. 

These customer communities provide ongoing input on everything from product development to marketing strategy. At Bulbshare, these communities allow brands to go beyond traditional feedback channels by offering a direct line to the customers who know the brand best. Instead of relying on static surveys or one-off focus groups, brands can tap into these always-on communities for continuous collaboration. And with 1000s of daily insights generated, at-scale user-generated content (UGC) at your fingertips, and authentic consumer voices to be heard, it’s not just products, packaging, or marketing campaigns that can benefit from consumer insights. 

What is BX and CX?

BX and CX are two key pillars of modern business strategy. BX refers to the overall impression that a brand creates across its marketing, design, and communication efforts - how a brand looks, sounds, and feels to its audience. It’s the personality and promise of a brand, crafted to evoke specific emotions and build a connection with customers. It is a long-term, ongoing, and evolving impression that is left on consumers. 

CX, on the other hand, is all about the customer’s journey with the brand - the short-term, immediate interactions they have at every touchpoint, from purchasing a product to contacting customer service. While BX focuses on how a brand presents itself, CX ensures that the brand lives up to that promise through every minutiae of experiences and every step of the journey.  

A new era: Consumer communities as testing grounds

Consumer communities are changing how companies approach BX and CX testing. The days of relying solely on small focus groups or limited surveys are behind us. Now, brands can tap into large, diverse pools of real-time customer input to test everything from product concepts to service touchpoints. These communities create a continuous feedback loop, allowing businesses to gather insights, co-create on product development, and refine experiences in a way that is agile, interactive, and customer-focused.

For BX testing, these communities offer an ideal space for innovation. Want to test whether a new ad campaign hits the mark? Curious about how a product’s packaging will resonate? Consumer communities provide immediate feedback, offering both qualitative and quantitative data, so brands can adjust their messaging before launching to the wider market.

On the CX front, these communities are equally transformative. They enable businesses to test customer journeys, website interfaces, or customer service scripts in real time. Rather than waiting for retrospective feedback, CX teams can receive instant reactions from real customers, ensuring every touchpoint is fine-tuned before it reaches the broader audience. It’s CX testing at lightning speed, with fewer assumptions and more actionable insights. Think screen recordings of your target audience navigating your website, with AI video analysis and expert researchers picking up on every furrowed brow, every hesitation, and every clicked link. Think in-store video content, as consumers navigate the shop and provide feedback on positioning, placement, and pricing of your product. 

Looking to the future with Bulbshare and SMG

The acquisition of customer collaboration platform Bulbshare by CX leader SMG signals a new chapter for experience management. By combining the strengths of both worlds, brands can unlock new opportunities for customer loyalty and the power of consumer voice will be ever more resounding. 

In this new era, consumer communities are not merely testing grounds - they’re engines of innovation. They’re where the next great product ideas will emerge, where marketing campaigns will be perfected, and where customer journeys will be refined. And with AI driving the process, the possibilities are endless.

“We’re excited and energised about the opportunities that lie ahead,” said Matt Hay, Founder and CEO of Bulbshare. “By joining forces with SMG, we are entering a new era where customer experience is driven by participation and co-creation. Together, our CX and BX solutions will deliver unparalleled value to our clients, while our employee experience (EX) offerings will foster stronger employee relationships, contributing to our collective growth and success.” 

BX x CX = Success

So what happens when BX and CX testing come together? Brand experience and customer experience are two sides of the same coin. A strong, cohesive BX attracts customers, while a well-executed CX ensures they stay loyal. By using consumer communities for both BX and CX testing, companies can make sure their external messaging aligns with their internal operations - resulting in smooth, consistent experiences.

Here’s how it works: when a brand tests a marketing campaign within a consumer community, it not only fine-tunes the creative aspects but also identifies any potential gaps between the brand promise and the actual customer experience. If a campaign claims “exceptional customer service,” for instance, the CX team can test whether this is truly being delivered - using the same community of engaged customers who tested the campaign itself. This holistic approach ensures that brand expectations match customer reality at every touchpoint.

Supercharging testing with AI

It’s not just about the communities themselves - it’s also about the technology driving them. Platforms equipped with advanced AI capabilities are taking consumer community testing to a whole new level. 

AI enables the rapid analysis of vast amounts of real-time data, allowing brands to move from insight to action faster than ever. No longer do companies have to wait weeks (or months) for research reports. Now, they can get answers to critical BX and CX questions within hours. 

But it’s not just fast - it’s deep. AI-driven sentiment analysis, for example, can detect subtle shifts in customer perceptions that might not be obvious through manual analysis. Reducing the manual labour, deepening the data, and accelerating the turnaround are all possible thanks to the AI tech driving these communities. 

At Bulbshare, the end-to-end AI suite not only speeds up survey creation to get CX projects out quicker, it helps with the analysis of rich-media content to detect themes and sentiments that might otherwise have been missed or taken hours to spot. And once these golden nuggets have been found, it stores them in a data warehouse that makes them easily accessible for future use or comparison against external sources. 

Shifting tides from consumers to customers to co-architects 

Brands are increasingly realising consumer communities are not just a nice-to-have; they’re essential. In a world where customer expectations are constantly evolving, the ability to test, iterate, and optimise in real time is invaluable. We’ve seen markets turn on a dime after Covid and the Cost of Living Crisis, and now know the importance of agile consumer connections. And the immediacy they offer cannot be reaped from traditional methods. 

While the benefits for brands are clear, customers themselves also gain from this arrangement. These communities give customers a platform to have their voices heard, collaborate on the products and services they care about, and feel a sense of ownership in the brands they support. It’s a win-win, where customers feel valued and brands receive the insights they need to create better experiences.

Bulbshare found that 77% of customers wish their favourite brands had a community, 88% want to be involved in brand decisions, and 76% enjoy helping in the product development processes. This behind-the-scenes, all-access pass to the brand and its products means brand associations are more positive, more lasting, and more personal. 

Gone are the days of passive consumption and transactional relationships. Here are the days of active involvement, where customers want to sculpt their own experiences. 

Consumers today want to sculpt their own experiences. Consumers are no longer just consuming. They’re co-creators, co-architects, collaborators. And your brand is all the better off for it. 

For more information on using customer communities for optimising customer experience, head to Bulbshare.com.