I follow a number a question and answer sections on LinkedIn. A recent question asked was:

How do you know when a startup is ready for a Tech Support (community) forum? I’ve identified the ideal tool (vBulletin); I’ve identified which subforums to have and the owners (support engineers/develop/writer) of each subforum, and the list goes on. BUT, How do you know when a company is really, really ready for a community (public) forum? What makes a forum successful? Why do some forums fail and others don’t?

My response was rather straight forward:

If you have a product with more than one user, then you need a place for them to go and get support, and offer feedback. The right time to start is right from the start.

With all of the products in the ADS AppSuite, we created support sites on Get Satisfaction. Our initial product, expens’d, has gotten a number of great comments and feature suggestions that we have implemented.

So, when do you start listening to your customers and interacting with them? Right from the start.

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