The Customers Who Stopped Buying and Started Belonging
Friday 9 October — Art of Leadership (II) · Marketing & media
The table
The case
Subtitle: A fictional leadership case for discussion. Source: The owner's own case (Dražen Kapusta, 2026-09-13), verbatim — the eight questions are his
The founder arrived at her own customer event and found that nobody needed her to open it.
At one table, an experienced customer was helping a newcomer adapt a template. Across the room, two people compared how they had introduced the company’s product to their teams.
Someone had brought a problem from work.
Someone else had already seen it.
The founder stood beside the coffee for a moment and listened.
A year earlier, every useful exchange at an event like this had passed through her employees. The company explained. Customers asked questions. Sales followed up.
Now the customers were creating part of the value themselves.
They still bought the product.
Their relationship with the company had become larger than the purchase.
The Question That Started It
The business provided planning software and practical resources for small service companies.
It had loyal customers and a capable support team. The founder knew that customers often faced similar challenges, but those conversations happened separately.
During a product workshop, one customer asked whether she could speak with another user who had introduced the system across several locations.
The founder made the connection.
A few weeks later, the two customers returned with an improved onboarding checklist and asked whether others might find it useful.
The company shared it with their permission.
More questions followed.
Could someone show how they handled seasonal demand? Did anyone have experience persuading managers to maintain better records? Would others join a short session to compare approaches?
The founder saw a possibility.
Customers could learn from one another in ways her company alone could not provide.
The Launch That Almost Missed the Point
Marketing proposed a community platform.
The plan included a content calendar, member badges, product announcements and regular expert sessions.
The launch attracted registrations. Participation remained modest.
The founder asked several customers why.
One had no clear reason to return. Another found the discussions too closely tied to upcoming features. A third had offered an example but received little response.
The company had created a place for customers to gather. It had not yet made participation reliably worthwhile.
The founder invited a small group to help rethink it.
They asked for practical exchanges with people facing comparable work. They wanted to see how others approached problems, including examples that were still imperfect.
They also wanted the company to listen.
When Members Set Part of the Agenda
The next session began with a customer’s scheduling problem.
A company employee facilitated. Two members shared how they had handled similar situations. Another explained why one approach would not work in his business.
The conversation produced a revised experiment for the person who brought the question.
It also revealed a limitation in the product.
The product lead acknowledged it and explained what the team could address immediately and what required more investigation.
Nobody received a polished solution to everything.
Participants left with something useful and a reason to return.
Over the following months, members began proposing topics, welcoming newcomers and contributing examples. The company supported the work by organising sessions, keeping resources usable and responding to product questions.
The founder began asking what members were able to achieve because the group existed.
The COTRUGLI Experience She Recognised
The founder brought the emerging community to a COTRUGLI dinner.
Her classmates recognised the pattern.
They spoke about what had kept their own generation connected: useful help, shared work, dinners, trips, humour and the confidence that someone would answer when a question mattered.
An alumnus pointed out that their relationships had developed through contribution over time.
“You know who has helped you,” he said. “And you remember who you have helped.”
The founder saw why her original content plan had been insufficient.
The customers needed opportunities to contribute and become known to one another.
She invited several members to co-design a small in-person gathering with a working session, dinner and enough time for informal conversation.
The company would host. Members would help shape the experience.
Making Knowledge Easier to Find
As contributions increased, useful material became harder to locate.
The team introduced AI-supported search over resources members had agreed to share. It helped people find relevant examples and helped facilitators identify questions that remained unanswered.
Summaries linked back to the original contributions so that members could inspect the context.
One summary initially combined two different approaches into a single recommendation. The contributors corrected it.
The founder asked the team to keep authorship visible and make corrections easy.
She also declined a proposal to fill quiet discussion threads with automated replies written as if they came from members.
The value of the group depended on knowing when another person had genuinely contributed.
AI could help members reach the knowledge. The relationships belonged to them.
The Member Who Paused the Subscription
Then a respected contributor announced that his company was moving to a different product.
Its requirements had changed.
He thanked the group and asked whether he could remain involved in occasional sessions. He still valued the people and had experience others found useful.
Sales wanted clarity about access to benefits. Members wondered whether he would disappear.
The founder recognised a decision she had postponed.
Which parts of the community belonged with the commercial subscription? Which activities could remain open to alumni customers or invited contributors? How much participation could the business support?
Generosity needed a sustainable operating model.
So did belonging.
Choosing What to Grow
The community was creating visible benefits.
Customers exchanged useful practices. The product team learned from real work. Some prospects arrived through members who believed they would benefit.
It also required staff time, events and careful facilitation.
The founder could expand quickly, introducing more people and more activity. Or she could strengthen smaller groups around specific needs before growing further.
She wanted the community to remain a place where members found one another useful.
At the next gathering, she joined the table as someone with a question.
The CDayZ Leadership Challenge
You are helping the founder develop a customer community that creates value for members and supports a healthy business.
Define why people participate, how members can contribute and what the company must provide. Decide how access, commercial benefits and the costs of operating the community should fit together.
Discussion Questions
The owner's "Eight Questions for the Room":
- Why would a customer return between purchases?
- What would help members contribute?
- What must the company take responsibility for?
- How should difficult feedback enter the community?
- What belongs with a paid subscription, and what could remain accessible more widely?
- How could AI make shared knowledge more useful?
- What can this business learn from the COTRUGLI tribe?
- What evidence would justify further investment?
Identify the practical or relational value the community should provide consistently.
Design opportunities for people to share experience, ask useful questions and support newcomers.
Consider facilitation, product responses, resource quality and the time needed to maintain the experience.
What would make it possible to discuss product limitations openly and turn those discussions into useful action?
Explain how you would handle former customers, invited experts and other valuable contributors.
Address source visibility, correction, member consent and the distinction between automated assistance and human participation.
Explore how shared work, dinners, travel, celebration and mutual help can create lasting relationships.
Consider member outcomes, quality of participation, product learning, commercial results and the cost of sustaining the community.
A Lesson for the Next COTRUGLI Generation
A customer community becomes valuable when people can learn, contribute and form relationships through it.
The company creates the conditions and remains responsible for its promises. Members bring experience that can make the whole group more capable.
The COTRUGLI tribe offers a lived example of how belonging develops through shared work and shared life.
The founder had built a product people wanted to buy.
She was learning how to host something they wanted to be part of.
Your comment on this chapter
A question for the table, a disagreement, what you would have done. The case lead reads every comment; the ones the table takes up enter the chapter as questions from the room, with your name.