When organisations are considering whether to build a branded online community, the most common reason I hear for deciding against this strategy is a concern about opening their brand up to criticism.
 
We agree that providing a platform for your customers to complain in public is a risk but this needs to be balanced with the risk of not providing the platform.  The proliferation of social networks and forums that provide this platform means that these complaints are already out there and this negative word of mouth can be very powerful.

Even if your brand is trying to monitor every complaint in social sites (using Radian6, Buzz Metrics etc), you will not find every disgruntled customer and it will not be convenient to engage with them one-to-one.
 
A branded online community is very effective because customers that want to complain can easily find the community using search engines and they can make the complaint directly to the people that can help resolve their issue (which is inherently more satisfying) rather than venting to all their friends.
 
 It is beneficial for your business to know immediately if there is a problem with any of your products, services or channels - before it has seriously dented profits and affected share price.  With the right internal processes, your organisation will be able to listen to customer issues in the community, prioritise serious problems and solve them quickly.  If the same problem is occurring for many customers, you can save time by responding to the group via a blog.  This way, it can transform these complaints into an asset for your business.

An example of this is the Everyday Rewards online community which has been managed by Resonate for over 3 years and has almost 300,000 members.  This community has reduced the number of complaints in social networks to virtually nothing because customers know there is a destination for their complaint and that the business will respond.  This community also allows customers to collaborate with the business and generate great ideas focused on their loyalty program.