Community looks different when you’ve lived it from multiple angles
Tiffany Oda has spent more than a decade working in community roles at companies like Salesforce, Talkbase, and now Asana. That range matters more than it might seem at first glance.
She’s built programs from scratch, stepped into communities that needed to evolve, and worked inside large organizations where community sits right alongside support, operations, and customer experience. She’s also lived the part of the job that rarely shows up in job descriptions: constant education, internal alignment, and translating between what members need and what the business expects.
Today, Tiffany is part of the community team at Asana, where the support community plays an active role in how customers learn, troubleshoot, and help one another. That work was recently nominated for CMX Support Community of the Year, which says a lot about how intentionally the program is designed and run.
When we sat down to talk, we weren’t aiming for theory. We wanted to unpack what actually makes community work, especially when it’s closely tied to support and GTM.
What “community” actually means inside a company
One thing Tiffany came back to early in our conversation is that community rarely means the same thing to everyone internally. To some teams, it’s peer-to-peer support. To others, it’s advocacy, education, or engagement. When those definitions aren’t aligned, community teams end up absorbing the confusion.
A lot of Tiffany’s work across roles involved internal clarification. Not evangelizing, but grounding expectations. What problems is community meant to help solve? What isn’t it responsible for? How does it complement support instead of quietly becoming a replacement for it?
As companies grow, this clarity matters even more. Without it, community programs can turn into catch-alls for unresolved needs or get measured against goals they were never designed to support.
Where support and community actually intersect
A big part of Tiffany’s current work at Asana sits right at the intersection of support and community, which is where this conversation gets especially relevant for GTM leaders.
Support communities, when they’re designed intentionally, do more than deflect tickets. They give customers a place to learn in context, hear from peers who’ve been there before, and build confidence using the product. That kind of learning is hard to replicate through documentation alone.
Tiffany talked about community as an extension of the support experience, not a separate destination. Customers arrive with real questions and real friction. Community adds value by pairing official guidance with lived experience, and by letting patterns surface that support teams can learn from over time.
That’s where community starts to compound its value. It helps teams scale without losing trust, reduces repetitive support load, and creates feedback loops that benefit product, support, and GTM teams all at once.
Building from scratch takes more patience than most teams expect
Across Salesforce, Talkbase, and Asana, Tiffany has helped launch community programs from the ground up. One lesson shows up every time: most organizations underestimate how much planning and alignment needs to happen before anything should go live.
When teams rush to launch, the cleanup work shows up later. Stakeholders have different expectations. Tools get chosen before use cases are clear. Early members arrive without enough context to participate meaningfully.
Tiffany emphasized slowing down early. Getting clear on goals. Involving cross-functional partners, especially support and product. Thinking through how members will actually use the space, not just how it looks in a slide deck.
Community wasn’t built in a day, and trying to shortcut that reality usually creates friction down the line.
Vendor choices shape behavior more than we admit
Tooling came up as a surprisingly important part of our conversation. Tiffany was clear that vendor selection isn’t just a technical decision. It’s a strategic one.
Who gets involved matters. Support, community, and GTM teams all bring different needs to the table, and leaving any of them out tends to create downstream issues. The right tool isn’t the one with the longest feature list. It’s the one that supports the kind of participation and outcomes you’re actually trying to create.
She also pointed out that tools should serve the program, not define it. Communities evolve, assumptions change, and flexibility usually matters more than perfection.
Engagement shifts from transactional to relational
Another theme that kept coming up was how engagement evolves over time.
Early participation is often transactional, especially in support-driven communities. People show up with questions and want answers. That’s expected. Over time, though, the strongest communities create space for something deeper.
Tiffany talked about the shift toward intrinsic motivation. Members start helping because they want to. They recognize each other. They feel ownership. The community becomes a place they return to, not just a resource they use once.
Designing for that shift takes intention. Feedback matters. Recognition matters. And so does paying attention to how people are actually using the space, not how the team originally imagined they would.
Feedback is how community stays relevant
If there was one principle Tiffany returned to throughout the conversation, it was this: community programs have to evolve.
Member needs change. Business priorities shift. Support volumes fluctuate. Communities that stay static eventually lose relevance, even if they start strong.
Feedback isn’t a checkbox. It’s the input that keeps programs aligned. That includes surveys, but it also includes everyday signals from participation, questions, and behavior. The work is never really done, and that’s not a failure. It’s the nature of community.
Decoded Insight
The strongest communities live where support, trust, and shared learning come together.
Closing thoughts
If you’re building or scaling a community that touches support, customer experience, or GTM, Tiffany’s perspective offers a grounded look at what actually makes these programs work over time.
You can connect with Tiffany Oda on LinkedIn to keep the conversation going. And if this post sparked a thought or challenged an assumption, feel free to leave a comment or share it with someone navigating similar terrain.
Timestamps
00:00 – Tiffany’s path into community
03:04 – Defining community inside organizations
06:08 – How community roles vary by company
08:47 – Community’s role in support and GTM
11:59 – Building community from scratch
14:56 – Vendor selection and alignment
18:07 – Launching with support in mind
20:53 – Engagement and motivation
23:56 – Evolving established programs
27:08 – Feedback and iteration
29:45 – Final reflections
