Using Web 2.0 To Collect Consumer Feedback
Earlier this month, Starbucks launched a new Web site. Launching a business Web site is nothing new, but this Starbucks site was established to capture consumer feedback and ideas about how the company should modify itself to perk up its US coffee sales. The comments have rolled in by the hundreds to the MyStarbucksIdea.com.
The site is really nothing more than a Web 2.0 suggestion box, but at the same time, Starbucks most valuable consumers have taken to it because it’s an easy, convenient way for them to access the Starbucks corporate administration. The site accepts consumer feedback, and comments, much like what you would find on a blog or social networking site. Visitors can also vote on ideas. The site is succeeding, despite critics’ predictions to the contrary, because clearly consumers feel like they’re being heard, and they like that!
If you visit the site, you’ll see that voting is an integral part of the brainstorming process. Popular ideas get pushed to the top of the list. The volume of comments on an idea can also affect its placement, as can the timeliness of the voting. The company also offers its own feedback, in the form of reports about ideas and what will happen with them.
Starbucks has established a marketplace of ideas, and for whatever it cost, they’ll get more ideas than they can handle in a short period of time from those people who matter most to the company: the consumers. Starbucks is working with Salesforce.com to manage this site. You may recognize Salesforce.com as being the principal behind Dell’s IdeaStorm.com Web site.
This site is a perfect illustration of how a Web site can be used to establish and promote a good relationship between a business and its consumers. By broadening the process of product development and product improvement, and by collecting consumer feedback via public forum, companies like Starbucks and Dell are breathing new life into the old suggestion box.
You don’t need to set up a separate site to get consumer feedback for your company; your blog will do just fine. If you don’t yet have a corporate blog, set one up and start building your consumer relationships today.
Photo Credit: Rodolfo Clix
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Using Web 2.0 To Collect Consumer Feedback
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