The big news this past week in Web 2.0 world: Starbucks dipped its toe into the pool where community and customers converge.
They launched a new Web site, MyStarbucksIdea. It’s essentially a Dell IdeaStorm clone designed to get feedback from customers. Give us your ideas on how to improve Starbucks, they say. Sounds fairly straightfoward, but there is monumental disagreement as to whether this idea is good, bad, or somewhere in between.
Is it merely a virtual suggestion box with voting? That’s the take of many people on Jim Romenesko’s StarbuckGossip.com, a site that’s always been critical of the company. “MyStarbucksIdea.com was clearly inspired by my site, which was created nearly four years ago to move barista/customer conversations to the Web,” Romenesko tells the Seattle Times. “My site will continue to thrive because it’s an authentic reflection of how customers and employees feel about the company. MyStarbucksIdea.com, on the other hand, is clearly a corporate propaganda site.”
He’s right about one thing. It’s missing the big detail that marks a true community: authenticity.
The way I see it, the site looks like a collection of possible improvements their marketing department already knew their customers wanted. Give us free Wi-Fi. Stop selling those warmed-over breakfast sandwiches and start serving something healthy like fruit. Give me a free cup of coffee on my birthday. I bet they’ve heard nearly all of these ideas before. I can’t help but imagine their marketing department sitting in a massive room scribbling out a giant flow-chart bracket on a whiteboard — their own version of March Madness.
But, it may be unduly harsh to call it propaganda. Yes, it’s censored and filtered, and yes, it’s wearing a grass-roots disguise, but it is doing one thing right: involving customers in conversations about Starbucks’ products. Whether you love or hate Starbucks, I think they deserve some credit for this relatively bold step. They need to lose their impulse to control the conversation if they want to be seen as legitimately caring about what their customers have to say, but it is a step in the right direction.
I’m betting that Starbuck’s new foray into customer feedback is an idea that nearly every media-savvy Forbes 500 executive will be pondering this week. If this idea gets co-opted and adopted by others, here’s hoping they get the other half right — the true community involvement — and not just ladle in an extra helping of marketing.
Starbucks is on Get Satisfaction.]
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7 Comments
I don’t know if you’d call My Starbucks Idea censored. There have been thousands of ideas posted and while you could argue that many may not be original, the dialog that it has sparked is much richer than anything a marketing department could have dreamed up in a board room. As a customer it is certainly interesting to be able to see what other customers want, and be able to participate in the process.
I’m a big fan of Get Satisfaction and the idea of organic communities, but there is something to be said for a company proactively facilitating the conversation. They can measure employee participation, follow up with customers offline if need be, and create a closed loop system for managing ideas and communicating progress back to the community.
Excellent point, Jamie. Perhaps censored is too harsh of a word. And, yes, we also subscribe to the idea that facilitating conversation is what’s really important, and that you can also shape the conversation for productive outcomes, which Starbuck’s seems to be doing pretty well. I think they’re getting great feedback, but the conversation is limited to a pretty specific end result. That’s fine, too, but I’d love to see them grow it even more. My hope is that they’ll get a lot of ideas they just never could have dreamed up, as you say. Thanks for the comment! Love getting them.
Thanks Eric for the great post.
As Jamie points out, Starbucks and Salesforce came together to create a really open-door web experience that allows for two-way customer interaction to produce positive change in our stores. We’re not filtering out anything but bad words. For any company, this is a huge leap forward, but for Starbucks, as a physical space in your community, and as part of your daily life, its a huge chance at positive change. We want to take that chance, which not a lot of companies would even consider. Why? Customer experience. We want the best, world-class customer experience each and every time you go into a Starbucks. If you’ve got ideas and want to see change, than we want to see that thru to fruition. Change that you can see in action in your store and community. Get Satisfaction, Dell, and Starbucks, along with other companies are trying hard to move closer to the customer, which is a great renaissance of customer experience.
Of course, a lot of the ideas that were posted on My Starbucks Idea are already currently being worked on, such as Wi-Fi. Those are efforts that are clear steps forward. Also important are the hidden gems of great ideas amongst all the conversations that we’re looking for. Someone will create a great idea and it will bubble up to the top or maybe stay buried waiting for the community to expand on its seeding.
Starbucks is committed to fostering this community and conversation. We’ve got a number of partners that are interacting with customers on the site daily to ensure their voice gets heard. More importantly, we’ve got a larger number of people taking those ideas and trying to make them a reality. In the end, we hope these ideas are soon seen in your local stores and community. That’s pretty amazing for any company.
To your point about the end-result; we want to see this thing grow, too! The end-result hopefully you’ll see in your store soon.
Lincoln: Thank you for taking the time to add this very considered comment. I like your language, particularly this gem: “a renaissance of customer experience.” I am right there with you. I think that the increased opportunity that comes with online communities is seriously driving this rebirth of customer service. It might take some time for it to trickle down from early adopters to outsourced call centers in India, but those companies that embrace these ideas are sitting on a huge amount of potential that can definitely be converted into increased sales.
Good luck with growing and evolving the ideas behind MyStarbucksIdeas, and thanks again for adding your own two cents here!
My suggestion is to have every Starbucks around the country make a place on the computer/register for the coffee slingers tips. This way, when customers use gift cards, credit or debit cards they can place their tip on there as well.
By doing this not only will stop anyone from stealing the tips left on the counter, any satisfied customer would normally add a bigger tip for great service.
I think that their tip policy is not standard. I looked on their idea site, and some people complain about their local Starbucks having a tip jar.
I bet employees would like it if they knew they automatically got a tip from Starbucks for every purchase over $5. Hey, there’s a new idea right there!
I think the URL for Jim Romenesko’s StarbucksGossip is wrong. Should be starbucksgossip.typepad.com.