Most businesses view customer suggestions and criticism as a minor nuisance, and simply something you have to “put up with” in order to do business in the retail sector. But occasionally, a company will take advantage of customer feedback to improve its service and increase its bottom line. Starbucks is attempting to do just that with the release of its new web site, MyStarbucksidea.com.
The new consumer suggestion and criticism web site was unveiled at Starbucks annual corporate meeting in March. Initially, many scoffed at the idea, saying it was merely the modern equivalent of a suggestion box, and that the majority of the ideas presented would be impractical or irrelevant to improving Starbuck’s business.
But three weeks after the initial launch of MyStarbucksidea.com, the business community is taking notice. The site has already amassed a great deal of Internet traffic, and has received well over 100,000 suggestions and comments. Cleverly, Starbucks designed the new site to be more like a Web 2.0 social networking service than a stodgy corporate feedback site. As a result, Starbucks fans and critics alike are all joining in the conversation by leaving comments and rating other peoples suggestions.
So far, Starbucks has received lots of new ideas, and clever twists on old ideas, including providing a free drink after a number of purchases (the well-worn punch card system), offering free coffee on a customer’s birthday, giving consumers a discount for bringing in their own mugs to be filled, allowing customers to swipe their credit card when they walk in the door to order their usual beverage, and many others.
Starbucks is discovering that by welcoming customer feedback they are receiving plenty of it! One suggestion that caught Starbuck’s attention early on was offering regular coffee drinkers a faster way to purchase and receive their coffee without waiting in line. Other noticeable suggestions included offering barista classes at night and installing more comfortable seats.
Starbucks has approximately 50 employees monitoring MyStarbucksidea.com, each of whom is a product specialist. The idea is to separate the best and most practical ideas to improve service, and send them directly to upper management where they can be acted on quickly. In order to minimize duplicate ideas, the site features an automated search function to let users know if their idea has been posted before.
Starbucks is not the first large company to take advantage of consumer suggestions in order to turn its business around. Dell.com used a similar “online suggestion box” a few years back to “get inside the heads” of its customers. Dell used the information to improve their web site’s flow and incorporate new customer-friendly features to its buying process. Starbucks is hoping to get the same kind of results from MyStarbucksidea.com and increase the company’s profit margin.
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