Sometime last year, Dell launched Ideastorm — a Digg-style social voting site where users can suggest ideas to better Dell products and have them voted upon. Starbucks is trying a similar — if not the same — concept with My Starbucks Idea, where Starbucks customers can post their suggestions and have them voted upon by the community.
You can share your ideas, view some of the popular, recent, and top ones, and see the ones that are in acion in their Ideas in Action blog. Additionally, you can comment/discuss the ones that have been submitted. Judging from the site activity, it seems to be off to a great start with a number of worthy submissions accumulated. More so, their blog is well-updated and a number of suggestions have been carried out (and explored.)
For Dell, Ideastorm has proved extremely well so far, although there is not much indication or evidence of them being carried out in action. And for a company like Starbucks which has a fairly loyal and vocal customer base, it seems it like the site may be on the same track.
The idea in itself is great, and their execution with My Starbucks Idea couldn’t be any better — the fact that they’re even blogging about the ones they consider is a huge thumbs-up to their customer base. I think more customer-oriented company needs to advocate this concept. Not only does it give their a voice, but it also makes their process is innovating and making things better a lot easier — this way the customers do your work for you!
