A lesson in customer engagement
26
Apr
2010
It’s always nice to run across a well executed idea when looking for something completely unrelated. I found this Starbucks website this morning and thought it was a fantastic way to achieve customer engagement, support positive customer opinion and, to be frank, a great way to get free ideas.
The site, My Starbucks Idea, is nothing profound or new. It’s a blog engine where users post their ideas and Starbucks respond to them. These ideas can be commented and voted on, and a raft of social media links help spread the word.
This has been done many times to varying degrees of success, but what struck me most about My Starbucks Idea was the obvious engagement of the users and their receptiveness to the responses from Starbucks. They were being listened to. They were being interacted with. A simple thing, really, but something that big companies are traditionally bad at doing for their customers, paralyzed by the fear of negative comments.
Of course it helps that the design is clean and simple, making it easy to follow and become immersed in. The website’s purpose is obvious and it’s easy to see both what people are suggesting and how Starbucks respond to those suggestions. The list of ideas put into action was prominent and larger than I expected. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Starbucks responded in a frank, honest and human tone, as opposed to the corporate tone of many companies.
Ok, so there are some problems too. One idea I ran across, a free shot for card holders on Monday mornings, was noted as being vetted two years after originally being posted. Another took around six months, and a raft of user comments, before responding to a request for a larger non-smoking area outside of the stores.
Categories are not easily accessible (the navigation has a couple of types, but search results have links to a number of others) and it took a while to figure out that the website did indeed touch upon the world outside the USA. And why oh why is the dropdown list of categories only available in the semi-hidden categories themselves and not in either the main categories or within any of the posts?
However all things considered, I thought that this was a fantastic website, playing a great role in providing a positive customer experience. Having seen so many of these kinds of ideas fall flat due to lack of investment or through a myriad of corporate issues, I was really happy to see one that appears to be successful. Well done Starbucks!
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It’s always nice to run across a well executed idea when looking for something completely unrelated. I found this Starbucks website this morning and thought it was a fantastic way to achieve customer engagement, support positive customer opinion and, to be frank, a great way to get free ideas.
The site, My Starbucks Idea, is nothing profound or new. It’s a blog engine where users post their ideas and Starbucks respond to them. These ideas can be commented and voted on, and a raft of social media links help spread the word.
This has been done many times to varying degrees of success, but what struck me most about My Starbucks Idea was the obvious engagement of the users and their receptiveness to the responses from Starbucks. They were being listened to. They were being interacted with. A simple thing, really, but something that big companies are traditionally bad at doing for their customers, paralyzed by the fear of negative comments.
Of course it helps that the design is clean and simple, making it easy to follow and become immersed in. The website’s purpose is obvious and it’s easy to see both what people are suggesting and how Starbucks respond to those suggestions. The list of ideas put into action was prominent and larger than I expected. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Starbucks responded in a frank, honest and human tone, as opposed to the corporate tone of many companies.
Ok, so there are some problems too. One idea I ran across, a free shot for card holders on Monday mornings, was noted as being vetted two years after originally being posted. Another took around six months, and a raft of user comments, before responding to a request for a larger non-smoking area outside of the stores.
Categories are not easily accessible (the navigation has a couple of types, but search results have links to a number of others) and it took a while to figure out that the website did indeed touch upon the world outside the USA. And why oh why is the dropdown list of categories only available in the semi-hidden categories themselves and not in either the main categories or within any of the posts?
However all things considered, I thought that this was a fantastic website, playing a great role in providing a positive customer experience. Having seen so many of these kinds of ideas fall flat due to lack of investment or through a myriad of corporate issues, I was really happy to see one that appears to be successful. Well done Starbucks!
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