- The Value of a Social Media Practitioner
- Integrating Customer Support into Social Media
- Using Social Media to Solicit Product Feedback and Innovation
- Taking the Next Step
Using Social Media to Solicit Product Feedback and Innovation
Some forward-thinking companies have already started listening to customer feedback on social media channels and are innovating their products, services, and business processes. This is also known as crowd sourcing. A company uses the collective intellect of the community to create or co-create a product or initiative. As a result of involving social customers in the decision-making process, the company fosters customer and brand advocacy and encourages loyalty to the brand. Companies such as Dell, Starbucks, and Microsoft have established such programs and are seeing a tremendous impact on the level of engagement with the community. In some cases, these companies are improving the customer experience for millions of customers and solving real business problems at the same time.
Dell IdeaStorm
Dell launched IdeaStorm in February 2007 as a way for the company to talk directly to its customers. The site allows Dell customers to view ideas posted by other community members, post new ideas about Dell's products or services, promote or demote ideas, and then see what ideas were actually implemented. In the three years since the site first launched, Dell has received more than 10,000 suggestions and implemented nearly 400 ideas. What's important to note here is that teams of Dell product managers spend time interacting with community members, sourcing good ideas that didn't necessarily make it to the top, and gaining insights into its customers' biggest concerns. The difference between Dell's program and what other companies are doing is that Dell is actually changing the way it does business based on community feedback.
Originally, the most popular suggestions concerned the Linux operating system on Dell machines. On May 24, 2007, just three short months after the site launched, Dell started selling three computer systems with Linux Ubuntu 7.04 preinstalled in the computers. The article requesting Linux eventually moved down the list and was replaced by newer ideas promoted by other community members.
MyStarbucksIdea
MyStarbucksIdea was built with the same intentions as Dell's IdeaStorm: to crowdsource ideas with the community. Community members can share, vote on, and discuss ideas, as well as see what ideas are being implemented. As with Dell, the entire community site is flooded with Starbucks employees listening to and engaging with customers. The site can be characterized as a real-time, always operating customer focus group. Since March 2008, the community has submitted more than 70,000 ideas.
A few suggestions that Starbucks has implemented include free coffee for Gold Card Members on their birthdays, a Starbucks VIP card, the infamous Starbucks Splashstick, and the program that gives customers a free cup of coffee when they buy coffee beans.
Intel's Ajay Bhatt T-Shirts
On a much smaller scale than the two previous examples, Intel took an idea one step further to delight its customers.
In 2009, Intel launched Sponsors of Tomorrow, a marketing campaign that centered on the people who work for the company, in an attempt to humanize the brand. Part of the campaign was a TV commercial titled "Your Rockstars aren't like our Rockstars." It featured Ajay Bhatt, Intel Fellow and the co-founder of the Universal Serial Bus (USB).
In the commercial, while Bhatt (played by an actor) is walking though the office, someone appears in the back holding open a T-shirt with Bhatt's face on it. The commercial was uploaded to YouTube and shared across the Internet on various web properties and blogs; then it was amplified through Twitter. Within days, these communities were begging for Ajay Bhatt t-shirts. They were tweeting about it, commenting on the Intel blogs, and posting on the YouTube channel and in third-party tech blogs.
Intel moved fast, printing 100 Bhatt T-shirts and giving them away as part of a month-long contest on Twitter. After the T-shirts were shipped, the winners began to post pictures of themselves wearing the T-shirts to Twitpic and Ajay Bhatt's Facebook Fan Page.
These three companies have more in common than just the fact that they're listening to social customers. They were also cited in a 2009 case study by Charlene Li and Wetpaint titled Deep Brand Engagement Correlates with Financial Performance. The report examined the top 50 brands and measured their depth of engagement with consumers on the web; it also looked at their financial performance for the last 12 months. The analysis showed that the companies that were more engaged in social media were seeing an increase of around 18 percent in revenue during the reporting period; companies that were least engaged suffered an average of 6 percent decline in revenue. Dell, Starbucks, and Intel were all listed among the top 10 companies in social media. It's not an exact science, but it's good food-for-thought for brands that are seriously considering social media engagement.