Cool Website Tuesdays: My Starbucks Idea
I don’t really much like Starbucks: I think there are too many of them, and I usually get sick off of their coffee drinks. However, I think My Starbucks Idea is a phenomenal implementation of an social voting and networking, Digg-like — using your customers to generate ideas on how to your company.
You can submit ideas, and other users can vote and comment on the ideas. From that, the ideas are submitted to Starbucks management. On the blog, the management actually asks for feedback on how to implement the idea, and if the idea is good and gets a great rating, the management gives credit to the users (what they should be doing is sending them at least a Starbucks for some kind of reward system).
More importantly, it allows Starbucks to evangelize to their customers, and build a devout customer base. There’s nothing better than empowering your customers to do your advertising for you.
Some of the suggested ideas are better recycling options, healthier food suggestions, and how to get people to refill their starbucks cards to save the environment.