*supercollider

Right now on My Starbucks Idea the first 10 ideas under the Popular heading are:

1. Recycling cold cups - bins and education
2. Free coffee on the day of your birthday
3. Buy 10 get 1 free!
4. Stop trashing empty cards
5. Coffee ice cubes
6. Lower your prices
7. Stop wasting so many pastries!
8. I’ll buy you a drink remotely
9. Discount when reloading a Starbucks Card
10. Recycle!

In one respect or another, 40% of those ideas are about the environment and 40% are about personal finances. Another is about melting ice cubes, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

Given that a lot of the world is worrying about global warming and the credit crunch right now, these results aren’t necessarily surprising. But it is interesting that you might be able to get a feel for what people are really concerned about right now by looking at a corporate suggestion box, even on a giant scale.

Starbucks’ crowdsourcing portal has given them a window into the priorities of their customers. More than that, in many cases the customers have even suggested specific solutions and actions. The amount invested must be negligible compared to the value of that insight and those ideas.

And that’s not even counting the boost in loyalty, advocacy and consumer sentiment gained from actively listening to, responding to, and acting on their customer concerns. Dell reported that sentiment moved from 50% negative to 23% negative just one year into their social media strategy.

So with results like these, the question is why are more companies not following Starbucks and Dell’s lead on this?

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