By Alice Bumgarner
A mere week after the launch of MyStarbucksIdea.com — a digital platform allowing consumers to submit and vote on ideas for the coffee retailer — hundreds of ideas had poured in, along with tens of thousands of votes. Less than two months after the March 2008 launch of the site, Starbucks rolled out its first customer-inspired innovation: a splash stick, to keep scalding-hot coffee from sloshing out through the coffee-lid hole. Starbucks fans everywhere rejoiced.
Like Starbucks, Campbell’s, Dell and Threadless.com have all created digital platforms that encourage customers to submit ideas to help create new products and messages. Some say that, in a time of battened-down budgets, this is the most efficient, nimble way to innovate.
It sends a message about who they are as a company — “Hey, customers! What’s up? We like listening. And we really like your ideas.”
Using online tools, or even more traditional methods, to tap in to customers’ ideas can provide a steady (free) stream of potential profit-boosters. The approach can tighten the loop from idea to rollout, so what’s being introduced are only the improvements, products and processes that customers want.
The tactic also gives customers something they increasingly demand from the brands they’re loyal to — participation and creative power. Given the rise of social media, customers are used to seeing brands on Twitter, Facebook and blogs, three platforms that let them speak directly to decision makers.
For businesses, these new platforms make listening versus messaging more important than ever.
Go to Quick Chek’s fan page on Face-book, and you’ll see a virtual conversation playing out between 5,000 customers and John Schaninger, vice president of sales and merchandising for the 120-store convenience chain with stores in New Jersey and New York.
Writing under the moniker “Quick Chek,” Schaninger takes advantage of the forum to ask questions (“Did anyone use the Fan Exclusives coupon this weekend?”), to dash off responses to customer suggestions like “Quick Chek needs a chicken carbonara sub like the one at Quiznos, because your sub bread is better,” and to work in the occasional store promotion.
Above all, he maintains a healthy back-and-forth with “fans.” Indeed, compared to other convenience store retailers on Facebook, Quick Chek stands out for the interaction it maintains between customers, employees and the brand.
“I do like to respond to everybody, even if it’s a ‘thank you’ or ‘e-mail me privately,’” Schaninger said.
The power of word-of-mouth is one reason Quick Chek has beefed up its Facebook presence.
“In the past, we always used to say, ‘One unhappy person tells 10 people.’ In today’s age, one unhappy person could tell hundreds of thousands of people,” Schaninger said. “The more we’re able to talk to customers and make sure they like coming to us, the more it helps us, because they talk to other people.”
By using tools like Twitter, Facebook and blogs, it’s easy to listen to what customers are saying. And by actually inviting customers to a conversation, Quick Chek and others send a message about who they are as a company — “Hey, customers! What’s up? We like listening. And we really like your ideas.”
Over on Twitter, Sheetz (or @sheetzcard) communicates with 1,700 followers as it tests a new SheetzCard in Ohio and North Carolina. The company rep chats with customers about frozen mocha and giveaways, and gathers input through survey questions about its proprietary foodservice like “What’s your favorite MTO sandwich?”
Meanwhile, across the country in California, Famima!! is revamping its Web site to include a Famima Fanatics page, where people can join a discussion about what they like — and what they’d like to change — about their local store.
“It allows us to be more in sync with the generation spending all their time on their BlackBerry,” said Pervez Pir, vice president of marketing at Famima USA. “We think that’s going to be the next big thing for us.”
He’s not the only one. Chris Brogan, president of new media marketing agency New Marketing Labs, believes that two simultaneous trends are making it more common for retailers to listen to customers online: First, people are sharing more and more “unstructured but useful” information online. And second, the tools for listening to customers have become more sophisticated and less expensive.
“These new online tools do a lot for retailers, because they allow much more interaction than the typical banner ad or e-mail blast,” Brogan said. “By taking the time to engage in two-way communications, retailers have the opportunity to build store loyalty, to discern new trends faster and to better anticipate need.”
One retailer has pushed the idea of online conversation to its extreme. At New York-based men’s clothing company Bonobos, listening to customer input is at the core of the company’s philosophy.
Two other things to know about Bonobos: They do almost all their business via their Web site. And they have a ridiculously friendly return policy: If you don’t like a pair of Bonobos pants after a few wears, you can send them back, no questions asked.
Knowing what customers will like or not like, then, becomes incredibly important. The last thing Bonobos wants is a closet full of returns. So any new product development at the company first goes through a listening period with customers.
“We’re looking to see, with the data, whether people are aligned with us. Ultimately, we make what we think they’ll buy,” said David Eisenberg, director of growth. “We’re trying to minimize mistakes because of tight loops.”
Bonobos’ most frequent channel of conversation is its blog, then Twitter and Facebook. Often the company asks questions to confirm a hypothesis. Staffers use the online tools to post questions like, “What are your top color requests for better-fitting tees?” or “What do you guys think about a Bonobos golf line?” The executive team pays close attention to the answers.
Eisenberg says the key to a constant stream of customer ideas is to do something with their input, or at least acknowledge it. You have to do more than simply give them a place to talk and then just leave them alone. Hearing, in other words, is not the same as listening.
Is there a measurable financial upside to all this conversation? The way some some c-store retailers see it, yes. Customers’ ideas can help them continually bring in new merchandise and gain an edge over the competition.
“We’re the small guy on the block. No one knows us,” said Famima’s Pir. “So it’s more important for us to listen.”
Customer ideas were behind Famima’s decision to roll out a vegetarian line, sushi wraps and pita sandwiches, among other items.
“What are customer ideas worth? Let me give you approximate numbers. The vegetarian line, for example, which customers asked for — we have three SKUs we’re going to roll out at $4.99, and a store will probably sell 10 to 12 units total per day. In our business, new items are the backbone of generating incremental sales. Customers are coming in for new items, so we have to be innovative, particularly in fresh food, which is 35 percent to 40 percent of our business.”
Quick Chek, which has traditionally sold its coffee beans by the can, heeded its customers’ request for bagged beans, which arrived on store shelves in November. Another customer idea: selling gift cards online. The c-store retailer heard via its Web site’s comment box that even consumers who don’t live near stores (where cards are normally sold) wanted to purchase them. This holiday season, they expect a new gift card microsite to boost sales.
Once you open up an easy channel for customer ideas, you may be surprised by the response. When Quick Chek recently ran a “Name It, Claim It” contest, asking customers to come up with a new name for the chain’s frozen drink, the company was inundated with ideas (mostly online).
“I can’t believe the response,” said Schaninger. “The number of names we’re getting — it’s far surpassing what I expected.”
Marketing execs agree that a key to any listening campaign is what you do with the input. Without a process in place to manage the flow, all that conversation becomes noise.
At Starbucks, for example, 48 specially trained “idea partners” enable discussions on MyStarbucksIdea.com and draw consumers out. Not only that, idea partners also advocate within the company for specific customer ideas, so customers have a voice when product decisions are being made.
At Famima, Pir sends his colleagues a monthly e-mail that compiles customer ideas and feedback. He allocates the comments by department, asking for any response or plan within two weeks. At monthly managers’ meetings, Pir tracks each piece of input, expecting department leads to “tie the loop.”
Whether and how an idea becomes anything more than an idea is an article for another day. No doubt, execution matters. After all, customers may insist that what they really need more than anything is purple milk. But are you the right retailer to provide it?
A conversation requires listening and making decisions without forgetting who you are as a business. Giving customers what they want — without considering operational limitations or business objectives — can lead you to a debacle on par with the Pontiac Aztek.
Or, for that matter, The Homer. In one episode of The Simpsons, Homer is asked by his car mogul half-brother, Herb, to design a new car for his company. Who better than an average American to craft a car that perfectly meets his needs? Tricked out with a bubble dome, tail fins and several horns playing “La Cucaracha,” the car turns out to be a hideous monstrosity with a price tag of $82,000.
For every splash stick idea, there may be dozens of Homers. But benefitting at all from the value of conversation requires that you become a more vehement listener, that you promote your social media presence within e-mail campaigns or on your company’s Web site, that you allow your customers to reach you immediately in a variety of ways.
As Chris Brogan said, “As people blurt out their interests, their desires, their hungers, their needs online...the opportunities are endless.”
Alice Bumgarner is a freelance writer based in Durham, North Carolina.