Starbucks has finally taken a page out of Dell’s playbook by launching their own Ideastorm called “My Starbucks Idea” hosted by salesforce.com.
As of today, the ideas that have garnished the most votes are as follows:
* Providing embedded orders in Starbucks cards
* A nominal incentive to re-use the Starbucks cards
* Loyalty programs (buy 20 get one free and free birthday drink)
* Separate lines for drip coffee and sandwiches than for espresso based orders
* Free WiFi internet access
* A reduction in “teddy bears, CDs, and others”
* Larger emphasis on improving aging facilities, and restroom cleaning
* Make Starbucks local with local art, and mug walls (I assume pictures of local customers)
So, pull up a comfortable chair and participate in My Starbucks Idea. We’re here, we’re engaged, and we’re taking it seriously.
This is your place. Let’s see where we can take it together.
— Howard Shultz
Along side the launch of “My Starbucks Idea”, Starbucks has announced they will be switching the type of automatic espresso machines that will grind coffee within the store locations. Soon you’ll have the welcoming smell of freshly ground coffee in a Starbucks near you.
Interesting that Caribou Coffee has the first three ideas - add $$ to you card, have x amount of qualifying purchases and Caribou adds $ on the card. Free Wi-fi, check. Free Drink on your birthday, check.
Oh, and the fresh ground coffee, Caribou grounds it immediately before it’s brewed! Starbucks grind all their beans in the morning for the ENTIRE day! (And the bean @Caribou is a higher grade.)
So why did it take Starbucks tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to create this when a little competitive analysis or some time on Twitter asking folks what they want would yield the same results?
Susan -
Great points on looking at the competition, surely some competitive analysis would have helped.
I personally haven’t had the chance to visit any Caribou Coffee locations as I am in Canada and not aware of their operations.
While simply asking your customers what they want is a good step, I think the platform they’ve used provides a way to prioritize or quantify ideas with their voting system. Not only that, but hopefully they will discover some unique ideas that some of their customers might suggest that would not be possible through Twitter (the reason being that not everyone has a Twitter account).
I haven’t had a look, but it would be interesting to see what lies in Twitter for Starbucks suggestions. Do you know of any companies that are actively using Twitter to improve their operations?
[...] a new Wikinomics Report Card on Starbucks: “Peering: My colleague David Cameron wrote about My Starbucks Idea on the blog a few months ago. The idea is quite similar to Dell’s Ideastorm, most recently [...]