Design Loom

Getting your users/Customers involved

The art of listening to the masses

The food service industry has always been kind of the first to acknowledge that the customer is always right. Recent trends in web design and usability standards have focused on the “customer ” in a whole new way. By catering to the need of the user, design has guided the effort of building the ultimate environments in which users can interact with applications, machines and everyday elements, without suffering from a backlash of miscommunication or the sense or feeling of not being able to interact with something because you simply couldn’t or didn’t understand it. In the last year and half, not only has the trend to make the environments more appealing and welcoming become more prevalent, but now the environments are staring to take direct cues form immediate feedback from its users. The ultimate form of customer service, where the provider anticipates the needs of the user, by focusing on the things that they will eventually want. Its a risky venture to try and guess with small pools of opinions, but more and more companies are putting the business models in front of the customers and creating a transparent experience where the user become as engaged in the development of the product as the company itself. I only thought that this was the case of a few and rare companies who have always had a knack for listening very carefully to their public, and the perception of their image in their eyes. These PR dream companies end up pleasing their masses so well that they build brand equity because they let the average joe think that they are part of building the company itself and the success that might come as a result. This is mostly true of tech companies who start out as small ventures and rely on the dedicated users feedback to tailor features to their needs and therefore improving the experience, so that he or she may in turn pass on the satisfaction on to someone else who will be expecting a similar result.

Tech has also paved the way to creating channels that create the feeling of genuine communication to the companies. While basic emails that direct your inquiries to broad accounts, more and more, users are getting direct lines into the inbozes of the people who make decisions.

This post really came about as result because of very interesting initiative currently being explored by the Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX). In a recent visit to their site, I saw what seemed to be a fairly large prominent graphic displaying on the site that read “Got a Great Idea” . With curiosity in tow, i ventured to click on the link that was provided by said graphic. After i was redirected to a new site, my curiosity began to grow, and i realized that I was either about to be sold on some new product, or i was about to be delivered something very different, and i want sure quite what to expect.

Upon my arrival to this new page, called “My Starbucks Idea” I was lost for a brief second while i digested the contents, then it struck me , its the nicest feedback site i had ever encountered, and while its function can be compared to that of a taste survey, this thing was well…, brilliant. Basic, simple and direct, “My starbucks idea” wanted me to post my suggestions on how to improve my experience with the company as a whole. and I could if i wanted to focus it more specifically to certain areas, like products, experience and community. What i loved about this is how responsive the who idea was, you post, while you post the site provides feedback on similar ideas that sound like the title of your own, and you can go ahead and read the ones that struck close to your own idea or continue to post. You then get a chance to describe it in detail, and then let the world start sharing their opinions on your idea. Here are the reasons why i believe this to be a very good idea and who it ends up benefiting:

Transparency (Affects both Customer and Company): You Are giving people the sense of who you are and what you do and how you do it, this lifts consumer confidence and lets the customer know that you have no “ulterior motives” .

Community(benefits the consumer): Its not starbucks against the world, or them trying to abuse of us as consumers, but it feels more like they respect our business with them ( while this is a little hairy around the edges, most companies are out to make money and get us addicted on their product or service, but this way it feels less intrusive or forceful)

Growth (benefits the company): How many millions are spent annually in consumer testing and research. This is a proactive approach to talking to your base, and actively engaging them in way they use the product and how they use the product. Weather or not you end up utilizing any suggestion is the companies prerogative, but think of the science behind finding out how your core base interacts with the product and how valuable that information can be not only for the current base but for initiative on acquiring new faces.

Innovation(benefits the company): Like growth, getting ideas from the source of the users, is perhaps one of the bast way you maintain a strategy that openly views the product from multiple perspectives. While internally the company will have goals it seeks to achieve, having people who are not swimming in the same lane of product development can help spark ideas of where to expand the business.

Impact (benefits both): If you have a small and minor say in how a company does business because it caters to your needs, then the overall experience can be overwhelmingly positive. The again you might be prone to want things your own way and , the percentage of people who share your view may be small. This however is solved with the notion of rating an idea for how successful it might be.

Its not to say My Starbucks idea doesn’t have its flaws, how much control do you really want to hand over the the consumer, and for that matter does it backfire one people realize all the ideas you might submit, just fall to the wayside and live in a place commonly called the drawing borad. How do you execute on these ideas, and keep the value for the business without giving away too many secrets, and realistically can you get enough of a customer base to contribute or give and opinion that is worthy of an investment of significant proportions?

In recent days My own company, Netflix(NASDAQ: NFLX) went through what some would call a whirlwind of response from the community of users that make up a small part of out base. After having told people that we would be eliminating a feature of the site that was used by a percentage of users small enough that merited its elimination, the outcry from the group that did was unlike anything ive ever encountered. The passion for the product and why the like the service and how they used it, proved to not only be a valuable lesson in underestimating the opinions of the user, but also a lesson in the value of responding and reacting to such news. Once the company digested the uproar, they admitted their mistake and reversed their decision to eliminate the feature. Most of the group that was facing the impending loss of their valued feature reacted with positive feedback about haw they were happy Netflix had heard them and acted accordingly. Granted the misstep tat occurred in this whole ordeal was not identifying the significance of the feature set before considering its removal, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Needless to say now a days gaining control is what people react to as part of a positive experience and it simply attributed tot he nature of humans wanting not only control but knowledge of the things that they interact with. From where on gods green earth your package may be in the world as you track it via UPS website, or how you like your lattes served in the morning and with what type of greeting from the local Starbucks Barrista.

On a side note: This post was pretty business side heavy, and while design will and has been my main goal for this blog, things like “my starbucks idea” are innovations that are fuels and executed as a result of design. Design in this case end ups becoming and ends to a mean, and my idea on witting about this was simply because, i think starbucks did and exceptional job at providing their base with an online experience that brings them closer to the $4 lattes and the justifications as to why the buy them !