Brilliant Ideas (Some of Them, Anyway)

This is brilliant. Starbucks has a website devoted to customer suggestions for everything from the coffee flavors and store setups to the new loyalty rewards program the company has started. Some of the ideas are very good: recycling bins in the store, "Starbucks should enable customers to encode their usual customized drink orders on their Starbucks cards and have a scanner available in the front of the store" so that customers can scan skip the line by scanning in their order and payment. Some are gross: "Starbucks should include a shelf in the restroom to place your drink" - this should never, ever be implemented. People should not be encouraged to bring food and drink into restrooms. N-A-S-T-Y.

Check out the My Starbucks Idea site - it's interesting to see what ideas people come up with, and it's also intriguing to see what people put a premium on as customers. It represents a great way to use the internet to improve customer relations and ultimately, the bottom line. This makes sense, particularly for customers of businesses like Starbucks that sell the notion of afforadable luxury. Their customers seem much more likely to be online, and to take the time to give feedback on what they do and don't like about the Starbucks experience. The thing about the Starbucks customer is that they will spend $5 on a cup of coffee, but they are very aware that it is $5, and they want to get everything they can out of that $5 (I can't blame them us, but I do recommend a French Press. For $50 you can get a nice press and splurge on some amazing Illy coffee. You spend that at Starbucks in a week - treat yourself!). I digress. Go check out the site, very interesting.