We have the pleasure of working with a variety of customers across multiple verticals like retail, consumer banking, web applications, hospitality, outdoors and more. The most common theme across all of these customers is that they have made the simple idea of “capturing customer feedback” not just about collecting great ideas from their customers, but connecting to build better customer relationships.
Most of the time what these companies are doing go overlooked unless you’re embedded in that niche community, but I want to call attention to the fact that no matter what size business you are; connecting to your customers and understanding their needs is your #1 challenge on a daily basis. Customers can help shape new products, old features, event locations and even new drink flavors. What Starbucks, Dell and now Oracle have done is simply laid the foundation for companies around the world to start figuring out how to get that invaluable feedback from customers and even beyond that, connecting with them to drive improvement throughout the organization.
I wanted to share some links to some of these industry leaders who have embraced the online suggestion box:
The above initiatives are great examples of Customer Listening Programs and good reasons to evaluate how you are currently capturing customer feedback. If you are capturing customer feedback, what are you doing with it? Are you keeping customers, employees, partners, vendors and others in the loop? Are you taking action on these ideas? Reading Charlene Li’s post about her preview of the Oracle Listens program, she states, “I think the biggest risk is that Oracle as an organization does not sustain the effort over the long term.” I could not help but agree with her. Taking the step to launch a customer-focused initiative like this needs to be well thought out and embedded into your operational efforts as well as a source for great ideas that can help shape your company’s direction.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be modifying SuggestionBox a bit. In a good way. If you’re considering a customer listening program, customer feedback solution, online suggestion box or customer relationship tool; I suggest learning more about our platform SuggestionBox. You don’t need a team of developers, IT certifications or rocket science degree to get started. Build better customer relationships now.
We are happy to announce the launch of the SuggestionBox.com affiliate program! We designed the affiliate program to be both simple and rewarding. We truly appreciate the support and promotion we have received from our community and this is a great way for us to reward all their hard work.
Here’s how it works:
Sign up and become an affiliate - you get a $10 bonus in your account just for signing up!
Add our banners, links or text ads to your website -clicks from your ads are automatically tracked
Make money - when someone signs up from one of your links, you earn 20% of the monthly billable total
Make more money - each month you will continue to earn 20% from customers who signed up from one of your links
Keep Track - Log into your account. View traffic and commission stats to see how you’re doing.
Cash out - payouts are sent the 1st of each month by check or PayPal once the minimum payout level is reached.
If you have any suggestions as to how we can make our affiliate program better, you know what to do.
I just wanted to update our customers and community with some recent news. So we’ve worked with Addison Avenue, one of our customers, to acknowledge the way they’ve embraced the feedback from their customers to improve the way they do business.
“It is our core belief at Addison Avenue that we can help people make their lives better. We are set apart as a Credit Union that can help solve our members’ real life problems and direct them towards achieving financial freedom – at any stage of life.”
If you’re wondering what a company like Addison Avenue (a Palo Alto Credit Union) does with all their customer feedback, see for yourself on their SuggestionBox page.
For anyone who wasn’t able to head up to the Techcrunch50 event, it was a blast. The atmosphere was filled with the entrepreneurial spirit that drives each of us everyday to make something that will be useful to people and in some way improve their lives. It might just be a Firefox add-on that let’s you stay on the same page and search like Briteclick. It could be a simple solution for the small business owner that wants to take back their website and be able to update it themselves like SnapPages. And it could be something that when you’re standing on your feet for 13 hours you need so badly that you’re willing to pay for it like a $5 Nonfat double short latte from David at myJambi. These were just a few of the 160 startup companies that either pitched their ideas on stage or were presenting in the demo pit. At SuggestionBox, we’re all about feedback and helping companies improve the way they capture, manage and respond to feedback by making it truly interactive. This is where our journey begins.
We decided to not only power the Techcrunch50 event feedback, but also give every startup company their own free 1 year account. They now had a way to capture all the great feedback and then re-connect with everyone as they implemented their suggestions. Well, we hope that’s what they are doing.
Overall, the event feedback was great. There are 28 suggestions from various people from the event and I’m sure there are countless others that want to share their suggestions on the event as well. After 3 days at our table, I’m sure Peter, Gema and Jeff would agree that powering the event’s feedback and helping these companies was a great investment for the product as well as the number of people we were able to connect with and hopefully build long term relationships as each of our companies experience growth. The bonds or relationships you create can last forever if you invest the time and having access to a tool like SuggestionBox will enable many of these companies to re-connect when they’re ready and not miss out on any opportunities with the people that care about their product or service.
I’m just glad that I got to demo myJambi and hire David to deliver us some Starbucks to our table or I might not have lasted. Thanks DAVID!!! (Coverage on Techcrunch.com)
Below are some photos from the event:
Feel free to leave us some comments and share your own Techcrunch50 stories with us!
If you didn’t already know, SuggestionBox.com headed up to San Francisco for TechCrunch 50 this week. As the official feedback platform for the event, we have created a special event page that contains the suggestion boxes of all the companies that are presenting, demoing or sponsoring the event (there is also a general TC50 suggestion box). You can watch the presentations on the TechCrunch site or follow us via Twitter. If you are at the event, stop by and say hi to the team.
The most valuable thing a brand new company launching can get is feedback, so let’s lend them a hand. There are still 4 spots left for the race to 100 suggestions. The more feedback you give, the closer you get to winning a $100 Visa gift card. Make 2 suggestions to each of the TechCrunch presenting companies and you will hit 100. Make 1 suggestion to each of the companies in the DemoPit and you hit 100. Mix and match, you decide.
While some are getting closer to the 100 mark, you still have a chance to surpass them all! Here are the latest top Suggesters:
Suggester #340 - CW
Suggester #460 - LRL
Suggester #539 - sb1
Suggester #613 - Nick
Suggester #1374 - John L.
In any startup, one of the most crucial tasks is hiring new team members. The process of prospecting, evaluating, interviewing and negotiating can be very daunting and time consuming in relation to the other types of activities you may be performing on a daily basis. Like any business, it’s important that the final candidate fits into the environment that you’ve taken so much time to create and that he or she can perform in the role structure that you’ve created as well. So we’ve taken that four-part hiring process and added our own ingredients to really get at the root of “environmental fit” and “responsibilities execution.” Our approach to this just so happened to gain us coverage on ABCNews.com and San Diego’s CW 6.
Every job posting and role description on the web lists some type of responsibilities. These are the things that you can assume you’ll be doing on a daily basis. It gives you a good indicator of whether you’re qualified or have enough know-how that you’ll be able to quickly adapt to anything you’re not that familiar with. As a person doing the hiring, this is your list of checks and balances for one of the areas where you’re evaluating each candidate. As we were developing the lists of responsibilities for the Community Manager role at SuggestionBox, we decided to use a few of their responsibilities as part of the hiring process. Hence, enter video resumes.
Whenever you’re evaluating any candidates on paper, the paper resume can help you filter down to the most qualified in terms of experience and ability to perform some of the duties associated with the role. In this case, being in front of the camera, creative, engaging and proactive were some of the things we were looking for in each of the candidates. So we gave them the option of sending in your standard cover letter or a video stating, “Why I Am The Best Community Manager?” That simple question gave us the ability to see a candidate’s approach to their new role, how they were in front of the camera, did they add in their own creativity and to what lengths did they go above and beyond the assignment? And in addition to the initial video resume submissions, the three final candidates would be conducting their own video interviews with myself and our team would be giving feedback.
So by simple taking that standard “responsibilities” list and being innovative, not only were we able to find great candidates, but our approach received some recognition on the following websites:
Last month we announced that the first 5 Suggesters to reach 100 suggestions would win a $100 Visa gift card. The first Suggester to reach 100 suggestions was OpenInnovator, Suggester #512. The race is still on for the remaining 4 spots! We realize 100 suggestions is a tall order, but we know you have great ideas and that you just need a little nudge to get started. So here you go. Nudge, nudge.
Here are a few tips to help you get to 100 suggestions faster:
When you come up with a great idea, chances are more than one company can benefit from it. Submit your suggestion to the intended company AND their competitors.
Think about the companies you interact with on a daily basis: your favorite websites, lunch spots, supermarkets, gyms, movie theaters, online stores, doctor’s office, dentist, hotel/spa, bar/club, video games, etc.
Support others’ suggestions. Read the suggestions from your fellow Suggesters. Get inspired. Make suggestions that complement their ideas.
12seconds, a new video status update website is the topic of the day. The team at SuggestionBox took the time to demo out the tool for all of you. Here is how we envision using the tool to provide the companies we love with our very own video suggestions. So enjoy our 12 suggestions using 12seconds:
More info about 12seconds 12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It’s a super easy way to share what you’re doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone. Show your friends where you are, share your thoughts, or tell them how you’re doing. We are building a video status platform that will help you keep up to date with your friends 12 seconds at a time.
We are happy to announce that we have rolled out an update to SuggestionBox.com that includes easier ways to make suggestions, keep track of your stats and get credit for inviting your friends & family.
Make A Suggestion On The Fly! You can now submit a suggestion without creating an account. If you provide your email address, we will notify you when the company responds to your suggestion. Any suggestions you make with your email address can later be claimed when you create an account using that same email, and all of your suggestions will then be accessible via your Suggestions Dashboard.
Creating an account allows you to vote, follow your favorite suggestions, comment, and read private messages. In addition, all your suggestions are centrally located and searchable in your Suggestions dashboard. Think of it as your Suggestion Headquarters.
Suggestions Dashboard Improvements
On your Suggestions dashboard, you will now find the total number of friends who you have invited and signed up. In addition, we have fixed a small issue with the suggestion counts that are displayed on your dashboard and throughout the site. The total number of suggestions in each category are now consistent and accurate.
Stay tuned as we continue to roll out new features. Let us know what you want the most by submitting your ideas.
I setup this Zimbio poll called “What way do you capture feedback from customers?” and there have been 20 votes thus far. I’d like to share a bit of the history on the creation of this poll.
A. I posted a question on Twitter asking what polling tools people recommended and received 3 responses:
ask500 @BJ re fast polls, you can put a poll on Ask500.com from twitter like this: @ask500 Q: question here? answerA or AnswerB (follow @ask500)
PaulSoldera @BJ www.surveymonkey.com is pretty popular as a general survey app, used it once and was very easy
GroovyBrent @BJ I really like SurveyMonkey. Not sure if it would suit your needs.
From the responses above I could see that Survey Monkey was the clear winner. But, I still wanted something I could literally setup in 5-10 minutes and just launch that day. So I found Zimbio that had a poll tool integrated into it.
B. I created the question and the answers as seen here. C. I then began posting to Twitter, IMing around to friends and shot a couple emails. D. I received the “Sure, I’ll check it out,” “Will do” and “I’ll pass it to 30 more people.”
So now I’m at 20 votes and I’m asking for more help to gain a larger sample to truly see what tools companies are using to capture customer feedback.
Current Results:
It’s not so surprising to see that most are not even capturing customer feedback. Admitting that you aren’t is the first step towards recognizing that it’s time to reach out to your customers and find out what they think. So I’ll be posting my thoughts as the poll comes to an end over the next week.
We are happy to announce the launch of the 
Here are a few tips to help you get to 100 suggestions faster:
