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:

• Oracle Listens
• MyStarbucksIdea
• Dell Ideastorm

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.

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.

You can read and review the submission here.

“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.

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:

Suggestion: Swedish Fish - attach the zipper seal to the bag on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: Ralphs - see rewards points on website on 12seconds.tv

More Noodles!! on 12seconds.tv

Blackberry Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Cubes on 12seconds.tv

ThinkGeek - Cubes Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Lord of The Rings on 12seconds.tv

CardScan Executive Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Startup Schwag Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Less Dye Arrowhead! on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: 12 seconds favorites please on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: 12 seconds default in my location on video form on 12seconds.tv

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.

What better way to grasp the importance of customer feedback than asking someone who is embracing it in so many ways. I recently had the opportunity to email interview Andy Beal, well known blogger, speaker, author and analyst. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with Andy as a founding Gooru on Gooruze.com and as a customer of SuggestionBox. I sent Andy 3 questions covering customer feedback, how he is using it for Trackur and the benefits of publicizing your “customer interaction points.” Enjoy.

Why is it important to listen to your customers and capture their feedback?

For years, customers have discussed companies, products, and services in their homes, offices, and coffee shops. Now the conversation has shifted to the internet, we shouldn’t cover our ears. Instead, we should realize that, as businesses, we have a huge opportunity to learn from our customers and provide a better experience.

The customers that take the time to provide feedback are generally the ones that sincerely hope you’ll listen and make the improvements they’d like to see. Listening to that feedback–especially when echoed by more than one customer–allows you to build better products, provide better service, and ultimately, improve your profits.

How are you applying the above steps to the development of Trackur?

I’m all ears! I’m learning from blog reviews, Twitter feedback, customer questions, and services such as SuggestionBox. Does it make me wince, when I receive some negative feedback? Sure, it does. But then I see the opportunity to make Trackur even better. When you build a service that includes feedback from your customers, you gain their loyalty and they’ll take partial ownership in your success–they’ll be active in helping your grow.

What effects could a company expect by publicizing their “customer interaction points?”

How many companies can you name, that seem to care about the feedback you provide. Chances are, your list is very short, but the ones you can name stay top of mind because you are impressed by their radical transparency. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you want to have your feedback show up in multiple places online.

If I’m torn between a similar product from two rival companies, as a customer, I’ll more likely buy from the business that demonstrates it listens to its customers and gives them a platform to share their reviews, suggestions, and general feedback.

Thanks Andy!

If you want to learn more about Andy Beal and his work:

• Attend his Online Reputation Management Workshop in Raleigh, August 7th.
• Learn about his new book Radically Transparent
• Monitor your reputation automatically with Trackur

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:

1. 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)
2. PaulSoldera @BJ www.surveymonkey.com is pretty popular as a general survey app, used it once and was very easy
3. 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.

It’s late on a Friday night and the office is quiet.

I wanted to create a connection between my own usage of SuggestionBox and how I thought it related to the other Suggesters in our community and on top of that what outcomes you might expect by engrossing yourself in your own community.

This morning I was sitting in on a call hosted by Learn From My Life featuring Lois Kelly, author, entrepreneur and marketing expert. During the call I noted some things she said about attracting and keeping great customers then developing relationships and trust. She said, “If you can provide a great customer experience you are sure to be on your way to achieving the latter two points.” Specifically in the area of “trust”, it’s important to understand an organization’s beliefs and values. This led me to think that if I could be a maverick for our own organization here at SuggestionBox and be the power Suggester, then I could wear my heart on my sleeve around others in the community. So I’m up to 90 suggestions! What’s also important is that I feel it’s important to reach out to others who would benefit by setting up a SuggestionBox page. Here are the ways to show your love and benefits that I feel any organization, SMB, Enterprise, Nonprofit, group, association or club could derive from building a community of raving fans:

• Infuse some trust and authenticity into the relationships you have with current and potential customers
• Empower your customers by doing things with them
• Generate Word of Mouth Marketing via the people around you that care
• Avoid missed opportunities like connecting with someone who may not have had the best experience or has a question
• Understand your customers and save time, money and the anxiety
• Improve the overall customer experience, starting with a simplified feedback channel

So we covered my usage, what a community can do for you on SuggestionBox and let’s look at the Suggesters. We’re working on a series of content that will help explain what a Suggester is. And we’re going to own this personality as an organization. As a Suggester, we are going to try to change the perception that when you submit feedback that you won’t receive a response. We often hear this is biggest hurdle for why people don’t often give feedback. We are challenging ourselves with taking this head on and doing everything we can to ensure our Suggesters are taken care of and are given the tools to succeed in their efforts to suggest and have their voices heard.

So over the next couple weeks, you’ll see some new tools launching and new ways that you can keep track of your progress against everybody else in the Suggester community. Of course, I challenge anyone to out-suggest me and any company to avoid missing an opportunity to connect with the people that care about them.

Like any relationship it starts with listening. So show some love, you just might get the same in return.

So it’s been almost one month and a half since we launched SuggestionBox.com. Everyday we’re working to develop this into THE online destination for people to make suggestions to any company worldwide. Big goals? That’s why we also practice what we preach. We’ve been listening to our Suggester community and current customers to see what will make this the best tool that can connect both audiences to each other. At the end of the day, Suggesters and SuggestionBox owners should connect to work together to improve.

I wanted to take the time to highlight some of the things we’ve actually implemented while managing our own SuggestionBox page and show you how you build reputation stats within the community. The following image shows the SuggestionBox page stats:

If you look at the above image you can see that we’ve implemented 20 out of 56 and are working on the next 16 as we speak. Below are some of the suggestions that have already been implemented to give you some sense of what types of suggestions people are submitting:

• Add Bookmarking Buttons
• Make the Suggestion Field more than 255 characters
• Issue A Press Release
• # of Suggestions in the Box
• RSS Feeds

View more of our implemented suggestions

Within each suggestion you’ll see that when you respond as a company your replies are marked by the blue fill to highlight an official response.

So managing the SuggestionBox is one piece of the new relationship with Suggesters. I’m also a Suggester and pretty sure I’m leading the way with 78 suggestions. Here are my official SuggestionBox Dashboard Stats:

If you look at my reputation in SuggestionBox you’ll notice that I have 40 Firsts.
What are Firsts? Firsts are given to you when you are the “First To Suggest” and create a new SuggestionBox for any company if they aren’t already in our database. I wonder if someone will surpass me?

With so many of us on both sides of trying to capture customer feedback and giving our suggestions to the companies we interact with each day, it’s important to show we’re both listening and voicing our ideas. Without this interaction, improvement becomes a guessing game for the business owner and something a Suggester can only hope for as they stumble into another experience. Embrace the box!