FreshNetworks Blog

A couple of days ago, I wrote about mystarbucksidea and our thoughts at FreshNetworks about the need to close the feedback loop and move the conversation on from just free coffee and free Wi-Fi (see post here). There has been a fair bit of discussion about the benefits of what Starbucks is doing, and as specialists in online communities and customer engagement, it’s something the team has been following quite closely. Some of the more interesting comments are below.

Brazen Careerist thinks that the Starbucks site is struggling because it is not showing customers that it is really listening. This highlights one of the difficulties of setting up an online community or social network for customers – it is not as simple as setting up a site, sitting back and waiting for the magic to happen. It takes close, expert and dedicated management to make it a success.

Charline Li at Groundswell is more enthusiastic and highlightsone significant benefits of such online communities. She has been able to find other Starbucks customers with similar concerns and ideas to her, realising she’s not alone but rathe is a regular member of the Starbucks communitiy.

Netbanker thinks that the Starbucks site could be emulated by the financial services industry. This crosover is particularly interesting as Starbucks (and the Dell predecessor) are both product based offers – banks and the like offer services and it would be interesting to see how a similar online engagement tool could work in this domain.

Finally, Bob Poole comments on Starbucks claim to now be listening to customers through the site: “What were they doing before? Not listening?”. As with all successful online activitie, in needs to run alongside your offline efforts; not cannibalise them.