CRM and the Customer – Sharing Ideas

It’s sad to say but I think we’re already taking transparency and collaborative idea sharing for granted. We love platforms like MyStarbucksIdeas, IdeaStorm, Crocs Ideas and other collaborative corners where we can, as consumer/customer and company, share thoughts, challenge the norm and make products better for all involved. I know I’ve logged a few ideas for Starbucks and Dell as well as for Salesforce.com on their Ideas site. I also know that my ideas are actively being vetted not only by product managers, but by other community members. Together we’ll make the products and services for those companies better.

The thought of such collaboration intrigued me. I thought about how such a platform could be used for my business in the Tradeshow industry. Granted, the tradeshow/exhibition business is one of the last vestiges of 20th century communication (read: faxes, paper, phone, paper, maybe e-mail and of course paper), but certainly such a platform could bring together our product/service managers, salespeople, marketing teams and executives with customers.

The next few posts will outline our experience selling the idea to our leadership and lessons learned along the way.

Since all good stories (not including this post in that realm) end with a tease I’ll leave you with the most important questions to be asked when considering a roll-out of a collaborative idea sharing platform:

“Do we want to know what our customers have to say?”

While I’ve yet to run into a company/group who answered negatively to this question, many should have spent more time pondering the question before launching into a new project.

Next up: What does it mean to listen and how do we show we are listening?