PUBLIC MARKS from dimelo with tag en

I think we might have taken that kind of CRM as far as possible for the time being. We have all kinds of CRM systems today that systematize and organize our customer facing processes, but what we lack right now are effective ways of capturing customer feedback. With feedback we can know whether or not we're on the right track earlier than the time when we first put a product on the market, and that kind of information serves to save money and improve our business processes in immeasurable ways. So, no offense to my friends who think that social networking is a separate activity, but I really think it's our space.

Last week I discovered two initiatives that Stéphane and Eric will appreciate : Dell Idea Storm and SalesForce Ideas Exchange. You got it. Two world leaders open the discussion. Still have to see how this will impact their product development. How are they going to listen. It’s too early to say but it’s already big. I’d be a CEO in the IT business I’d call Stéphane and Eric to discuss how to join the movement.

"The valuable information we get directly from consumers helps both marketing and creative teams better understand the people who use our products, by giving people in the online communities an open-ended way to share opinions," Givan says. "The IdEx is convenient, low cost and immediate, and it’s a method that consumers like.”

Crowdsourcing is a technique that sophisticated companies use to translate the enthusiasm of their most highly-engaged customers into valuable marketing, branding, or product-development insight. You can do it, too.

What would you buy if you won the lottery or made a million? We've all had that conversation... So now we give you a virtual £1,000,000 to spend on what you want!

Feedback2.0, of France, seeks to carve out the feedback function by recasting it with a digg-like presentation and voting (and a statistical dashboard and relationship management on the backend). Feedback 20 launched a beta back in June 2006. Now it has two showcase pilot customers using the CRM platform live: the european search engine Exalead and the employment service JobMeeters. A related product positioned for internal use — within the company or between defined stakeholders — is Project.

Expo TV is a new video solution to product research, with thousands of consumer-generated reviews and product demonstrations all available in full-motion video. In addition to the video reviews contributed by our community, we also produce informative ‘how to buy’ videos and have advertising partners who have contributed product demonstration videos.

Feedback2.0 ( http://www.feedback20.com ) is a hosted software service, sold brandless to companies, which eases and organizes communication between a company and its customers.

All these rapid changes are setting the stage for an expanded role for customers. In this new environment, the customer is no longer a passive recipient of products passed through an entrenched value chain—instead customers are now active co-creators of value.

Recently, I argued that in order to leverage WOM and drive better marketing, brands should be putting more attention toward "listening" to consumers rather than "talking" to them. Along these lines, I also provided some initial directions on how and where to listen to customers.

If you don't make it easy for your customers to offer ideas about how your company can improve its services, they may just give those ideas to your competitors.

Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.

CUSTOMER-MADE: “The phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.”