Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

April 21, 2008

What Is "Crowdsourcing"?

By Tracey E. Schelmetic

Online market research tool provider Survey Analytics today unveiled the public beta of IdeaScale (www.ideascale.com), a new community-based portal intended to enable companies of all sizes to harness the “wisdom of crowds” on their own Web site to improve their product or service.
 
“In the competitive world of hospitality lodging, it’s not just enough to simply solicit customer feedback - there needs to be a mechanism to  turn that feedback into real business intelligence that can be quickly incorporated into our various properties,” said  John Thompson, Director of Hotel Performance Training for Choice Hotels. “The concept of IdeaScale is appealing to us as it provides a relatively simple way to canvas customer opinions and then give those same customers a voice to watch their ideas come to life. We are excited to be one of the initial beta testers of the IdeaScale service and believe it represents one of the new frontiers in customer feedback technologies.”
 
With the recent launch of MyStarbucksIdea.com and success of Dell’s (News - Alert) IdeaStorm feedback portal, customers are now being offered a dynamic forum to voice their opinions and see their ideas blossom into action. By embracing what Survey Analytics calls the “crowdsourcing model,” a company’s community of users can easily promote the best ideas to the top, in a manner similar to that of Digg. Pricing for IdeaScale will be free for the initial beta period and will continue to be free for individual Web sites and bloggers following the conclusion of the public beta.
 
“A lot of companies talk about listening to their customers but are they really hearing what they’re saying?” asks Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO and Founder of Survey Analytics. “Our goal with IdeaScale is to help facilitate an authentic conversation between companies and their most important constituency – their customers. No company can succeed in the long term without actively listening to what their customers want and now with IdeaScale, any company can put the power of real-time feedback to work for them.”
 
For more information, visit www.surveyanalytics.com.
 
Tracey Schelmetic is Editorial Director for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, and covers the customer relationship management and call center industries for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
 
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is, Best Practices in Agent Retention brought to you by Enkata.
 


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