Starbucks has its My Starbucks Idea network up and running. It’s a consumer forum more than a social network and owes more than a debt of inspiration to Dell’s Ideastorm and perhaps also VanCity’s Change Everything.

Starbucks wants to know from its customers what they would like the
company to do make the coffee, food and experience better. Their
rationale is pretty clear if you see the battering the company has been
getting in the media and on Wall Street in recent months.

The site seems to have gone live just two days ago – that’s the date of the welcome message from CEO Howard Schultz – and already over a thousand comments have been made on over 100 idea suggestions.

Here’s the interesting part for me. Starbucks has assigned a team of 40 in-house experts – it calls them Idea Partners -  in "specialties range from coffee to entertainment to community programs" to evaluate the ideas that are voted (Digg-like) most popular by the users. 

According to the site, the Idea Partners will "take a combination of the most popular and most innovative
ideas that are the best fit for Starbucks and present them to key
decision makers within the company to recommend how we put those ideas
to work."

Welcome to the brave new world of social media customer relations management. Are these 40 doing this work on top of their traditional jobs? I imagine so but what happens in My Starbucks Idea really gets popular.

When you ask for customer feedback you have to be sure you have the capacity to respond and act on it. It will be interesting to follow the Starbucks experience and see the company handles this growing conversation.

- Matthew