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Perhaps you think you should get your 10th cup of coffee for free, or you would like free Wi-Fi access, or even a free birthday brew… whatever your suggestion, Starbucks want to hear it.

Starbucks have unveiled MyStarbucksIdea.com - a social community site aiming to give their customers a platform to share their ideas and suggestions, vote on the ideas they would most like to see in-store and find out what ideas Starbucks have actually implemented. It seems Starbucks have placed blogging and communicating with their customers at the core of their “New Strategic Initiatives To Transform and Innovate the Customer Experience” er, strategy.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced this week -

“We engage in millions of conversations with our customers everyday, and those conversations and ideas have helped shape the company we are today,” said Schultz. “With the launch of MyStarbucksIdea, we are extending the Starbucks community online and creating a dynamic forum that enables us to capture and act upon our customers’ best ideas.”

Starbucks seem to be doin’ it right: offering transparency for the process and what they want to do with your ideas, employee-driven content and encouraging customer engagement. If they do ‘act upon’ some of their customers ideas, it looks like Starbucks may succeed in extending the customer conversation on-line.

Regardless of how many of their customers actually choose to engage in this conversation, Starbucks are set to benefit as they gain cost-effective customer feedback, potentially improve their pubic image, and maybe even hear that gem of an idea that makes a difference to their profits.

Tags: Blogging And Your Business, business, social media, Starbucks