Can you hear me now?

It is always nice when I find someone else who shares my same passions, concerns or general interests - really helps to uplift my sense of community. Being more of an extrovert and the one to raise my hand to ask a question (or ask it for someone else), I find it a breath of fresh air when a company or organization offers a community page on their main web site. It should not be buried where you cannot find it, but rather embraced as part of their culture, allowing customers to submit an idea (or a complaint that makes its way to an idea), rate it and follow it through the process of evaluation and discussion. The more transparent an organization is to my submission, the more I like them. It makes me feel that my ideas (and my time) are valuable to them. Being in product marketing myself, I value all of the suggestions and complaints that come my way as I see them as opportunities to improve and make someone on the end of the line happier.

I recently ran across these two sites that caught my attention. First is the Kraft foods site. I was looking for nutritional information on a product and found that they have created a nice recipe builder and grocery list generator. I have looked at many sites to help manage that pesky task of grocery shopping each week and like the way Kraft has created a site that offers members (yes, you do have to register for this feature) an easy way to choose their favorite dinners from recipes from both Kraft and other members, and rate them too.


They invite members to submit recipes for their holiday site (hard to think about warm foods for the winter when it is 105F outside) using their Recipe Exchange. I have yet to extensively use the community aspect of the site but it looks promising. Thanks Kraft for offering a nice tool to us novice chefs out here!






The second "Idea" site that I ran across is the Dell Community site. A few comments. First, I like the IdeaStorm site that allows you to submit your favorite idea/complaint and it can be promoted, commented and ranked. There is also a feedback on the status of the idea from Dell's perspective (Under Review, Partially Implemented, Already Offered, etc.). However, if an organization is going to take on this task of welcoming (or in Dell's claim "Where Your Ideas Reign") then the feedback needs to be current and acknowledged. I must have found a dozen ideas that I promoted and voted as "me too!" feature requests (like this one here).




On one hand it was nice to see that so many other community members also want the same things I do, but disappointing that some of these ideas have not been acknowledged. Kudos to Dell for opening a forum for customers to submit ideas just make sure to keep it up to date.

Now... go vote for your favorite idea (especially the standardized power cables - one of my all time biggest pet peeves) :)