Flip it and Reverse it
I’ve often read about creativity in business and techniques for generating new ideas for products or services. One of the ideas I like to play with every once in a while is to take the way that something successful works and reverse it to get a new spin on the same idea that is novel and might have something to it. You know, something like an “inverse microwave” that freezes food really quickly that could go in everyone’s home (Perhaps Ron Popeil has already started working on it?)
Recently Mike and Paul and Matthew launched Business Logs. I believe it is a great idea, and it will take them far. The premise is to help companies and organizations work better using online communication tools. It got me to thinking…
So, lets assume that this will work for them — that a company will setup a blog, and publish, monitor comments, respond to comments, all in an effort to foster better communication with customers and prospective customers. Yes, I know that Business Logs will be much more than just blogging, and I know I’m presenting a simplistic view for sake of argument. I also know there are companies that are already doing something similar — with an internal audience, or an external audience – either way, better communication is the key.
Reverse It
In the current model the company runs the blog, readers subscribe to various feeds, and the company gets feedback from their customers/readers/whatever via comments, which keeps the companies informed etc, and makes them a better company.
What would that concept look like in reverse?
So now, the customer blogs and the companies subscribe to the client’s syndicated feeds? What if the customer/client published, and the company commented? What if by subscribing to the feeds of the masses, a company could actually be ahead of the game on what customers gripes were, what they actually wanted in certain products, or what trends people were discussing? Competitive advantage? I’ll say – especially if the company is tuned into the blogs of early adopters…
How Company X could reverse it
A company that wanted to do something like that and be successful at it might also want to provide the tools, and have an easy way of knowing what customer logs were out there so they wouldn’t have to hunt them down.
For a company to create this great massive pool of “customer logs”, they would need to provide the tools to do it – especially for the non-technical consumer – which, let’s face it, is what most are. It would need to be something free and they’d need to have some way of tracking them all – perhaps a simple and unobtrusive registration system.
If the company was smart, they’d work to find a way of keeping track of what is being said across the various logs that existed so that company people could easily find out what topics were popular and get the lead on trends… The company would likely do well to have a system that would notify various company representatives if new ideas or requests or whatever came up in the Customer Logs (clogs?) as well — it would be the only way it would work — there would be too much information to sift through manually.
In theory this could keep companies ahead of the curve – and they would really be listening to their customers.
And then, as I was playing around with these ideas in my head, I asked “What if we are already be there?”
- The tool? Blogger. Requires registration, and doesn’t cost a dime. Conveniently owned by Google.
- Notifications? Think Google News Alerts, but an internal version.
- Indexing? Obvious. Google itself has proven to track blogs very very well, often giving them the highest search results.
Hmmmmm… I wonder…
8 Responses
Comment by Sylvie Noel — Jul 08 2004 @ 8:29 am
I was going to say that I wouldn’t trust a company not to try to control what its clients are saying (because they really don’t want to hear the bad news), but then you had to offer Blogger as an example, which is what I use for my personal blog.
So let me rephrase that to, I wouldn’t trust most companies…
Comment by feather — Jul 08 2004 @ 9:50 am
I don't think Business Logs really stands up to “flip-reverse” scrutiny
I wouldn’t exactly call it scrutiny, but more like “throwing ideas around” ;)
The nature of blogging also means that only occasionally will the subject matter correspond with the company's input requirements.
Google is an interesting case-study, but I think you've chosen the wrong example; instead of Blogger, think Gmail – that's the way Google will be collating what we're all talking about, and making money too
Indeed — there will be a lot of traffic that isn’t relevant to the company — that’s why I thought an internal version of something like Google News Alerts would be useful so that they company gets automated notices when something relevant does come up.
As for Gmail — I thought about including it as part of the mix. The only reason I chose Blogger over Gmail is that I felt that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy with Gmail, whereas with Blogger, people are already choosing to make things public – via the site proper, or their feeds…
Thanks for the heads up on the list items!
Comment by Dave Marks — Jul 08 2004 @ 1:20 pm
I find that having a forum on the company site is the bets way to acheive this.
Then each person with something to say can start a thread. The company can respond, and so can other clients. This way a two (or more) way conversation is started which is much more powerful.
One comapny I know called Digiguide [www.digiguide.com] are excellent in this manner. They have a forum, where lots of users frequent and more importantly lead developers and other staff partisipate. problems are solved and ideas for future versions are exchanged – It has to be the most customer focused company i have dealt with
Comment by Matthew Oliphant — Jul 09 2004 @ 10:03 am
I believe it is a great idea, and it will take them far.
Thanks for the kind words.
We haven’t been asked (yet) to set up a many-to-one type of relationship between an organisation and its customers.
But one of the ideas we do promote is getting orgs to blogroll (or better yet have a feed page) customer sites that focus on the products/services of the org. Internally, this will help the org keep track of what people are saying. Externally, it will increase perceived transparency (and thus hopefully reputation) by creating an even bigger “Company X” community.
I think it is entirely appropriate for the org to want to control the content on their site. After all, this is an opportunity for them to promote their offerings and manage their reputation.
But I am not sure if an org wants to take on the maintenance overhead involved with a many-to-one scenario. Definitely encourage people to write about the org’s offerings, even to the point of linking to the current Web publishing options. But my guess is that the flip it and reverse it idea would be cost prohibitive.
Can it be done? Absolutely. Should it be done? It depends. :) But at this point I would counsel that it shouldn’t be done. Conceptually it is a great idea, but it is too far outside the realm of control that an org would want; even the most progressive and transparent ones.
Comment by Mike Rundle — Jul 09 2004 @ 10:26 am
Just to add onto Matto’s comment above…
I think an organization wide implementation of this would fail. However, some product designers here and there, some PMs around the company, and maybe a few higher-level executives reading thoughts direct-from-the-mouths of consumers would be super useful. Here’s a transcript from a meeting once this is implemented:
Designer: I’m not so sure about the colors on the new beta site’s navigation. They just don’t draw my eye up to the logo.
Boss: I was reading the daily feed this morning, and John5468 wrote about the exact same thing. He suggested that we move from pale blue to deep ocean blue, in an effort to make it pop a bit more.
Designer: Well I guess that saved us some usability testing :)
See what I mean! Instant feedback and criticism. Now let’s try and fundamentally shift organizations enough to let them try it…
Comment by feather — Jul 09 2004 @ 10:41 am
Matt, Mike:
I agree with you both — this would be very difficult to implement for anyone. The only people that I think would be in any position to do anything about it right now would be Google — they already have the infrastructure to pull it off if they wanted to.
Even then, I believe it would be difficult to pull it off – the only reason I even wrote about it was because during my thinking, I thought about Google and the fact that they could do it…
Mike — the scenario you outlined between the designer, boss, and the “daily feed” is one that I hadn’t really considered. I wasn’t thinking about this type of communication between company and customers — I was thinking more along the lines of large issues – company direction or even policies perhaps. I’m curious to know (maybe you can’t tell me) but is the level of communication you wrote about (i.e., feedback on specific design issues) the kind of things you guys are envisioning at Business Logs? I didn’t expect that, but, hey, it wouldn’t expect that you guys didn’t at least explore the idea…
Comment by Matthew Oliphant — Jul 09 2004 @ 10:58 am
I can answer that by saying orgs will use this concept in a variety of ways, and customers will offer feedback on things the org doesn’t expect to hear about. Those darn customers and their free-thinking ways! ;)
Mike’s example is a good one. Part of what we offer goes beyond the install to education; don’t change something just because John5468 wants it changed. We will help the org set their appropriate threshold for initiating change based on feedback.
There’s responsiveness and then there’s waffling.
Comment by Matt Pennell — Jul 08 2004 @ 5:01 am
While I agree that it is an interesting and often fruitful method for identifying new opportunities, I don’t think Business Logs really stands up to “flip-reverse” scrutiny.
A company running a blog to which its customers subscribe works because it is a one-to-many model – the company generates output in one place and customers visit to provide input.
Reversing the idea becomes a many-to-one model – the company then has to monitor the input in an ever-growing number of locations and generate its ouput in all those locations (assuming it contributes to the customer blogs).
The nature of blogging also means that only occasionally will the subject matter correspond with the company’s input requirements.
Google is an interesting case-study, but I think you’ve chosen the wrong example; instead of Blogger, think Gmail – that’s the way Google will be collating what we’re all talking about, and making money too.
By the way, your list-items are unstyled.