A good IdeaX that could be better

I recently spent some time on Best Buy’s branded social networking site called IDEA X, and for the most part I applaud them for their efforts. I’ve been saying for a while that I thought more marketers would be looking to create their own forums for engaging with their customers, rather than simply trying to participate in the chaos of environments like Facebook and MySpace. So kudos to Best Buy for taking some initial steps to providing customers with this option.

What’s a bit disappointing, though, is that the conversations – so far at least – seem a little one-sided.  For example, there’s a request (more like a plea, actually) to get rid of the plastic boxes that require super-human strength or an engineering degree to open on some of their merchandise. And judging from the comments, there’s a good deal of support for doing something about this within the site community.  But there hasn’t been any substantive comments from Best Buy to this post, and it’s now been almost two months since it was originally submitted.

It seems to me that this topic affords Best Buy with an excellent opportunity to fulfill what it says is actually the objective of this site, which is, to quote, “see if we can make things better.” What about asking customers which merchandise has the most difficult packaging?  Could they post instructions on this site for how to open some of these packages in an easier, safer (no blow torches, please) way? Or test the idea of actually removing the packaging for customers in-store, post-purchase?

The point is that all of us marketers have been guilty at times for thinking too much about what we want from our customers, rather than listening to what customers want from us. And even though an issue like this is beyond the scope of the Marketing Department to address by itself, raising it with other groups within the organization and taking it on together could truly provide Best Buy with an opportunity to “make things better” for their customers.  I’ll check back in to IDEA X in a month or so to see how the conversations are going.  In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of plastic boxes to take on, so wish me luck…

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