Starbucks has been a popular player in the blogosphere lately but the company hasn’t been generating all positive vibes. Their time-out to train employees intended to emphasize their focus on quality, the throwback logo shows off their coffee making roots, and mystarbucksidea.com is aimed at getting consumers involved with the brand online. All well and good, but not when customers can’t even access the site for free from within Starbucks shops! Currently, Starbucks customers can pay for hourly WiFi passes, unless you are an AT&T broadband customer. Now riddle me this Howard Shultz, you make a site to engage with your consumers but you aren’t giving them the ability to access the site free of charge from within the walls of your stores? Talk about a missed epic opportunity. These customers are already paying $5 for a coffee and willingly choosing to spend their time inside Starbucks. They are loyal to the Starbucks brand, but still might not visit the mystarbucksidea site from home. By allowing customers to connect with the brand online and share their ideas while they are experiencing Starbucks, more useful truths and insights are likely to be posted and give the company the ideas that they had hoped for when creating this site.
Starbucks is missing the free trade boat on this one. Free WiFi access could be provided and users would be taken to mystarbucksidea.com and even prompt them to create an account. There is also potential to take this idea even further. Users could connect with other brand loyal customers within the cafes and converse with other online Starbucks customers around the world. I think Starbucks would want to leverage this portal and connect with their consumers on multiple levels all at one location, but I guess not. Now that Mr. Shutlz knows myyaybiaidea, maybe he should know that I always drink a Grande Americano. No cream or sugar.
The free WiFi/branded network conversation will continue later this week. Hang in there.
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