In my first weeks as a solutions strategist I’ve been spending some time reviewing Idea Share, a new Dow Jones product designed to capture customer feedback. I’ve been involved with digital product management for some time now, and collecting customer feedback has always been a critical step in the lifecycle of any product. Customer feedback offers one of the best ways to spot untapped markets, common problems, and opportunities for new products and services. With the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies we now have new ways of not only collecting valuable feedback from the users of our products, but a means for them to collaborate. It’s critical to the long-term success of our products for us to provide quick, easy ways for our customers to tell us what’s on their mind and for us to get back to them. Idea Share is one way we are communicating with our users.

First, some background. Idea Share is a new site we launched several months ago with the goals of collecting customer feedback and a providing a new platform for knowledge sharing within Dow Jones. Idea Share is about facilitating the community that wants to make our products better. It is a forum for users to talk about our products; what’s working and what’s not. Better than an email or a message board, Idea Share allows customers to collaborate and vote on community feedback. The goal of this constant source of collaborative feedback is to make our products better and keep users coming back.

Because this communication loop is so valuable, I have been exploring ways to improve Idea Share. Some key areas for improvement I’ve identified are promotion and positioning. I’m looking at how we might remove existing barriers to entry and create additional entry points. In the next version of the product I would like to make it easier to provide feedback by creating clear “calls to action” at multiple product entry points including e-mail alerts, RSS feeds, and widgets. Unobtrusive hooks into Idea Share need to be created wherever our users are interacting with our products.

What we do after receiving feedback is another area I’m exploring with the team. Analyzing and acting on customer feedback is critical, but acknowledging the customer after they submit an idea or comment is also an important step in the process. Lack of acknowledgment can cause our customers to question the relevance of or worse, lose trust in the channel that they are using to share their feedback. A simple email thanking them for providing feedback can go a long way. Showcasing the best, recent and most popular ideas in new and engaging ways is another form of acknowledgment we are examining. Keeping the community engaged after they have communicated with us is one key to the success of the product.

Idea Share is an important step in opening up the communication channels between our customers and the Dow Jones’ teams responsible for moving a product forward. I will continue to look for ways to improve Idea Share and create new collaborative networks for facilitating communication with our customers.

I look forward to your feedback!