SuggestionBox, a Better Way to Manage Feedback « Social Media Strategy – JenniferVanGrove.com

Beyond the Press Release

What happens after you complete a phone or online survey for a business you recently frequented? Absolutely nothing. You spend upwards of 5 minutes answering inane questions, probably never getting to say what you truly think, and you never hear from the company again. It’s almost like a bad one night stand. Jeff Whitton, CEO and Founder of SuggestionBox, is hoping to help improve upon the customer-company feedback loop with SuggestionBox, serving as an online suggestion management system that allows any customer the opportunity to provide and track feedback to any company.

After reading both the TechCrunch and MarketingProfs articles, I sat down with Whitton to get the real story beyond the press release. It turns out that Whitton is a serial entrepreneur with a spirit that has inspired him to dabble in business ventures since his childhood. The idea behind SuggestionBox originated from his perpetual thoughts of wanting to improve upon or enhance existing businesses. Whitton would find himself thinking, “I would love to buy that business and change A, B, & C,” but in the end those thoughts weren’t feasible. So instead of opening up his own consultancy, Whitton opted to create an online experience that would serve as the middleman between consumers and the businesses they patronize.

The suggester experience is fairly straight forward. As a suggester, a member can create a suggestion for a company, track suggestions, comment on other suggestions, and rate other suggestions. The experience is exactly what you would expect from an online suggestion box. Probably the coolest thing that I’ve yet to see reported on, though, is that SuggestionBox actually takes those customer suggestions and does their best to put them in the right hands. According to Whitton, each message is delivered to the company in question, even if the company is not a paying SuggestionBox client – they actually take the time to track down the appropriate contact information and deliver the message on your behalf.

SuggestionBox 2014 Manage Suggestions

A company, however, can use SuggestionBox to manage and follow-up on the influx of suggstions. To test the functionality, I created a SuggestionBox for the San Diego Tweetup group I organize. The feature set is pretty darn impressive. The image to the left, (see the full size image) depicts my dashboard, where I can easily update the status of a suggestion (new, under review, future, coming soon, implemented, filed away, deleted), respond to a suggester, internally score and comment on the suggestion, categorize the suggestion, and forward the suggestion via email to other people.

As a company, I can also choose from a variety of widgets and buttons to display on any of my web properties to get the word out about my SuggestionBox.

Quick Facts

To Watch or Not

Right now SuggestionBox is privately funded, and Whitton hopes to continue bootstrapping the businesss with the paid company suggestion boxes. I couldn’t get any specific information regarding the number of paying companies, but I definitely got the sense that Whitton was less than enthusiastic about where things stand. Obviously, success hinges upon companies feeling compelled enough to own their suggestion box, which is only likely to happen if SuggestionBox garners a mainstream consumer audience. Once the consumers come, companies might be nudged into forking over $495.00 a year just to maintain a good reputation.

Some features that might help both consumer and company adoption rates are slated to be coming soon, including an API for integration between the company site and their SuggestionBox, as well as video suggestions. The site was actually built to support video suggestions, and given the latest 12seconds.tv craze, a partnership could very well be in the works.

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)

Subscribe to comments Comment | Trackback |
Post Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Browse Timeline


  • sebastianmacias
    Very well reviewed, definitely beyond the press release. It was a fun read!

    Thanks for the coverage.
  • $49.50 is pricey for web service and with so many free competitors coming onstream, I'll be interested to see how long they can charge people/co's $50/mo for a service that creates new problems for their organization to solve.

    It's cool; I get it. And I love the idea, particularly for the small organizations such as nonprofits and associations that I'm affiliated with. The feedback would be very beneficial. But they're not looking for new ways to spend $500.

    For the bigger organizations I am affiliated with, the $500 is NOTHING next to the cost in employee time and other expenses required to 'implement' suggestions in a timely fashion.

    It's also nothing compared to the bad PR if your organization is not percieved to have implemented sufficient changes. If there was a Compliments Box that allowed shout-outs as well as 'needs improvement' type comments, I think there would be more positives to offset the negatives of a public suggestion box. Shoot, that sounds like a suggestion for Suggestion Box so I guess I made this comment in the wrong place -- but Suggestion Box can just use their other social media monitoring tools to pick up on this 'suggestion' as can any other company that is listening online for what its customers might say.
  • Julie, for the most part I agree with you, especially in relation to small organizations who may not have room in the budget for an additional $500 a year. There is a non-profit option that is much cheaper - $49.50 per year. According to Whitton, the price was set at a level they felt would make the expenditure low enough for any business to own their SuggestionBox, with the larger companies possibly paying for multiple boxes for different departments.

    To your point on bad PR I would argue, however, that an organization using a service like SuggestionBox stands to benefit from the mere experience, regardless of whether or not they implement every single suggestion. People want to feel like they're being listened to, they want to feel like their feedback isn't falling on deaf ears, and that they are valued as a customer. Of course a savvy company is listening to what's being said about their organization online, but SuggestionBox offers an additional way to say to a customer community "we're listening and we care what you have to say." That statement alone is pretty darn powerful. I would also argue that the organizations that can afford to listen via social media probably have one or more dedicated staffers who are focused on community building - so managing a SuggestionBox would be an easy extension of that role. I do agree that the role, in and of itself, is not cheap. A Community Manager, however, is an emerging position within many companies who are starting to recognize that community engagement and participation is an extra expense that ultimately benefits the bottom line.
blog comments powered by Disqus


© Copyright 2009 Social Media Strategy – JenniferVanGrove.com . Thanks for visiting!