What is ‘Crowdsourcing’?
Crowdsourcing can be defined as enlisting the services of a number of individuals for a particular cause usually via the internet. It is also very reflective of common community organizing techniques where you trust the established network or community has all the experts it needs to accomplish a goal. Additionally, crowdsourcing, as with community organizing, allows a community to come together for the purpose of working towards a common goal using their own skills and their own ideas. Most importantly, it can be a method of empowerment, albeit a digital enfranchisement.
You’ve probably heard of ‘Crowd funding’, a fundraising side to crowdsourcing. Websites such as Kickstarter, Crowdtilt, IndieGoGo, and others exist to pool funds from many people to create something- a new product, a realized idea, t-shirts for a community center, or whatever else. There are even nonprofits that exist solely on this crowd funding model: Benevolent, Watsi , and others.
How Does this Apply to Nonprofits?
Nonprofits use crowdsourcing in many ways to accomplish the same goals in the digital world that they would have otherwise used in more traditional methods. The upside of crowdsourcing is that it’s free and requires much less time and effort to track down the experts or resources you need. The only requirement is that you must have access to an online community infrastructure ready to call upon. In this digital age, many (should be all) nonprofits have some sort of online presence. Websites such as VolunteerMatch or Idealist also help with gathering people who have very particular skills and knowledge.
How Can You Start Using Crowdsourcing?
The simplest way to get what you need is to ask for it. The fundraisers in the audience will know exactly what I’m talking about. If you want people to donate $500, you don’t have a default option on your mailing cards to donate $5. You start at $500 and work your way up. You have to ask people for exactly what you want if you want to get it. Read more click the link below?
In a follow-up to our most recent article about crowdsourcing Tony Weimer has pulled together another 10 examples of how crowdsourcing is being used today.
The power of the crowd is already being utilised by many businesses. For some, the service delivery shift is well underway and is redefining existing customer service models.
Effectively, some companies are outsourcing their first line support and service function to the crowd or are using them to focus product development initiatives.
Even more radical is the crowdsourcing of sales, marketing and service.
Here are ten real-world examples of how crowdsourcing is being used:
1. giffgaff – is a SIM-only mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), positioned at people who want more interaction and involvement with the brands they choose. Users (or “giffgaffers”) provide ideas (functionality, pricing bundles), market the company (word of mouth, member get member) and provide support to the community (customer service).
They are rewarded by their contribution in terms of activity in the community support forum, ratings on answers provided and activations of free SIMs. With no call centres or big advertising campaigns to fund, marketing and customer service budgets can be slashed and redistributed to the most active and best users.
2. Microsoft’s most valuable professionals (MVP) programme – the MVP Award recognises technical community leaders who voluntarily share their knowledge about Microsoft technologies with others.
MVPs answer more than 10 million questions each year and provide vital feedback, reflecting the needs of Microsoft customers. MVPs are not paid, they do it to share their knowledge and for the recognition they receive.
3. TripAdvisor – relies on the opinions and reviews of its members to provide information to people interested in a flight, trip or vacation. With over 40 million reviews, it has become the first port of call for many travellers.
4. Catwalk Genius – based in Ireland, Catwalk Genius is a crowd funding fashion site. People buy a small share of a collection enabling struggling designers to showcase their work. Each share costs £10 and when 5,000 have been sold the designer is commissioned to create a collection.
Those who bought shares are then given a proportion of the profits from the collection based on the number of shares they purchased.
5. Apple – world class net promoter scores and brand advocacy, but many people will have limited interaction with the company. Much of the product information and support required is found in forums where people share their knowledge.
For example, Googling “iPhone 3GS frozen” returns a multitude of answers (including YouTube videos), only one of which is from the official Apple support site.
6. Walkers Crisps “Do us a flavour” campaign – Walkers brand regard was eroding and competition was increasing. Through their “Do us a flavour” campaign they handed over creation of their next crisp flavour to the public.
They launched 6 of the flavours suggested and asked people to vote for their favourite. They generated over 1.2 million flavour suggestions and 1 million votes, with Builder’s Breakfast being the winning flavour. The winner received £50k and 1% of future sales. Sales increased by 14%.
7. Starbucks – an ideas forum where customers are invited to share, vote, discuss and see – “You know better than anyone else what you want from Starbucks. So tell us. What’s your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple – we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people’s ideas and join the discussion. We’re here, and we’re ready to make ideas happen. Let’s get started.”
8. uTest – provide software testing services. They have a global community of over 30,000 professionals providing software companies with a new way to test their applications.
Testing covers standard test phases such as functionality, usability and load testing as well as Agile methodology-related testing. Clients include the Met Office and Microsoft.
9. Air New Zealand – Air New Zealand’s Aviation Design Academy set out to design the best long-haul flying experience. They turned to passengers to design parts of the flying experience on their new 777-300 aircraft – the cocktail, in-flight food, eye mask and one “freeform” idea.
The winners have the opportunity to take a flight from Auckland to London to sample the implementation of their ideas. The competition itself attracts people with a level of engagement with the company and has generated more interest in Air New Zealand’s online marketing initiatives.
10. Wikipedia – perhaps the pioneers of crowdsourcing. The not-for-profit Wikipedia Foundation launched its free, web-based, multilingual and collaborative encyclopaedia in 2001. It has over 17m articles written collaboratively by the community and is the most popular reference site on the internet.
So, why are businesses so interested in “crowdsourcing”?
We know that an engaged community can drive down operating costs by reducing the need for conventional support models. Just as important is that support communities are often able to provide more first-contact resolution (FCR) in the customer service environment. Improvements in FCR can often be attributed to the community unearthing problems and fixes that the company are not aware of. In traditional customer service models this often results in out-of-date knowledge bases, longer more frustrating support calls and ultimately creates more customer frustration and dissatisfaction.
But what interests business even more is the emerging picture that suggests community members are more loyal and less likely to churn. Intuitively, you would say this is no surprise. If people are willing to spend the time to participate in the community, sharing their knowledge or experiences, there is likely to be an emotional attachment to it and the company – reinforced by recognition and rewards programmes for the best community members.
Forrester research undertaken in 2009 shows community users are more satisfied customers, more likely to recommend products to others and are less likely to defect to competitors. They also tend to buy more often and for longer periods.
But typically, not all community members are engaged in providing support or content. Research undertaken by Jake McKee and Jakob Nielsen provides an insight into the 90-9-1 principle that explains participation models in communities:
- 90% of users are the “audience”, or lurkers. These people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.
- 9% of users are “editors”, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely create content from scratch.
- 1% of users are “creators”, driving large amounts of the social group’s activity. More often than not, these people are driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads, and activity.
Additional support to this argument is provided by the experience of Wikipedia where, when reviewed, over 50% of edits were done by 7% of users and Amazon where 167k book reviews were contributed by a few of the “top 100” reviewers.
Tony Weimer
So what about the peripheral community members – the vast majority of lurkers, those people that use the community for support but don’t participate in contributing to the “knowledge base”? Are they any more likely to remain loyal when company X undercuts prices or company Y have a not-to-be-missed promotion?
We believe an important parameter in customer loyalty is customer effort – simply put, the amount of work a customer has to do to get what they want. We know that there is a high correlation between low customer effort and positive commercial outcomes and believe that the “friction free” nature of the community is a key driver in building customer loyalty.
Tony Weimer is a consultant at Budd (www.budd.uk.com)
The rapid exchange of data necessary to maintain competitive enterprise operations demands access to multiple, fluid sources of information. Crowdsourcing uses the input of individuals external to an organization to resolve strategic problems or complete tasks once assigned internally to an explicit corporate individual or department. Widely-dispersed contributors acquired through an open call for participation pinpoint data or offer opinions essential to achieving a specific objective for a designated problem. Open innovation for new products is also encouraged. Crowdsourcing participants encompass a population from everywhere, with all backgrounds; today’s mobile functionality has made the potential assembly of contributors truly global in scope (see Figure 1).
Five companies using crowdsourcing to their advantage.
Anheuser-Busch (AB)– The world’s leading brewer, AB has made sizable inroads in crowdsourcing. While its Budweiser is easily America’s best-selling beer, AB sought customer input to develop a brand more attuned to craft-beer tastes. Development of Black Crown, a golden amber lager, combined a competition between company-brewmasters with consumer suggestions and tastings; this project had more than 25,000 consumer-collaborators. In Brazil, where AB markets the leading brand, Skol, it has opened PopTent, a crowdsourced video-production company specializing in TV-commercials, utilizing a social network of 35,000 videographers from 120 nations. AB’s site offers potential collaborators open innovation opportunities with the firm.
Coca-Cola– Well-known for keeping secret the formula of its most famous beverage, Coke now uses a more open business model, assuming an increasingly prominent position in corporate crowdsourcing. Its open-sourced “Shaping a Better Future” challenge asks entrepreneurs to create improvement-ventures for the project-hubs of youth employment, education, environment and health. In addition, its“Where Will Happiness Strike Next?” series of short films and TV-commercials relies on the social media-input of Coke customers, contributing ideas about creating happiness. Coke also seeks crowdsourced online suggestions for marketing its products more effectively, once again tying social media to co-creation.
General Mills (GenMil)– This major food-processing firm has created the General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network (G-WIN) to vigorously generate innovative concepts from crowdsourced partners in a variety of merchandise, commodity, or service categories. Included are:
(1) products fitting the GenMil-brand concept,
(2) packaging of those products,
(3) improvements to manufacturing, service or marketing processes,
(4) ingredient-suggestions for food products,
(5) technology-suggestions for GenMil’s IT-processes, and
(6) concepts for improving the firm’s digital efficiencies and performance.
GenMil seeks ideas that help the firm deliver breakthrough innovation in any of these operational areas. The G-Win open call is sufficiently accommodating that anyone can go to the website, and click the“Submit a Novel Proposal“ tab to suggest product or technology innovation useful to GenMil and its businesses.
(1) products fitting the GenMil-brand concept,
(2) packaging of those products,
(3) improvements to manufacturing, service or marketing processes,
(4) ingredient-suggestions for food products,
(5) technology-suggestions for GenMil’s IT-processes, and
(6) concepts for improving the firm’s digital efficiencies and performance.
GenMil seeks ideas that help the firm deliver breakthrough innovation in any of these operational areas. The G-Win open call is sufficiently accommodating that anyone can go to the website, and click the“Submit a Novel Proposal“ tab to suggest product or technology innovation useful to GenMil and its businesses.
Nokia– Like most crowdsourcing ventures, Nokia’s Ideasproject defines itself as a global community devoted to open innovation. It focuses on consumer-derived collaboration across 210 nations to improve the viability of Nokia products in all markets. The Ideasproject is valuable because it draws on the consumer-experiences of participant-innovators to generate new ideas about the kind of products they seek from Nokia. Crowdsourcing participants are enabled, becoming their own agents of product-design. Current crowdsourced innovations can be examined, and new ideas offered. Nokia shares revenues generated from crowdsourced ideas with Ideasproject participants.
Unilever– Despite its globally-recognized and respected research staff and facilities, Unilever understands the value of collaboration with innovative partners from outside the firm. It seeks external contributions from anyone with useful input into such diverse project challenges as storing renewable energy, fighting viruses, reducing the quantity of sodium in food, creating cleaningg-products that pollute less, and changing consumer behavior to encourage enhanced sustainability, among many other projects. The firm invites crowdsourced, open innovation submissions at its “Challenges and Wants: Submit a technical solution to us via our Open Innovation“ portal.
Calling for crowdsourced ideas, information, opinions and analyses has emerged as a viable and enriched resource of enterprise-data. It is rapidly becoming a procedure of choice for generating innovative solutions issues for a vast range of corporate and societal issues.
