If we live in a knowledge economy, we have to accept that employees are the ones who know how local things need and can be improved. Top down approaches have to give some space to Bottom up ones. We have to let them voice, converse and listen to them, as a minimum. Blogs, wikis or tools such as Feedback 2.0, correctly backed by a precise policy, are made for that. It is their real value in a corporate world.

I just discovered Feedback 2.0 from Stephane Lee. This French born website is aimed at B2B support and services. They have a unique view on how support should be done, they’re trying to bring the power back to the companies:

It is not very easy to engage a big community on the web because you hardly have the chance to put in that personal touch but then it is not impossible either.

After a recent rebranding (see this), Delta Airlines launched a community site to collect ideas and suggestions from travellers. The site is pretty well designed, but I have some doubts about the right navigation part… Anyway, this is not my point here. Their “about” page states that “very soon, though, it will evolve into something truly collaborative—truly revolutionary”. So it will be interesting to see how they will develop it and turn it into a real customer feedback management. So far, the most interesting online CFM I have seen is feedback2.0, made by a french company.

feedback2.0 Projet is a platform of dialogue dedicated to the accompaniment of project, set up by a project team within a company, of an organization or a community.

Last week I discovered two initiatives that Stéphane and Eric will appreciate : Dell Idea Storm and SalesForce Ideas Exchange. You got it. Two world leaders open the discussion. Still have to see how this will impact their product development. How are they going to listen. It’s too early to say but it’s already big. I’d be a CEO in the IT business I’d call Stéphane and Eric to discuss how to join the movement.

Feedback2.0, of France, seeks to carve out the feedback function by recasting it with a digg-like presentation and voting (and a statistical dashboard and relationship management on the backend). Feedback 20 launched a beta back in June 2006. Now it has two showcase pilot customers using the CRM platform live: the european search engine Exalead and the employment service JobMeeters. A related product positioned for internal use — within the company or between defined stakeholders — is Project.

Feedback2.0 ( http://www.feedback20.com ) is a hosted software service, sold brandless to companies, which eases and organizes communication between a company and its customers.