Giffgaff ideas are overwhelming

[vincent]

Hi all,

Almost a year on from starting the giffgaff Ideas Board we feel it is time to review what has happened, how it works, what we’ve done with it and what we’re going to do in the future.

When we first launched the Ideas Board we never expected it to take off as much as it has. The response has been truly overwhelming. So much so that in the last couple of months we’ve simply been unable to cope with the huge amount of ideas which are submitted by our members.

We’ve tried several ways of coping with this demand and our initial stance has always been to reply personally to each and every Idea submitted to us by our members. We felt it was the right thing to do as someone who submits an Idea to us, has put time and effort into sharing their thoughts with us in the hopes of improving our network and making it better suited to their needs, so we should at the very least give them the courtesy of spending some time to properly review the Idea and give some insight and feedback into why we would accept or reject it.

Although we still love the philosophy behind this, due to the sheer volume of Ideas submitted to giffgaff we are going to have to change things around slightly. We feel that it's better to cut down the ones we personally respond to than get further and further behind in dealing with each and every idea submitted.

We have looked at the Ideas that are being submitted and the popularity rating they are given by the community in the form of Kudos.

You might know that if someone likes an Idea, they can click the yellow star and this shows their appreciation of it. To deal with the sheer volume of Ideas being submitted we are now looking of setting an initial kudos threshold of 10 kudos to an Idea before we review it. As the community grows and Ideas get more and more kudos, we might have to increase that threshold, but initially we’re happy to set it at 10. We feel this is very reasonable and gives the community the initial voting power to raise an Idea to our attention.

We will when time permits still look at Ideas which have less kudos, but the personal responses will initially be made only to those Ideas which reach the threshold we set.

To give you an insight of how we judge the merits of an Idea, I can tell you we look at how well it fits with our Brand Values, if it has a very Minimal Appeal using our own judgement as well as the amount of kudos it has received and if it does not Replicate something we’ve either already got in place or if it is something we’re already working on.

Once it’s passed those initial hurdles, we then create a sort of scorecard whereby we look at the time it would take to implement, the cost of the whole project, the complexity as well as the possibility of integration into our existing system, how commercially viable it is, if it is a strategic fit for us as a company looking at what we’re currently doing and our current goals and lastly what the priority of the suggested Idea is in terms of impact and the roadmap we already have in place.

So as you can see there are a lot of factors we have to take into account when we look at these.

Of course we did not start the Ideas Board with this understanding but over the year these have been our learnings from the project. This means we now understand we have been too liberal with the acceptance of Ideas when we started it early last year.

With the small team and small budget we have it makes it very hard to actually implement all of the Accepted Ideas we currently have on the back-log. So we might have to revisit these in due course. However, we do feel we’ve achieved a lot in less than a year by implementing a total of 134 ideas and we will continue to do our best to implement as many Ideas as possible, even while working on our own Ideas and projects to move giffgaff on to the next stage.

I hope this has given everyone a good insight of what has been happening with your ideas, what we’ve learned from the process and how we’re going to move forward. Of course, as always, we value your feedback on this. I hope you have all enjoyed submitting your Ideas over the last year and will continue to do so. On top of this I hope you have found our judgement of Ideas to be fair and reasonable and that you’re happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish so far.

Cheers,

Vincent

[plastix]

Reviewing all the ideas will always be a tough job, especially without limited number of staff/time available, So I can appreciate the tough job (even if I'm often one of the people adding to the pressure). 

The judgement to limit which ideas get checked make sense in principle, but the reality of kudos could raise a few issues that should be considered:

With so many duplicates, there may be ideas that are raised multiple times, each getting 8 or 9 Kudos, but get closed as duplicates.  Can we introduce a mechanism that duplcate ideas get linked or 'merged', giving a 'Total' Kudos for the idea? (though I appreciate this may be hard if someone kudossed both versions.   Otherwise some valuable ideas may get more than 10 kudos, but still get missed.  I know I don't want to have to always go back to the oldest version each time just to kudos the idea again.

Also, as said abaove,  kudos is more often used as a mark of popularity, rather than quality.  There is a big difference, so relying on that alone may not bring you to the best ideas.  (I'll refrain from rehashing my disdain for the kudos system any further )

[jamesdn]

@plastix

If an idea is a duplicate, people shouldn't be giving that idea kudos anyway, so I don't think there's a need to be complicating anything with merging kudos.

Instead, it's better just to educate people not to give kudos to an idea if it is a duplicate but keep all support to the original idea.

[daveysludge]

Many a good idea goes under the radar due to the barrage of 'off topic' banter, they never get read let alone gain any kudos!

In contrast you have certain groups who will kudos in their own interests and the sickening 'kudos begging' will become an issue again!

[plastix]

@jamesdn  - I agree in principle, but in practice many people don't know it is a duplicate at the time.  (and lets not get started on items marked duplciate, when they people feel they are sufficiently different)

[daveysludge]

I think this sounds the death knell for the ideas section, it'll just be the same old tired unoriginal demands being trotted out on a daily basis and kudossed by the same old faces...

A backwards step if you ask me!

[nottstu]

Would this bethe right place to post a suggestion that the situation might be improved if the 'post a suggestion' section was split into 'post a suggestion about tariffs',  'post a suggestion about website' 'post a suggestion about ....' etc?

[grannycool]

Hello everyone, I am a new member and an OAP called I am told a silver surfer. I would just like to say that I think giffgaff is great, a wonderful idea, I do hope you keep the £5 goody bag going, being on a pension i find it very helpful as I do not use my mobile phone very much, but hope to pick up my emails on it (when I have learnt how to use it). I shall spread the word! Once again thank you for providing this wonderful service, may you continue for ever.

[james middleton]

hi I have just seen this article and I have to say I am not supprised that giffdaff are looking at a ten star limit before it is reviewed becouse the number of ideas is as has been said all ready overweillming the truble is meny are dups

if you are planning to make changes you might need to look at this I did came up with an idea yesterday that would allow

members to use there reword points to help giffgiaff get ideas that are aceppted off the ground I acepped that giffgaff

are a new network and I also know that it has limited funds and manpower wich is why it might be a good idea to allow members to assist giffgaff though the points system were there is agreement between members letting giffgaff use there points and giffgaff themselfs.

[gman2011]

when people port their number over as an incentive - give new customers £2 credit when they credit £10 pounds or more!!!

xD

[nutellajunkie]

Dupicates, duples, doobies, spark em up!

When adding an idea, there should be some check boxes to check, one important one being "i have checked this against the search engine".. and put a cheeky little search input box there, just for convenience.

I lost interest in looking at the ideas as there was so many duplicates and so much cow-pat arrogance going on that I just left it up to the people who could be bothered. Which is a real shame as once in a blue moon, there generally are some nifty ideas.

The kudos system is duds, a farce, rubbish, cack-high, trash, plop! Its human nature to use such a thing, as said above, as a system of popularity, instead of quality. I still have my kudos turned off, unless I genuine see something that catches me eyes; but even that makes me go meh!. its its needed, Id triple the amount of kudos needed before review!