CommonWealth Bank's idea campaign offers $10,000 for best idea

To celebrate its centenary year, Australia’s CommonWealth Bank on December 8th launched an online portal where customers and staff can submit ideas and suggestions to improve the Bank for the future. The top price is a juicy $10,000.

Details of the idea evaluation process are absent on the site, but a little digging found this info in another story – “the Bank will reward the creator of one of the most popular ideas with $10,000 in March 2012 - voted on by both customers and the Bank's leadership team”.

My favorite (that I voted up) suggestion box ideas on the Bank's site were: 1) the appeal for more elderly-friendly services – not everyone’s comfortable moving online remember; 2) ‘win commonwealth bank shares’ might have trouble getting regulatory approval but could be a winner; and 3) ‘electronic receipts’, this idea, apart from being a cost-saving idea for the bank, would also be a very eco-friendly move and would represent a further step from Wells Fargo’s move to offer paperless ATM receipts.

Andy Lark, Chief Marketing and Online Officer for the Bank, said "We're incredibly excited to bring this pioneering platform to life and looking forward to a future that includes greater collaboration with customers (some of Vetter's customers can be seen in the image below) to turn mutually beneficial ideas into reality. Never before have our customers been so empowered to both contribute and vote for innovation and improvement. I'm delighted that we're able to pioneer in this space and harness the collective power of our 10 million plus customers, and work together to build a Bank that's always one step ahead."

On the negative side, judging by the amount of thumbs up votes for the Top Ideas, take-up has been decent, but not spectacular. A top score of 260 positive votes implies about 1000ish people have voted on an idea at some stage to me, not much for a bank with 100s of thousands of customers.