• Salesforce.com's Ideas application, which provides a great way to capture and prioritize customer suggestions.

• Survey/feedback center.

SFDC's Customer Self Service portal (part of their Service Cloud offering) is a great foundation for this, but it can't just be a "click and run" proposition. You need to spend some time to really integrate it into the rest of your website and your business processes. It's critical that you get customers directly involved to test and refine portal usability. Skimp on this step, and you'll miss a huge opportunity for improving customer satisfaction at virtually zero incremental cost.

Although high-tech customers become very comfortable interacting with portals, do not implement a self-service portal as a "slash cut" that removes phone support. Introduce the idea gradually, letting customers naturally drift over to the customer self-service portal. As more of the support volume shifts to the portal, you'll get suggestions for refinements to make it even easier and faster for customers (and in the long run, cheaper for you). Once 80 percent of your "call volume" is handled through the portal, you can provide some incentives (such as lower costs or better service levels) to cement the customer behavior.