Even though your customers have an unlimited number of questions, if you’re like most companies, you give them very few answers. Have you considered creating a “smart” community to answer every possible question your customers have?

Yahoo! Answers does just this. Think about how you might apply collective intelligence - let your customers ask and answer the questions. Turn them into experts. This is especially compelling where, collectively, your customers really are much smarter than you are - pretty much always the case. What if Williams-Sonoma let me ask its customers how to achieve key lime pie perfection?

The idea works regardless of your market (selling to consumers or to other businesses). There are open source tools to let you turn your FAQ’s - frequently asked questions- into EAQ’s - every asked question. Are you ready to accept the Wisdom of Crowds and let your customers help each other?