Comments on: Re-Experiencing Starbucks: Update 6 – The Card

By: Becky Carroll

Becky Carroll — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:30:25 +0000

BJ, integrating technology is often a sticking point; it could make our lives so much easier…! To answer your question, customer expectations are always changing – and are often set by others outside of our organization. That is why it is important to constantly be in conversation with customers.

Great to see you here, and it was great to meet you in person the other day!

By: BJ Cook

BJ Cook — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:00:25 +0000

It’s a shame that technology is the culprit for a lousy experience, gotta love legacy systems It’s good to see them at least listening and implementing some of the ideas for starters. But if the free coffee coupons are like pacifiers and like children, don’t you think we’ll grow out of those at some point and expect more? Just a random thought. I’m thinking I need to update my own Starbucks card here. Good coverage so far Becky.

By: Becky Carroll

Becky Carroll — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:29:15 +0000

Nancy, thank you for adding your thoughts to this post. Starbucks definitely has a lot of great ideas that can be applied to other companies that will help their customer strategy. I think we have now come to expect a lot from Starbucks, and they are probably scrutinized in a way that others are not. I think they can achieve their goal, and I look forward to seeing it happen!

By: Nancy Arter

Nancy Arter — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:40:47 +0000

I totally agree with you Becky. And, I think as Starbucks aficionados, we’ve come to expect at least a “really good” customer experience. It’s supposed to be part of their culture. In fact, back in the 90s when I worked at AT&T, I was so impressed with Schultz’s customer focus, I bought a copy of “Pouring Your Heart Into It” (Schultz’s historical review of how Starbucks came to be at that point in time), for each of my Sales Managers. We then reviewed the customer-focused philosophy that existed at Starbucks and discussed how we — as a Leadership team — could coach our sales folks to embrace such a philosophy when selling telecommunications services. I just love that book — and our customer satisfaction numbers definitely improved as a branch as a result of our implementation of Schultz’s ideas.

Now, back to the current times . . . when Starbucks is available on each corner and has become such a huge company — and now, the customer re-experience. You are absolutely correct — the fact that you have to tell the barista that your Starbucks card is registered to get your discount is not good — the databases need to be tied together so that the customer doesn’t have to ask for it. Or worse, not get the discount applied. Or even worse, have to get told that the discount doesn’t apply on “your drink.” That’s not the customer re-experience that we want — not at all.

I hope that Mr. Schultz is paying attention to these blog posts — he certainly should be. It’ll be interesting to see how the customer experience does change over the Summer and Holiday seasons. Let’s hope it’s for the better!