Comments on: Starbucks and Empowering Employees

By: darren

darren — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:10:26 +0000

Great post, Becky!

My definition of 5-star service, as I stress time-and-time again…

1) when the customer wants it (“timing”)
2) how the customer wants it (“delivery”)

My thoughts on Starbucks, however, stem far and wide. I find the delivery of said service is certainly not consistent. I’ve written about two of these instances as well as I think they needed mentioning!

By: Becky Carroll

Becky Carroll — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:46:42 +0000

Thanks so much for all the additional responses to 5-Star Service! The workshop went very well, and the employees did some great brainstorming on how each of them could take ownership for providing 5-Star Service.

Esteban, I like your simple definition. As someone mentioned in response to my LinkedIn question, customer expectations of 5-Star Service differ customer by customer. Un-noticed, or un-obtrusive works very well in the restaurant industry, where top servers just make it all happen without us having to ask. Thanks for your contribution!

Glenn, I agree with you that being “fully present” for a customer is an important element of great service. I’d love to hear more about “Lagniappe”. Want to write a guest post on it?

Bonnie, glad to have you here! I like the attitude of an organization that wants to say “yes” to its customers. Thanks for sharing.

Leo, thank you for posting my question as well as for your answer on LinkedIn. I am pulling together a blog post on this to go out early next week. Stay tuned, and thanks for being a part of it all!

By: Leo Bottary

Leo Bottary — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:48:01 +0000

Becky, hope your presentation went well. As you know, I was among the respondents to your question on Linkedin and posted about your question also. I look forward to learning more about the results. Best, Leo

By: Bonnie Larner

Bonnie Larner — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:10:53 +0000

Sorry I didn’t read your post before your presentation, but I used to write for an Assisted Living corporation in the US.

Their motto was, “The answer is yes, not what’s the question.”

bonnie
Richmond, VA
USA

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:00:21 +0000

I agree with Estaban. Specifically, when a a customer approaches a retail employee stocking a shelf or building a display and asks the location of a product, the employee cheerfully walks him to where the product is located,then pauses and, as if the customer and the employee are the only two people in the world, asks if there is anything else the customer needs. If not, the employee smiles and expresses genuine sincerity to the customer for shopping there.

To get to this point, management must make it clearly understood to the employees that the customer’s needs are more important than restocking the shelves or building the displays.

I would add that, whenever possible and practical to surprise the customer with a small service, gift, or other act of kindness. In Louisiana this is called “Lagniappe.”

By: pligg.com

pligg.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:44:43 +0000

Starbucks and Empowering Employees…

Those two topics go together, as Starbucks is a company that works to empower its employees (which they call “partners”) in order to improve the customer experience. Their recent “We’ll Make Your Beverage Right” focus is a good example of th…

By: Esteban Kolsky

Esteban Kolsky — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:34:32 +0000

Just a quick note to let you know what my definition of 5-star customer service is. two bullet points, very simple:

* whatever the customer wants it to be
* un-noticed

Think customer-focused organizations, with proactive processes, perfect knowledge, and flexible processes. then go back to my two bullets above.

Break a leg, hope this works (late is better than never)!