Starbucks Coffee
On a recent visit to my local Starbucks, I did not get my coffee right away. They were all out of my favorite, Sumatra. Normally, I would shrug it off and wait for the next batch, I paid attention to the Batista and how he was going to handle the matter. Being a former partner, I knew how it was handled in the past. The customer would be given a coupon for a free cup on the next visit. Not this time.
In fact, the barista did not even apologize for not having the coffee. I then noticed that as the coffee was brewing, the barista would slowly fill a cup. As most coffee snobs know, you need the whole batch to run or you are going to get a cup of crap.
What this gets back to is customer service and setting customer expectations. What the barista forgot was to really understand the problem and know how the manage the situation and acknowledge the problem. Unfortunately, he did not do that.
Although an isolated incident, this is not the first time that I have had my drink make wrong at Starbucks. But how hard is it to make a really good drip coffee?
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wsm190 says:
I couldn’t agree more. I also find it interesting that about 90% of money saving financial articles I have persued over the past 6 months, frequently use the scenario of not spending $3 a day on coffee at Starbucks and to brew their own at home or get it from somewhere else less expensive. For a while it seemed that Starbucks had the “status thing” going for it’s audience but high prices and bad service are a sure recipe for disaster.
8 April 2009, 9:30 am