Image via WikipediaI just read a tweet from Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) about a foodservice issue.
jeffjarvis Fucking Starbucks. What’s so hard about keeping a pot of coffee full in a COFFEE STORE? I had 2 min. to get a cup. They wasted my time. Grr
What’s hard about keeping the supply of ready-to-serve product full is the actions of the customers. Lots of things come into play here. First, Starbucks has developed the expectation that when you order coffee, you’ll get it right away. Not a bad expectation to build, but it does set you up for problems when you don’t meet that expectation. And you will fail to meet that expectation at some point.
In this case, all it would take is for one or more customers to buy more than what the system (designed to build those high expectations) could accommodate. One customer ordering ten coffees for the office when there is only enough for ten coffees brewed means the next customer or next few customers is going to have to wait. There isn’t much that can be done to avoid that. There is, however, much that can be done to address it when it does happen.
The situation should have been explained to Jeff. “I’m really sorry, but we just had someone come in and order a dozen coffees to go, and it ran us out. We’re brewing more right now, and it’ll be a few minutes before its ready.” That would probably have blunted Jeff’s initial frustration at Starbuck’s not meeting his expectations. Any questions Jeff may have asked at that point would have been an opportunity to tell the Starbucks story of fresh vs. stale coffee and maybe the suggestion of an alternative that could have been made ready quickly – at the same price. In any case, Jeff should have been given a card for a free coffee at a later date, as a gesture of contrition for not meeting the expectations that they’d created.
Whether Starbucks has a policy where any employee can do that kind of damage control, I don’t know. If they don’t, they should. They had no idea that Jeff would tweet about it to his 2665 twitter followers, but his greater reach into the public shouldn’t matter. No customer should walk out of any store or shop angry that the expectations the store or shop has built for themselves weren’t met. Meet the expectations and make sure you can cover those rare times when you don’t meet them or work to build new, lower expectations that you can meet.
Leave a Reply