Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service – Case Study
Starbucks – one of the fastest growing companies in the US and in the world - had built its position on the market by connect with its customers, and create “third place” beside home and work, where people could relax and enjoy others or themselves. It was the motto of Starbucks’ owner Howard Schultz and mostly thanks to his philosophy; company has became the biggest coffee drink retailer in the world. However, within the new customer satisfaction report, there is shown some concerns, that company has lost the connection with customers and it must been taken some steps to help Starbucks to go back on the right path regarding customer satisfaction.
I will briefly summarize and examine issues facing Starbucks. Starting from …show more content…
On the other end are selection of merchandise, new beverages and whole bean selection.
We can clearly see that fast customer service is not the most important attribute for Starbucks customers.
Last exhibit shows factors driving “valued customer perception. From 34% of responders indicating better service as a factor, 19% want see friendlier staff and only 10% want to have faster service. From 28% of responders indicating better prices and incentives as a factor, 19% of them believe “free cup after x number of visit” as the most important improvement. Therefore, we can clearly see that adding additional employees to speed up the service is not a solution to fix the company’s problems.
Solutions and Suggestions
After reviewing the case I believe there are some possible alternatives to fix the Starbucks situation.
1. Investing 40 million per year to increase labor hours per store. This solution does not appear as the best way to fix Starbucks’ problems. As we clearly saw from the exhibits provided with the case, there are some more important issues for customers than fast service. In long way, company will get into another downturn without more complex changes, than simply add 20 hours of work a week in every store. Besides that, I believe Starbucks customers are linked to the company because of its unique style created by Howard Shultz.