The Secret of Starbucks
Have you ever thought about how businesses treat their customers? If you have your own business, how do you treat your customers? Did you ever feel like you were completely screwed by company that you do business with?
Today I went to my favorite Starbucks in North Hollywood, and used a coupon for a free drink that they are promoting. To my chagrin, the drink really wasn’t what I wanted, so I threw it away and promptly returned to the counter. I ordered my usual Tall Mocha.
Ayako, the girl who works at the register, noticed that I just used a coupon for a free drink a few minutes before. When I started to get my money to pay, she said. “That’s okay. You don’t have to pay.” I thought,”Wow, isn’t that incredible. I didn’t even pay for the first drink, but they still want to give me another drink for free!” How awesome is that!
It’s true that the people who work at that Starbucks are kind and love to make their customers happy. And there’s another, more powerful force at work. This force is the idea that customer satisfaction is important. Starbucks actually cares to make sure that the customers have a great experience, and the net result is that customers keep coming back.
Contrast that to the way most companies do business. Just think about the phone company, or your cell phone carrier. Most businesses try to extract as much money from every customer as possible. And they are totally apathetic to how angry, frustrated or ripped off their customers feel. It’s so cheap for them to attract new customers that they don’t care how many leave them.
So back to the Starbucks philosophy. One of Starbucks great business “secrets” is that they actually care about their customers. Instead of trying to extract a few extra dollars, they actually make sure that their customer is happy. I wonder how fast our economy can return to health and prosperity if every business cared that much about their customers.
Related posts:
- A Starbucks on Every Corner
- A Different Way of Thinking: Richard Branson
- The Secret to a Successful Blog
- Tony Hsieh and Zappos
- Secret #4: The Government’s most Powerful Tool is Ignorance
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I'm George Ulmer. Matt and I started this blog and launched the Online Investing AI business. Our goal is to develop the technology to allow anyone to retire after working for 10 years.
is one of my favorite financial books of all time. It's an allegory about a guy who has a terrible job, and how he overcomes challenges to achieve his dreams.
