Starbucks: How We Handle Mistakes Determine Customer Experiences

It isn’t a question, mistakes happen in life and in business.  But making a mistake doesn’t have to mean an unhappy customer.  It is how a business handles the situation when a mistake occurs that determines a good customer experience. Take a recent experience I had at my favorite coffee house.

I stopped by Starbucks to get my daily drink.  Recently Starbucks released a new drink that my kids actually like, so in addition to my order, they each ordered this new blended drink.  When the order came up, my kids noticed that their drinks were quite thin and not slushy as they normally are. It was a very noticeable difference than what we had received in the past.  I asked the barista about it and they told me that it was normal.  I told her that we’ve ordered it many times before and it didn’t look like that, it didn’t even look similar to their promotional picture. Her reply was “The drinks never look like the picture” and then she kept on making other drinks.  There was no offer to fix it or anything. So I left because I really didn’t want to make a big deal at a place I frequent a lot.

I am very familiar with Starbucks reputation and I know that one of their cornerstones is stellar customer service and making sure each customer gets exactly what they expect. So when I got home, I went to their website and wrote an email telling them of my  experience.  I wanted to tell them because it was so out of character for their company. If it was my business I’d want to know about this type of behavior.

Within a few hours I received a reply in which they sincerely apologized for my experience and said they would be following up with the district and store managers.  They also said they wanted to send me two free drink coupons to make up for this bad experience.  Free drinks weren’t my goal in writing them, but it went a long way in “repairing” an anomaly I had with their store and their brand.

In truth, businesses are made up of people and people will occasionally make mistakes.  So even though this story started out as a complaint, it turned out to be a successful customer service story because they corrected my experience with their fast acting and appropriate response.  Now when I speak of this I will emphasize what they did to fix it rather than the mistake and I will continue to happily frequent my local Starbucks.

Join us next week to view the highlight of another excellent experience.  Do you have an excellent experience you’d like to share? Email your story to Roseville@Cybertary.com and we will post it on our blog.