'Starbucks Customer Satisfaction\r'

'There be numerous factors that surface the way for Starbucks’ success during the early nineties. I swear that peer slight of their strengths was good knowledge of who their potential guests were and how to revel them with their profile, assortment and overhauls. One in like manner has to take signalize of their clear vision of be happener America’s third place, this tells me that they’ve had an aggressive vision from the start. And of course they’ve matched this with their strategy, from 1992-2002 the party opened about 3500 stores on the whole across America.This gives the community a yearly growth rate of some(a) 350 stores, an impressive number. They alike licensed out some other(prenominal) 1500 stores. This allowed them to become a household name for the firm Ameri put up, and the strong stain name was created with all the advantages that comes a considerable with it. They enjoyed plenty of first-mover advantages. All this was finan ced by boldly fetching the friendship public, despite doubts from near analysts regarding the company concept. And who was the originator behind this decision, if not Howard Schulz?Responsible for much of the success, Howard Schulz and his team up drive home proven that their aggressive strategy’s have been key in the success of the company. In other words the instruction is a monstrous contri furtheror. I’d also like to mould up the human capital of the company, or as the employees be called, the company â€Å"partners”. Since the Starbucks concept of creating an experience for the guest goes hand in hand with partner bliss, oversight have been quite generous to their employees. They’ve for instance provided them with wellness insurance and stock options.For Starbucks it is key to create long lasting races with clients (these nodes have proven to be rattling profitable for the company), demanding good relationships amidst baristas and guests. Keeping a low employee turnover rate both with baristas and managers has in spades contributed to the company’s success. The live umber mantra misbegottent, in short, that the company wants to create life surrounding the c mop upee tree sop uping experience. To create a space outback(a) of the office and the own home where people could drink coffee and enjoy themselves, was something very appealing to consumers, a refuge from the routine of their day.They created value around the function of coffee. The primary(prenominal)(prenominal) brandmark image that was created was a support coffee bean and coffee beverage brand but it’s not the total brand image. They also added attributes of the company to this image such as â€Å" node thing”, â€Å"great air” and â€Å"highest case coffee in the world”. These attributes are all derived from the three main comp onents of the branding strategy: coffee, assistant and atmosphere. Togethe r this was the brand image of Starbucks created during the period. 2.The reasons because the node satisfaction scores are down could, in my view, be linked to the fact that the typical Starbucks customer has permuted because the customer base has expanded. Their perceptions of the brand are different and because the company really doesn’t know who the typical customer is at the moment, they can’t cater to them as well as they could before. There are examples of this change for instance in the case of stores in southerly California where they now have huge poesy of (some periods lower educated) Hispanic customers instead of the affluent, well-educated clean collar 24-44 aged white men and women (mostly women).In deliver 10 we see that on the scale of what attributes the customers pick up most important in dress to be meet, that places 3-7 all are based on one module members performance that single conviction. What I mean by this is that the performance level of this will deepen from customer to customer and because of that you need a large base for the survey than the â€Å"customer snapshot”. This core that it’s not sufficient in decent measuring the true customer satisfaction.But seeing as this method, supposedly, has been kept constant all the time we can overlook that for a second and see that thither has been a decline using the same carcass of measurement. I then(prenominal) contribute that change to the changing customer, as I wrote in the paragraph above. 3. Starbucks’ main difference between the periods is its coat. With the change in size a lot of different attributes naturally follow, some of which are a bit contradictory to the goals Starbucks dress up out to achieve back in the day.The main concept of creating value for the coffee drinker liquid exists but they now struggle to lay aside up their customer intimacy. This is regular more than enhanced by the perception that Starbucks is simpl y a money sharp-set company only interested in revenues and bring forward growth. The product sales also vary between the periods, the coffee connoisseur that bought a lot of coffee beans has been somewhat replaced by the on-the-go customer who just wants the beverage. We also mentioned before that the customer has changed in North America, but even more important, Starbucks have grown internationally with over 1300 stores in total.Both nationally and internationally process innovations have taken place, examples of this are the SVC’s and the piano tuner internet service. 4. The frequent and loyal customer is the most profitable for Starbucks. uncover 8 shows us in quite a clear way that customers with a history of Starbucks purchases that go back 5 days or more, tend to shop 4 more cups of coffee than the average customer that visited Starbucks for the first time last year. In exhibit 9 we’re also shown the clear correlation between customer satisfaction, purcha se size and customer life span.The snug customer has more visits/month, spends more money to each one(prenominal) time and stays as a customer of Starbucks for more years than the unsatisfied. So the highly satisfied customer is vital to the business and is al slipway what management strive to acquire. I strongly think Starbucks have shown this strive in a number of ways to keep customers satisfied. First of all a constant customers likes to recognize the salesperson and if this person recognizes them and remembers their drink this is a quality sign for the company. Starbucks are clearly aware(p) of this since they have a lot of â€Å"soft skills” homework for new employees.They teach them how to interact and create a lasting bond with the customer. Something that’s of course also key in keeping up this relationship is a low employee turnover, something I mentioned before that they are excellent in doing. Secondly the customers come for the product, this is an co untry Starbucks still enjoy a great involve in comparison to competitors and they also add another product every season in order to keep the assortment wide and interesting for customers. And at last the customers need to enjoy a great ambience while at the store and be served quickly.This is something that’s always measured and they try to maintain a great ambience and in regards to the quick service this is something we’re considering in the last question on how to improve. 5. The main goals would be to reduce service time and get closer to the customer by allowing each store to add 20 more hours of cranch per week. It is also a way for the company to sway their commitment to their customers (lose their image of greed) and show them that despite a loss of short term profit they are willing to sacrifice that in order to keep customer satisfaction high.Would this investment increase customer intimacy, is it even possible for a mega-brand to have customer intimacy? With more time it is obvious that the familiarity would improve. A combination of more time for the barista and less waiting time for the customer would allow for in more time to practice soft skills and do up a vibrancy with the customer for the barista. The customer would of course build a relationship with the event barista and a bond would be created that would make the coming visits feel more intimate.To some extent it is possible, since the intimacy mainly is based on the staff and their rapport with customers as I previously stated. But then again it is a faceless organization, they can’t really see and talk to the leaders and internationally not many customer know of Howard Schulz for instance. It’s also quite easy for the customer to feel less important if they’re just one of 20 million served which is the case here. Would this investment reelect long term profits for Starbucks? Would it be cost the $40 million? 0 million peculiar customers are served every day at Starbucks, 21% of those (4. 2 million) are customers with 8 or more visits every month. A staggering 42 % (8. 4 million) only visit 1-2 times per month. These numbers could be related to those shown in exhibit 9, 21 % of customer show the pattern of highly satisfied customers and 42 % show similarity’s to unsatisfied customers. Exhibit 10 tells us that fast service, friendly staff and being treated as a worthful customer are considered highly important factors for customers to be satisfied.All of these factors would most likely be directly change by the investment in a overconfident way. If we only turned one unsatisfied customer into a highly satisfied customer this would result in an increased turnover of $247,494 ((7,2*4,42*8,3)-(3,9*3,88*1,1)). We would have to change over roughly 160. 000 customers using this calculation and over a course of 8,3 years the investment would pay off financially. But in regards to spillover effects such as brand reputa tion and new business generated by this I believe the number would be even smaller, so definitely I would suggest that they do this.\r\n'