Developing Customer Service at Starbucks

I was sitting in Starbucks this morning and trying to figure how to tap into their song grouping with my Iphone. I have done it once and only once. I typing in Starbucks into my search field in ITunes and something cool arrived. It is a series of employee training podcasts for Starbucks employees. Its called the Starbucks Experience. The segments are audio. Each is about 4 1/2 minutes. They are made by Dr. Michelli an elegant clear spoken presenter.

This is the perfect medium for inservice. All small business and people that are working with people should listen and glean some very important information on the customer interface.

I think that people that are so involved with the complexity of their jobs that they forget that the job would not exist without the customer interface. I am particularly fond of the podcast segment of Get off the Phone. It describes a situation where Dr. Michelli was a customer and was trying to get a transaction completed while the clerk was answering a personal call.

These times require more customer service not less. I look around at the big box stores around here that have closed their doors. Circuit City lost out because their employees were working for that mighty commission. They are on you at every glance. They had little knowledge of their product but they were going after that commission.

The opposite is true with Mervyn's. Its closed its doors because they did not analyze their customer base and reduced the customer interface into a kiosk format. Then they reduced the number of kiosks. You had to hunt down a place to pay for an item.

Khols which is replacing Mervyn's has a central checkout system so it doesn't mix the metaphor of buying something with the metaphor of customer service. Maybe it will do better at the Mall.. at least I hope that the accessibilty for Wheel chair will be better.

So go have a listen at the Starbucks employee training podcasts..

Have a great day..

Pat