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Starbucks Delivering Service

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Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service

In late 2002, Christine Day, Starbucks’ senior vice president of administration in North America, discovered that the company was not meeting customer expectations and that there was a decline in customer satisfaction. Day attributed the decline in customer satisfaction to a service gap, particularly service speed. Day must decide whether she will proceed with her plan to invest an annual $40 million across its 4,500 company stores. The investment would allow each store an additional 20 hours of labor per week. The objective is to improve service speeds and in turn increase customer satisfaction.

We recommend that Starbucks proceed with the investment in labor. Customer service and satisfaction is one of Starbucks’ core competencies. If Day does not address the decline in satisfaction levels, Starbucks can potentially dilute its brand and ultimately lose market share reversing the sales growth achievements attained in the last eleven years.

Starbucks’ Success

In the last decade, Starbucks had consecutively achieved 5% or higher in comparable store sales growth. This success was due to several factors, primarily to its value proposition. Starbucks’ value proposition consisted of three components: the quality of coffee, the service provided, and store atmosphere. Starbucks prided itself in serving the highest-quality coffee in the industry. To maintain its coffee exacting standards, the company strived to control as much of the supply chain as it could. It worked directly with growers to purchase raw coffee beans; oversaw the custom roasting process; and it controlled the distribution of coffee to its stores. This control allowed it provide consistently high quality coffee products.

The second component was customer service, also referred to as “customer intimacy.” The goal was for partners to connect with

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