On a recent eight-day trip with my family to California I found myself needing a bit of java to keep up the pace of a travel coordinator, entertainment manager, tour guide, wife and mom of three. As I visited the SoCal area I think I seriously visited ten or more different Starbucks. It was funny to see that even in the quaint area of Balboa Island the S-factor has taken over the small coffee houses. However, we succumb (or don't) to the fact that Starbucks is here to stay they have a pretty good process and system to getting their customers what they want quickly for a reasonable cost. Most of the time...
Over my vacation I found frustration in one small fact; honey in my latte. I have one of those orders that has morphed from a plain cappuccino (about ten years ago) to a Venti, Non-Fat, One-Honey, Two-Splenda, No Foam Latte. Yes, you can laugh, it is a bit ridiculous but it is what I like. As most people that have ever been to California know, its a bit more pricey in the land of Mercedes then say, here in Chicago. So when I put my $5.24 out on the counter I expect a hot latte made to order my way. One out three times I was handed my packet of honey and told to do it myself.
They seriously expected me to put the honey in myself? I just paid them $5.24 for my Latte and yes I maybe a bit picky, (my gram would say being selective is good) but they expect me to rip this packet open and dump it into the cup? I was baffled. Mouth agape. Seriously.
Time after time I got the story that the they can't touch it because it's food. Hum...I guess maybe, but then isn't my milk and bagel food too? I would raise the question and they didn't want to hear it - a few would refuse and others would give in to my requests to make my drink with my honey in it.
It was after my last "honey encounter" (while visiting Store 9505 at Crenshaw & Washington) that I realized it isn't the barista or cashier that should be to blame for this problem at all - it is culture. They are not delivering a consistent message to their teams or their clients.
Why would three of the ten Starbucks tell me they can't put my honey in my drink but the others could? Strange that there is such a disconnect in what they are practicing vs. their mission.
Starbucks has a great mission statement: To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. Why was I not inspire? Why was I pissed off - what was wrong with me?
This got me thinking of how we at Obtiva create expectations to our customers? How do we interact with them? Are we consistent in everything we do? Do we insure that we are delivering the same consistent service to our customers every time we engage with them. Are we giving them the "honey" excuse.
One of our core values at Obtiva is to Deliver WOW, its interesting to me how we do this. There are some of our developers that do this by crafting awesome code that turns into this product our clients drool over. Some of our Sr. Developers are out on-site training the new breed of developers on Ruby on Rails or TDD. We even have an operations team that is facilitating the coordination of bringing in our new recruits to on-boarding new Obtivians. Along the way making sure they have a smooth transition into Obtiva so they can be nothing but successful. It doesn't matter how big or small it might appear; we do these things over and over and continue to Deliver WOW to both our external and internal customers.
As part of the leadership team we've shrived to empowering our teams to bring the WOW to their clients in any fashion they can. Is everyone in our company doing this? Are there a few that are feeling like they are limited? constrained? not able to make the best decision for their client?
We work hard to implement only the necessary constraints needed to run our business and above all else we are consistent. Aren't we? If one customer what's "honey" then are teams should be able to evaluate why we can or can not put honey in their cup. If they decide we can then should we do it for every customer. We want our customer's to know when they partner with us they will get the same or better experience than they did the last time.
As I went out to a few of our Obtivians and quizzed them on our consistency and our delivery of service to both internal and external customers I found we've been doing a pretty good job. The empowerment is felt and emulated on a daily basis to make the best decision for their customer. Additionally, our staff feels that if something was on that line of "not-sure" they had the necessary support to make a best choice in the situation and then bring the matter to leadership for potential permanent change to our process and/or service.
That made me smile.
The passion created in individuals that gives them this freedom to do what's best for their customer given a situation is something that is created from a culture that empowers their people. To be able to communicate to Leadership what has happened after an "on the spot" situation and know that we will have their back is a HUGE factor to enabling them to do what's best for our customers.
Although I may never be able to get a straight forward answer as to why Starbucks can't put honey in my latte 30% of the time I've gained some power insight into our Obtiva teams. We do empower our staff to make the right decision for our customers and as a company we support their decisions and each other.