The New Starbucks Customer Experience Blueprint and More…

Great Employee Engagement Survey Question

I love the following question to measure employee morale:

• On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), how do you feel on Friday at 6 pm?
• On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), how do you feel on Sunday at 6 pm?

Obviously, it is unrealistic to assume that most people’s excitement on a Sunday night will be as high as Friday night (assuming they have the weekend off). However, this gives you an excellent baseline for moving the needle. My guess the most common answer to this question for most people would be an 8+ on Friday night and a 3 or lower on a Sunday night. I know people who have told me they start to get a not in their stomach around Sunday night, realizing their weekend is over, and dread Monday mornings.

“As leaders, we need to build the type of company

that helps employees be proud of the work they do and

have an opportunity to live their best lives.”

What if your employees averaged 6, 7, or 8 on Sunday night? You would be an outlier. Your morale would be incredibly high, and your turnover would be extremely low. Every leader’s goal should be to build a culture where people are excited about the work they do.

Bezos says Great Leaders Need to Focus on Only 3 Things

Leadership is about doing less better and delegating the rest. Watch this 18-second video of Jeff Bezos explaining the top 3 priorities of great leaders.

*Episode 222: How to Identify and Eliminate Negative Cues in Business

The New Starbucks Experience Blueprint

Starbucks has recorded a decline in same-store sales for six consecutive quarters. New CEO Brian Niccol is transforming the Starbucks experience, making its cafes warm and inviting. Competitors like Dunkin, Dutch Bros, and Luckin Coffee’s strategy is focused on speed and price over interaction and ambiance.

Starbucks’ senior leaders realized their locations need extra staffing to allow baristas to better connect with customers while not compromising order accuracy and speed. “We are asking them to do too many positions at once,” COO Mike Grams said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

A carefully crafted script guides everything. The world’s largest coffee company is launching a fresh push to choreograph precisely how its hundreds of thousands of U.S. baristas talk to customers, prepare drinks, and hand off orders—even down to the choice of words. They are being trained to read customers’ moods, use the right gestures, and modulate their tone of voice.

Baristas now carry folded cards in their aprons that spell out Starbucks’s service expectations: greeting customers properly, writing messages on cups, personalizing how orders are handed off, offering ceramic or glassware for in-store drinkers, and keeping the lobby and condiment bar clean.

Starbucks Non-Negotiable Standards

• Greeting
  • You walk in the door, and the barista looks you in the eye, smiles and says, “Welcome to Starbucks.”
  • They may call you by name, if you’re a regular.
• Ordering
  • “Pause for a second to make eye contact. Don’t rush the moment,” reads the “Thank with eye contact” section of Starbucks’s new training material.
  • Employees should be present with customers, even when multitasking.
• Delivery
  • When your drink is ready—in four minutes or less—the barista’s again handing it to you. “Your Caramel Macchiato looks so good, it’s one of my favorites,” they say.
• Seating
  • Making your way to a comfy chair, you notice a smiley face and “Have a nice day!” scrawled in Sharpie across your cup.
• Service Recovery
  • If there’s a mishap, baristas need to execute LATTE service recovery model: Listen, Apologize, Take action, Thank, and Ensure satisfaction.

Early Results

Since Starbucks rolled out its new service model, the company reports a drop in customer complaints and a higher order fulfillment rate. In most locations, drive-through service times have fallen to under four minutes, and some employees, according to internal surveys, say they feel more positive about their work.

Niccol also noted that, with the release of Starbucks’s fall beverages in late August, they had their biggest U.S. sales week ever, which he says is evidence that the company is progressing toward delivering a world-class customer experience.

👉 Ready to Create Your Own Customer eXperience Revolution?

Book a complimentary advisory call with a DiJulius Group expert today. You’ll learn how to empower your team, consistently create exceptional experiences, and, ultimately, build a culture that keeps top talent and loyal customers coming back.