Page 44 - The Starbucks Experience

Make It Your Own

our product. I’ve learned everything I can about all our
machines, and I pair people up with the right one. I use the
‘connect, discover, respond’ model. I typically ask, ‘Are you
brewing it just for yourself? Because then a French Press
might be great. If you need to brew 12 cups of coffee at once,
™
then we’ve got our Starbucks Barista Aroma Grande .’ It’s
amazing how appreciative people are when you help them get
their needs met.”

Respond
While a lot of businesses actually do connect with their cus-
tomers and discover those customers’ needs, they don’t
always act on what they learn. They are long on interest and
short on effort to address the customer’s actual need. Cus-
tomers feel betrayed when they are lured into believing that 29
their input matters, only to find out that their preferences are
ignored. Starbucks partners are trained not just to listen to
their customers, but to take action immediately based on
what they hear, and to learn from these experiences for future
customer interactions.
Betty Doria from Middle Island, New York, reinforces this
concept. Betty and her husband were traveling through Ten-
nessee when they “made a wrong turn and accidentally found
a Starbucks. There was a sign in the store for coffee with
malt. Real malt! I got so excited because I hadn’t seen any-
thing like that since I was a kid in Brooklyn. I got to talking
with the manager and started to tell her about how they made
real malteds back then.” However, says Betty, the manager
“made my coffee with malt, and it wasn’t that great.” But
instead of ignoring the customer’s dissatisfaction, this man-
ager listened to Betty and worked with her to make the drink