Page 69 - The Starbucks Experience

PRINCIPLE 2

brew coffee within the hour and served a cup that had been
brewed an hour and 10 minutes earlier. The customer, who
was a regular, immediately noticed a difference. People who
are real coffee connoisseurs appreciate our focus on the little
things.” Commitment to detail is critical in all businesses. If
you ignore the smaller things that are important to those you
serve, you’ll fail to create the experience they crave. This inat-
tention will be a surefire way to drive those customers
straight to your competitors.
Starbucks leadership has found that implementing strict
quality control measures frees partners to look for new ways
to deliver extraordinary experiences. Meredith shares: “I par-
ticularly like the requirement that one of the store partners

54 Create Your Own Experience
• How do you and your business attend to the details that
affect the experience you wish to create?
• Where can you execute more consistently on details,
so that people will talk about being a shareholder in your
company?
• When has your customer experience been compromised by
missed details, even when the product you received was a
quality one?

• What can you do to put yourself more directly into the
experience of your customer?

• What quality control safeguards can you employ to assist
your team in attending to important details that are
frequently missed?