How to make your customer experience “Lean”…
Posted on | August 25, 2009 | No Comments
Everyone under the sun is blogging about the WSJ article on the adoption of Lean Process at Starbucks. I figured I better get my two cents in as well.
If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal online you can link to the article here. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124933474023402611.html
Hey WSJ, thanks for making it available for everyone. Just sell cool banner ad’s to drive revenue would ya? Oh, that won’t work? Well make me steal someones old copy off the train then…
If you google “Starbucks Lean” you will find all of the blogs I am speaking about. Every topic has been hit. Bad idea, customer experience impact, not McDonald’s, etc… This appears to be another “brilliant idea” that lacks an effective change management plan. The PR department at Starbucks let the article go out with the comments from Starbucks Barista’s. In my mind they are saying they don’t like it and essentially they are not McDonald’s employees, they don’t want to be McDonald’s employees and if you read between the lines they say it will destroy the brand. STOP…
…If they believe that then the customer experience will show it. You will begin to see turnover in the stores which will be the start of a wave of trouble.
I propose this could have been avoided with a good Change Management Plan. They do not seem to have the desired behavior lined up with the appropriate incentives. By not making the vision and mission of this project clear in Barista terms they have allowed the perception to create itself. I have nothing against McDonald’s employees (Tried the new Angus Burger today, not bad, but not really different…) but if you ask a Barista at Starbucks they will tell you they are 180 degrees apart.
This seems to be another case where communication is going to cause trouble. It seems like a simple process but it is not. I paid a lot of money to learn about it at Northwestern (www.msc.northwestern.edu) and it is still not easy. I have worked in the consulting world for years and this is a critical component but still is not executed well a lot of the time. If companies understood this better and had better transparency within their communication process they would see much more success.
It boils down to this. People do not want to be told what to do. They also need to have incentive to produce the desired behavior. The desired behavior must be aligned to the business. In this case I think they may have assumed that a cup of coffee served 3 seconds faster by an angry Barista would equal a happy customer, more foot traffic and more revenue. If they monitor social media at all they will be adjusting strategy fast. I hope…
Venti, extra shot Americano on ice, with a shot on the side… and Super Size it!
Tags: Change Management > Communication > Human Capital > Organizational Development
Comments
Leave a Reply
About Coley
Coley Perry is a 15 year veteran of the sales and marketing grind. Most of his experience is in and around the intersection of sales, marketing, change management, technology and business process helping clients solve business problems through innovative solutions and consulting. He has built sales teams, go-to-market strategies, demand generation engines and sustainable revenue streams. Currently his passion is focused on the convergence of sales, marketing and technology. He wrote a lot of checks to Columbia College and Northwestern University but learned the most from The “Second City” Training Center in Chicago where he studied the Art of Improv.
