Marketing Memo Case Assignment About Starbucks

Memo Case
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Memo Case: Starbucks
Research conducted on Starbucks, one of the largest coffee house chains in the world revealed that it was not meeting customer expectations in terms of customer satisfaction and this was majorly attributed to service gap. Further scrutiny revealed that most of its customers demanded improvements in the speed of service by its employees hence ensuring that they spend less time on the queue. The customers in addition shared that by so doing they would feel that the company values and appreciates them. As a result, the company’s senior Vice president of Administration in North America Christine Day came up with a plan that would improve the speed of service and in turn increase customer satisfaction. She recommended that the company invest an additional 40 million dollars annually in its 4500 stores which would result in an extra 20 hours of labor per week.
Background
Starbucks had for the longest time identified service delivery as a key factor in its growth and expansion plans. Delivery of not only good, but superior service would differentiate them from the competitors and create customer satisfaction and loyalty. The company ensured that its employees otherwise referred to as “partners” were taken through proper trainings that instilled not only hard skills, but also soft skills that enabled them to relate and connect with the customers which also assisted them to understand their clientele. The company attempts to ensure the standard of quality is maintained throughout initiated regular service performance measures. Most notable was the use of a mystery shopper who would visit one of their stores as any regular customer and take note on matters such as quality of products offered, speed of service, cleanliness or store ambience, employees’ soft skills among others. The mystery shopper would then sample a few of the other stores in the region and give an overall rating that represented the performance of the company. However, this proved to be an imperfect tool to measure customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, hence the problem that Christine Day intends to solve.
Recommendation
Christine Day noted that queue management was very critical in promoting quality service delivery in the company’s stores. Customers become very agitated and irritated when they stand in a queue that is not moving. They expect the company to have streamlined processes that would ensure they take the least possible time in the stores. As a result the company needs to realize and ensure they achieve the three minute standard of service by employing more people to attend to the customers, hence Days recommendation of investing an additional 40 million dollars annually which would increase the labor hours per store by 20 hours weekly. Furthermore;
* An increase in the number of employees will reduce the long queues and ensure constant traffic, which means an increase in the number of customers served in a store per day.(See Exhibit A)
* An increase in the number of employees would ensure the employees provide quality products as despite the three minute standard for serving one client an employee will not be in a rush in preparing a quality...