6 Comments for “(37) Brands Are Made Possible by People”

1. In reading under this (chapter) you listed some other coffee houses that tried to market themselves as Starbucks, my favorite chain, while living in Lafayette, LA, was CC’s Coffee Houses. In reading your book, I was continuisly reminded about sitting in onf of the CC’s. I found so much of what you mentioned on Starbucks culture and customer experience to be unique also to CC’s. In each of the stores there, (about four of them I think) it was just like being inside of a “Starbucks”

   Posted by Randy Simon on September 19th, 2006 at 11:39 pm

2. I just finished your book and found it to be excellent, although it really based on good citizenship principles. It has merely being translated and executed at Starbucks. I have recently experienced tribal truth #37 “gone wrong” at my local Starbucks as we recently became the “target” of Starbucks’ new strategy of reaching towns with

   Posted by Clive de Castro on October 17th, 2006 at 9:39 pm

3. Half of my previous comment got cut off. Not sure why?
   I wanted to make the point that I have recently had to switch back to my local coffee shop even though I used to frequent Starbucks at least once a day. I have been to more than 100 Starbucks stores across the U.S. and overseas and my local Starbucks is the first one I can honestly say, has not followed this tribal truth. Even though I have shown brand loyalty over several years, the lack of passion of the baristas at my local Starbucks has resulted in me taking my loyalty somewhere else and a brand negative.

   Posted by Clive de Castro on October 17th, 2006 at 9:51 pm

4. Clive … thanks for reading TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE and for making comments on this website.

   I hear what you are with some SBUX locations not living up to the tribal truth of the employees making the brand. However, given that 99% of the stores you visit are delivering … I’d say that’s great. No retailer can be perfect 100% of the time, right?

   I hope you have asked to talk with the store manager of the SBUX location you feel is not delivering. The only way stores will get better is to know that they are doing wrong. Dig?

   Posted by johnmoore on October 18th, 2006 at 6:48 am

5. It’s just rare to find a corporate SBUX store underperform on a consistent basis like that. The baristas are unfriendly and do not respond well to complaints. The store manager was present when one of these unfortunate events occurred and she was indifferent. Anyway, no big deal. I have discovered, in addition, that SBUX stores in smaller towns and in licensed stores tend to struggle more with performance than stores in larger cities. I learned from one of the baristas at my local, licensed supermarket store that the training period has been severely cut for new employees (just at this supermarket chain). They hardly do any hands-on training and spend more time watching a training video. She had received full training four years ago and said it was definitely affecting quality and service. Ofcourse, since it is not a corporate-owned store, it highlights the value of having control over who is on the front lines serving the customer.
   Within one week I had to have 5 drinks re-made because of mistakes made by baristas. All five incidents happened at licensed stores. I am detecting a pattern here. I have to say that it diminishes the SBUX experience and has caused me to go to other coffee shops - something that I thought would never happen.

   Posted by Clive de Castro on October 18th, 2006 at 8:35 am

6. Clive, Sorry to hear about your poor experiences. I do hope you find a way to express these bad experiences to either the Starbucks of the location in question or to submit a comment card. And yes, every comment gets read and many get acted upon.

   Posted by johnmoore on October 18th, 2006 at 3:10 pm

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