Delivering Beautifully Inefficient Customer Experiences

I’m still thinking about my first brand love, Starbucks. Layoffs have happened, promises to reduce menu complexity are in place, and their ceo recently told partners (employees) they need to step it up and take more responsibility to turn the company around.

I revisited the love letter I wrote to Starbucks in 2006. That love letter was my book, TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture. I was hoping to find perspective to better understand what went wrong for Starbucks.

I found something interesting in TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE that gives context to Starbucks ceo Brian Niccol pinning part of the blame for the brand decline on the drive for hyper-efficiency when he said, “We spent a lot of time trying to cost-save our way to a very efficient drink and not enough time on what is the experience that Starbucks provides.”

In my dusty book, Tribal Truth #24 is: TOUCHOLOGY TRUMPS TECHNOLOGY. (Yeah, cringy and cheesy title.) In this chapter I discussed the importance of delivering beautifully inefficient customer experiences through high-touch means.

Howard Schultz once explained the blueprint for developing a loyal customer base by saying, “If we greet customers, exchange a few words with them, and then custom-make a drink exactly to their taste, they will be eager to come back.”

Delivering great customer experiences through touchology requires companies to trust their employees to be themselves when connecting on a personal level with customers.

Unfortunately, too many companies are reluctant to place that much trust and responsibility in the hands of employees when interacting with customers.

Instead of trusting their employees to be human, most companies attempt to replicate personal interaction through high-teching their business with technology.

Those last three sentences were lifted directly from page 96 of TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE and it helps to explain how mobile ordering today has siphoned away the personal touch of what was the Starbucks experience.

Today, it’s more of a grab-n-go experience because technology and efficiency have been the business focus. Here’s another snippet from my love letter that has parallels to today’s Starbucks choosing hyper-efficiency over beautiful inefficiency.

“When automation is implemented solely for the benefit of the company’s bottom line, customers realize it. They notice the subtle, yet perceptible shift away from them and toward the business. And today’s customer doesn’t appreciate being short-changed. They will put up with it if they have little or no choice, but given another choice, it’s not difficult to predict what they will do.”

The old school Starbucks ethos was about high-touch human interaction more than high-tech mechanisms. Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” turnaround plan is placing a renewed importance on finding the better balance between touchology and technology.