Starbucks Experience

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Source: The following article is a collection of my thoughts based on my understanding of the book - The Starbucks Experience. I OWN the article written below.
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I came across a book in my personal library yesterday – it was called ‘The Starbucks Experience’. The first few pages were so interesting that I got down making notes for myself.

The book talks about how Starbucks turned an ordinary business into an extraordinary organization – that is loved not only by its customers worldwide but also its employees.

What defines a great company?
A great organization would be a combination of a great vision along with a plan that is implemented to perfection. Starbucks is one such organization that not only dared to create a vision but also implemented it to perfection.

Let us take a look at how Starbucks managed to create such a great organization.

Values and Culture
Starbucks has a unique culture in which the senior management believes in sharing not only their resources but also their wealth. Their employees are called as ‘partners’. They believe in giving their employees, quality and customer focused training, work-friendly environment which would enable them to keep their customers happy.

The best thing about them is that they have been maintaining consistency across all their outlets worldwide.
1) Leaders have created a unique culture for their partners in which Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, Quality and Service form their core values.
2) Partners in turn believe in creating a unique and personal experience for every customer.

Leadership
1) Starbucks leadership believes that the right way of doing business is to turn your employees in to partners. In fact their CEO distributed stock options not only to the senior management but to all the employees who spent more than 20 hours every week. Through this sharing, their partners appreciated the direct link between their efforts and the success of their company.
2) Starbucks has created their own Mission Review committee that is responsible for checking whether their leaders are living their vision and mission and also passing it down to their partners.
3) Starbucks believes in having an aligned mindset between the senior leadership and its partners.
4) It is only when the leaders live the values will the partners imbibe it.
5) Leaders believe in staying small while growing.
6) They face constant challenges in attracting quality and like-minded workforce.
7) They have a separate department called ‘Culture and Leadership development.
8) Senior leadership says – ‘It does not matter how many millions/billions of cups we serve if it doesn’t suit our clients need.

Values, mission and excellent customer and employee focus has been the driving force behind their ultimate success.

Starbucks partners
1) Partners feel ‘proud’ to be a part of this organization because they have the liberty to make things right.
2) The above point is a result of constant training and grooming.
3) Partners believe in creating an emotional bond with every customer.
4) They give importance to every customer by customizing their needs, making them feel important. It is only this trait that has resulted into higher loyalty amongst their customers.
5) Their packing is so great that they aim for 0 spill rate.
6) They believe in making a difference in the lives of their customers – this has been passed down through their leaders. This is what they call as ‘The Starbucks Experience’.

Other important facts
1) Starbucks has been maintaining the same quality consistently for years across all their outlets worldwide.
2) They spend more money on quality and customer focused training than on advertisement.
3) Apart from sharing financial benefits with its partners they provide the following as well – training in product knowledge, guiding principles for success, personal empowerment and the importance of creating a warm customer experiences. These things have resulted in to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
4) Employee turnover rate is 120% less than the industry average.
5) Partners have an 82% satisfaction rate.
6) One of their loyal customers not only knows where all the outlets are situated but also gives her family and friends directions to those outlets.

Apart from a great vision, core values and a strong work force they believe in 5 principles that act as their oxygen for surviving:

Make it your own
Everything matters
Surprise and delight
Embrace resistance
Leave your mark

Most of the companies may or may not be able to follow suit but we can definitely extract some of the important aspects and use it in our day-to-day work life. We could start off with the following:
1) Create a vision and share
2) Create an environment such that every employee feels proud to be a part of the organization. This can happen through client focused training, giving them the desired things, empowerment (basically a feeling of ownership).
3) In short, we need to create a Service-Profit sharing chain that will lead to employee satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn would lead to customer satisfaction and loyalty and drive our growth and profitability.