Missed Expectations

Setting then, missing customer’s expectations is the worst way to displease a customer. I’d argue that Starbucks is one of the better companies with having consistent expectations from store to store. However, they recently missed my expectations on a colossal scale. Below is my letter to them:

Hello,
I need to share how Starbucks set, then completely missed my expectations.
This email is about two stores E. Olive Way, 3281 and one of the Neighborhood Coffee Shops, Roy St Coffee and Tea.

On March 6th, 2011, I had a friend drop me off at Roy St Coffee and Tea. I’m a regular there, so I know that usually they’re open until 11 pm every day of the week. I got upto the door, and I noted that there was a sign on the door that said it was closed for a special event.

This was disappointing as I follow the Roy St Twitter feed, @RoyStCoffee, and would’ve expected any early closing, especially a planned one, would be listed on the twitter feed. I had previously seen early closings (such as holidays and the like) listed on the twitter feed, but the closure on March 6th wasn’t listed. (While I’m touching the topic, the @RoyStCoffee twitter feed has been dead Roy St needs to either commit to it or just declare failure and close it down.)

I was miffed at this, but I decided to take it in stride, and visit the E. Olive St store, which I haven’t been to since it was remodeled.

I arrived at the Olive St Store at around 9:15, and was settled in and sitting down at 9:30 or so. The service there was acceptable.

I had thought that the store was open until 11 pm that night, I was informed at 10:20 pm that the store was closing in 10 minutes. I had checked the store hours a few weeks before on the Starbucks iPhone app and this is what I noted, but even if I had checked that night it wouldn’t have mattered since the app shows the store closing at 11 pm. (Even today it shows the store closing at 11 pm on Sunday.)

Simply this pissed me off. I wanted to get some work done, and had just settled into a nice rhythm when I was kicked out of it because the store was closed. This was the second time that night that Starbucks had hindered me in my productivity that day due to their lack of information.

I’m very concerned that the store hours facility on the Starbucks App and website is almost useless as there doesn’t appear to be an established procedure to update this information. I’ve found multiple stores that have incorrect hours. This simply is unacceptable. If Starbucks is going to provide this data they should ensure that it is correct. There needs to be a procedure to update this information as store hours change. This is a failure either properly designing this system, communication about this system, or proper closure of this project by the project manager.

I hope that both of these issues will be rectified systemwide.

Best Regards,
Nicholas Barnard

I completely left out the list of problems that the the early closure caused me as I didn’t want to go into the minutia of the shit that annoyed me with having to piece together a good bus schedule, because part of that was my fault, although I would’ve planned better if I had known when they were closing..