Musings at Altitude

As I picked up my triple grande soy with whip caramel machiatto at the Starbucks drive through today, the customer service representative (I call him that because he wasn’t the barista and I don’t know what they call the person dishing out the drinks through the window) handed me a receipt with an email address to respond to a survey and he made sure I knew his name as well as the barista in case I wanted to say something special about them during the survey.  He said it in a very enjoyable and probably semi-joking way, but you could tell he was very sincere about me taking the time to go to that web address and share my experience in the survey.

Since I had a couple of minutes free and since I’m a Starbucks “power drinker”, I decided to take him up on the offer and give some feedback.  Just for background, I average about 150-200 drinks at Starbucks a year, and if you added the drinks I buy for family, friends, partners and customers, you can probably add at least another 100-150 drinks.  Almost all of the drinks I buy are “loaded” with extra shots, and most of the drinks that I buy others are something different than a standard “drip” coffee.  So I frequent Starbucks for between 250-350 drinks per year – and I think that’s conservative.  In the past 7-8 years, I’ve had years where I know it was much higher than that, and I probably have had years that may have been just a bit lower.  But I am a significantly addicted Starbucks drinker.  During this heavy usage time, I can’t remember a time where I had a significantly bad experience at Starbucks.  In fact, I can only remember a very few times where I had any problem at all with a drink or with timeliness to fulfill my order.  Also, I can only remember a very few times when I entered a Starbucks (anywhere in the country) and felt that the service was a bit sub-standard – and even then it wasn’t so bad that I felt dismayed about it – it was just different enough to create some curiosity on my part as to what may have been causing that particular team member of Starbucks to be having a bad day.

With this background, I want to go back to the survey.  It took me about 5 minutes to fill out…couldn’t have been much longer than that.  But near the end, it gave me a chance to provide comments and I provided feedback similar to the background information I provided above.  At the end, the survey gave me a chance to send additional comments and feedback to a customer service representative, and I quickly took them up on that offer to provide a very important recommendation – Starbucks should find a way to recognize and reward their “power drinkers” and make them feel special in some way.

I shared a story earlier in the week with friends about Best Buy, where Best Buy sent a letter to my house recognizing that we had recently purchased a HD DVD player from Best buy (within the last year), informing us of Toshiba’s decision to get out of the HD DVD business, and giving us a $100 gift card for anything in the store as a means to tell us they care about us and the technology we buy.  Best Buy made us feel special and also made us feel like they were concerned about the impact on us for having bought that technology.  As a “power buyer” at Best Buy, I did not expect such a gift and more importantly, I probably wouldn’t have changed my buying habits because of it, but the fact that Best Buy went through their user records and then decided to offer a special compensation to those who bought the HD DVD players, that made me feel even more special.

But treating customers in a special way isn’t limited to just Best Buy.  I’m also a “power flyer”, spending well over a 100,000 miles in the air every year, and I’ve probably flown that much and more well over half of my business life.  I prefer United because of the routes and the hubs, and I prefer United because they too make me feel special.  As a 1K flyer with trips at least 45 weeks out of the year right now, United provides me those special services that truly make a difference when you fly – a 1K desk for check in; a 1K desk for reservations and flight questions; special upgrades throughout the year; and tracking of my status as I close in on the “million mile” club.  I’d probably fly United (because of the routes and flexibility) even without all of these special privileges, but I do at times truly appreciate having the recognition of the revenues that I generate and the miles in the air that I fly with them.

And that gets me back to Starbucks.  I don’t know of any program that Starbucks may have that recognizes the “power drinkers”.  In fact, culturally that may be something they are completely against.  But I can’t help but think how cool it would be if Starbucks had some way of tracking the number of drinks consumed by any one individual, and in that tracking, had some way of flagging certain high volume milestones to the team members in the stores so that they could say something extra special as those high volume milestones passed!  Just by recognizing those that frequent given stores and more importantly continue to visit Starbucks across the country and across the world during travels would bring even more smiles to the “power drinkers” and even more loyalty as the options for those power drinks grow.  I recommended to Starbucks in the email that 1,000 cups was a pretty significant milestone, and for the drinks I buy, many thousands in revenue.  I would be very pleasantly surprised if one day I got a letter in the mail with a gift card saying “thanks for sharing the Starbucks experience with us” as I passed significant milestones.  I’d be even more surprised and incredibly excited if instead of the gift card that letter contained some seemingly insignificant to them but incredibly significant to me number of shares of Starbucks stock – just 1 share would be something I’d proudly display in my home office (though I recommended to Starbucks they consider 5 shares for 1,000 drink buyers).

The good news is that I feel special every time I stop in or drive through Starbucks – that’s something that is consistent across the many stores I’ve visited over the last decade or so.  I also feel special on United each time I fly.  And I feel very special now thanks to Best Buy.  With the data that’s collected and the buying patterns that are tracked today in seemingly every business environment, won’t we all feel special when every store we frequent realizes how often we do frequent and then provides us that special treatment as we hit milestones or as we experience some disruption because of the products or services they provide. 

I hope we get there soon!