customers

Starbucks – “We Love Our Customers A Latte.”

Posted on by jessica30131f14

Move over Pumpkin Spice Latte! There is a new drink in town…but wait, where is it? The signature Starbucks red cups are back, which can only mean one thing! The holidays are near. The holiday season for Starbucks is their most profitable  and busiest season. However, there was something missing from this festive time a year. The Eggnog Latte! A staple holiday drink for Starbucks since 1986 was not on the menu for this season. Which left more than just a few customers grumbling Bah Humbug.

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After almost 30 years of success, why was Starbucks pulling the hot seller off the menu? Starbucks spokeswoman Linda Mills said, “The chain initially kept the flavored coffee off this year to ‘optimize’ it for new offerings like Chestnut Praline.”

One loyal customer, 35-year-old firefighter, Travis Block just could not get into the holiday spirit without his Eggnog Latte. So he did was any person would do, he took to social media to protest. One tweet to Starbucks turned into to thousands more and plenty of retweets. Calls, emails and letters started overflowing the Starbucks headquarters, and an online petition even gained over 2500 signatures to bring the signature drink back! 

Starbucks clearly received the message and loves its customers “a latte” that it has agreed to bring back the Eggnog Latte this season. Mills has announced that the Eggnog Latte will start appearing in stores by November 17th. Starbucks apologized to its millions of customers saying, “We made a mistake. We are very sorry.” Starbucks learned its lesson, “Many customers have a very emotional connection to the holidays, and Starbucks is part of that tradition.”

However, quick adjustments to menus are not always easy to fix. Starbucks is now struggling to find enough eggnog from suppliers to bring the drink back to every store. With this being their busiest and most profitable time of the year Starbucks understands the urgency to get the drinks back in the hands of their loyal customers.

It seems as if Starbucks got too wrapped up in the excitement of their new holiday drink line, that they forgot what their customers really wanted.  One reason people choose Starbucks over other coffee chains are because they can customize their drink to their exact liking. Starbuck’s customers are not ones for change. Something Starbucks perhaps forgot about.

There is no doubt, Starbucks loves its customers, a latte, but they will need to improve on staying process focused and understanding what products their customers really want moving forward.

 

How could Starbuck’s have overlooked their customer’s love for the Eggnog Latte? The company has never had a problem like this before, so what do you think happened?

What could Starbucks have done to prevent this nightmare before Christmas from happening?

 

http://www.today.com/money/starbucks-brings-back-eggnog-latte-after-customer-protest-1D80271463

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102160234#.

Amtrak Alert!

Posted on by spr1321rdickey

AMTRAK LOGOAmtrak service is disrupted due to a different transportation service. Since I have relied on Amtrak for about 4 years now, I would be worried if I lived in the New York/Boston area. While Amtrak is more of a long distance passenger service for commuters, many still rely on the service on a weekly basis. Now, because of a collision between two Metro trains in the New York/Boston area, Amtrak service through out this route is limited for an unknown amount of time. Amtrak offers transportation to areas that many other public transportation does not. Therefore, this collision has created a conflict for Amtrak that is currently out of the company’s control at this time.

Through reading Business Week’s article, “Connecticut Commuter Crash With 700 Passengers Curbs Amtrak (2),” readers are able to see that the reasoning of this crash remains unknown. While the service disruption of train transportation was of course not caused by Amtrak, the demand of their customers may stray beyond the halt of the rail line. Since the investigators of this situation are still deciding the reason for this crash, many customers may be worried that this rail line is an unsafe one to travel on. While Amtrak offers alternate routes, their service alert page mentions that those customers who feel uncomfortable to use the services are available for a refund. Therefore, the lack of demand for Amtrak goes beyond the disruption of their services. Is Amtrak under a threat due to safety of their customers?

Focusing on how the collision affected Amtrak as a company required me to think about the bottleneck in project management situations, as the term was even mentioned in the article! The Metro train accident served as a bottleneck in Amtrak being able to operate between two different locations. As discussed in class, when there is a bottleneck situation, there is a backup in the process of creating a product or continuing a service. In the case of the Metro train collision, Amtrak is currently not able to operate between New York and New Haven. Therefore, not only is the business affected financially, continuous customers of Amtrak are required to reroute their trips and may find a new means of train service. While the situation was out of Amtrak’s control, this bottleneck brings Amtrak’s quantity and efficiency to a lower level. While the train company and its customers have already been greatly affected, the article also mentions that investigations similar to this train accident take several months to come to a close. Do you think Amtrak will be affected until investigation is over? Will customers be hesitant to take this route through Amtrak until investigations are over?

As mentioned earlier, more information on this collision and its affect on Amtrak can be found here.

Changes for the Better

Posted on by dounyah301s12

I currently work at one of the top leading financial institutions of the world. It can be compared to a Walgreens, due to how many locations we have.   Recently in class, we discussed what is known as the SWOT analysis. Majority of companies create their own SWOT analysis to determine where they stand amongst competitors.

Three months ago, my financial institution has changed its focus from selling aggressively to the customer to primarily focusing on improving our customer service skills. Our district manager informed us that our bank has undergone some changes due to the fact that we are on the same level as our competitors, rather than surpassing them. As a branch, we disussed our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of our team.

We concluded that our strengths were the products we sold and how each of them varied to fit the customers needs. We also had another strength which was brand recognition. Customers already knew of our company and what products and services it had to offer, without the need of advertising it so much. When it came to discussing our weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the three coincided with one another. We realized in order to stand out from the rest of the other financial institutions, we had to change our attitude. Meaning we had to become more personable with our customers. We needed to become more open and more friendlier than before. Our bank was so focused on making profit that we forgot about how we should treat our customers.  Our branch manager guided us by giving us tips on how to offer the best customer service. As the months passed by, we have received many letters and emails sent to our manager telling him how amazing our staff is. With this, came an increase in referrals. Since our customer service was booming, customers came back more and more, and in return they opened more accounts and referred family and friends.

Overall, I believe that if a company were to create their own SWOT analysis, they can benefit greatly. They can improve tremendously just by tweaking with a few things. All in all, customers  should be the main focus at all times. A pleased customer equals a great sale in the long run. A company should always find ways to outshine its competitors, and the SWOT analysis is a great tool to use and it benefited our company positively!

 

Do you believe that in order for a company to be successful, management should include all the staff members in discussions on how to improve the company overall, rather than just have the upper management brainstorm?