A Customer's Bizarre Tale of Two Starbucks

Maintaining consistency in operational success is difficult even in the most simple of operations. Starbucks is one company that excels in providing amazing service across all of their stores nationwide. However, this story proves that no matter how well you attempt to organize your processes, the underlying culture and reasoning behind your processes must be just as clear.

This story concerns two Starbucks, under two miles apart. I live exactly 1 mile from each of them, and I love my Three Shot Americano. Initially, I chose which Starbucks based only on which direction on the street my car was parked. However, an odd battle, over something very minor, began at one of the branches that changed that for good.

I typically order a "Triple Tall Americano", utilizing the smaller cup to concentrate the three shots of espresso. The problem is, a standard Tall Americano has two shots and costs about $1.95. An additional shot would cost another .55 cents. Now a Grande Americano has three shots and usually costs $2.25. The quick math says if I order the Grande, I save a quarter. I typically don't care too much about the difference since I always give the clerk the change from cash. However, knowing it helps them, I usually order a Grande in a Tall cup to get charged correctly. All over the country, I've never had an issue getting charged the lesser amount.

Until I visited one Starbucks in particular that decided to make this an issue. I ordered my typical drink, and when I was overcharged, I briefly and politely explained the issue. I was amazed when I was told, "my manager doesn't allow that." I shrugged, and decided next time to be sneaky and order the "Grande Americano in a small cup" to avoid confusion. That worked for a few visits. Then one day, the clerk just translated my order into the more expensive version. When I asked, I was told that it was the manager's policy to charge correctly on every order.

Wow. I was actually being charged MORE for a SMALLER cup. Determined, I decided to push this issue just to see how far they were willing to go. I ordered Grande Americanos with half water. Finally, I wasn't charged for getting less.... so far. But in the end, my experience was so poor, I decided to patron the other Starbucks  close by. Their manager was in shock by my little story

What's the business perspective to learn from here?

The spirit of the policy in decidedly more important to communicate to organization than the rules themselves.  While this might be a mildly humorous example of policy gone wild, some organizations don't have another branch to get a second opportunity with a customer.

Communicate your policies to the people that implement them, and make sure the goal is about satisfying the customer, not your own needs. This will ensure the actions of your team members will reflect that goal.

Status update - Alpha and Beta customers wanted

Our advisory board is formed, and with their guiding influence, we have begun development of our first product lines. Our website is being redeveloped, and most of our software and consulting products will be available in the next 30 days.

We're currently looking for the right customers for our Alpha and Beta stages. Check out our main page for more info at www.tinycircle.net.

Announcing New Advisory Board Member - Tony Zuanich

Tiny Circle is proud to announce the addition of Tony Zuanich to our official Advisory Board.

Tony's experience in building world class sales organizations in startups and large consulting companies make him critical to our soon to be released suite of services.

Announcing New Advisory Board Member - Andy Mullins

Tiny Circle is proud to announce that Andy Mullins has come on board as our Advisory Board member and manager. Mr. Mullins experience building and growing software and consulting companies is critical to our strategy and success. His past accomplishments and understanding of software markets enables us to build real value to our target customers as well as our shareholders.

Initially, Andy will be working with me to round out our Advisory Board, and general strategy for investment and customer focus.

Six Sigma / Process Modeling and Who Needs It?

Business process modeling and automation has crossed the chasm and is generally accepted as worthwhile. How different enterprises have implemented these methodologies (Six Sigma / Lean Six Sigma / etc.) have varied greatly. However, from my work with small and mid-sized companies, the feedback I get is that that's for "big business" and "we just hire the right people and trust they use good process." This article backs that popular assumption up.

The feedback I get from big business that does have the budget to support expensive consulting has a different mixed bag of reactions. "Implementing those processes often costs more in training, time, and oversight than we make in the improvement, even in the long run."

In response, I advise small companies to make the leap to good business process modeling early, when you don't have so many! Make the investment early and much like a good habit, revisit them as your grow. This keeps you from having to rewrite your bad processes later, or suffer from never knowing what bad process or assumption made you fail.

I have also taken this feedback to heart. I hear, "my process consultants need to be more financially invested in my success in implementing these process improvements", and just as importantly, "I need some kind of tool to put those processes into action."

Tiny Circle is dedicated to making great process consulting affordable to all, and we use ground breaking technology to implement those processes to each team member that allows us to monitor the process success and measure dynamically for success and improvement. Our hope is through making good process consulting accessible, we can save jobs and companies that might fail.

As a startup, we are implementing these rules for ourselves first. We have a process we use to evaluate business opportunities, and a process we use to move those opportunities from prospect to client. We also have built a process for evaluating our client's success as well as our own to improve our abilities over time.

We're currently accepting 3 more clients for our Q1 goals, and we're looking for the right team members to help us grow. If you're looking for a career in helping keep jobs alive and growing, and helping small businesses blossom, please feel free to email me your resume. I'd love to talk to you.

Thank you for tuning in.. please leave your thoughts.

Tiny Circle Status

Tiny Circle is now preparing our executive and advisory teams and we have a lot of momentum right now. Closing several deals for our big launch leading to our funding round in early 2010. There is a revolution of how software and end to end business process will interact. We hope we can help lead the way with creative problem solving, good methodology, and revolutionary technology to enable true "process to action" packages.

Keep an eye out for Tiny Circle in the near future. As the CEO, I will inform you on my unique business perspective on this blog, our progress, and the exciting ride of launching an exciting start-up company.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you tune in for every update, and some of my experiences help you build your dream.

Sincerely,

William Hodges