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Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service – Case Study

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Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service – Case Study
Preliminary
Starbucks – one of the fastest growing companies in the US and in the world - had built its position on the market by connect with its customers, and create “third place” beside home and work, where people could relax and enjoy others or themselves. It was the motto of Starbucks’ owner Howard Schultz and mostly thanks to his philosophy; company has became the biggest coffee drink retailer in the world. However, within the new customer satisfaction report, there is shown some concerns, that company has lost the connection with customers and it must been taken some steps to help Starbucks to go back on the right path regarding customer satisfaction.
I will briefly summarize and examine issues facing Starbucks. Starting from there I will pick the most important issue and study it from different positions. In the end of my I will try to suggest what steps should be made to keep the company in continuing its quest to become one of the most recognized and respected brands in the world.

Introduction
With clear core values towards providing quality coffee, the best service, and atmosphere, Starbucks has enjoyed great success since it was founded 30 years ago. The company has being doing very well for last 11 years with 5% or more store sales increase, even with the rest economy still reeling from the post-9/11 recession. However recent research, conducted to Starbucks, have showed some concerns regarding company’s problem meeting customers’ expectations. To increase customer satisfaction level, Christine Day, the Starbucks senior vice president of administration in North America, suggested a plan to add additional 40 million annually for extra 20 hours of labor per every store. This move should help the company to accomplish lower time of service to three minutes.

Analysis of Exhibits from the case:
Exhibits 1 and 2 show the growing of the Starbucks during the period of five years from 1998 through 2002. As I can see, company has experienced huge

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