When Peet’s Coffee on the UNR campus surprised me by pulling the plug on what I thought was a very smart $.99 cup of coffee, I switched my business to Starbucks Coffee just a short walk around the corner. I wrote about this in my article “More Service Stupidity: A Tale Of Two Coffee Shops.”
Late last week I got a call from the manager of Peet’s here on campus. He apologized for my experience and we had a nice talk about the importance of great customer service. I could tell that he understood the issue and genuinely cared about what happened. What impressed me the most about our conversation was that he said the woman that served me on the day of my complaint was one of his best employees and he was glad the service failure incident happened to her. They talked about what happened and used it as a learning experience to make her an even better employee.
Yes! That is EXACTLY what should happen.
Of course, there are some systemic issues that disabled this great employee from impressing me that day, and the manager still has to address those. For example, doing a better job of making sure customers understand when offers are VERY temporary, or simply making smart and effective offers like $.99 coffee permanent.
The manager also gave me a coupon for five free cups of coffee. I told him that was not necessary, but it was a smart gesture on his part.
So far, a good service recovery. In order for it to be truly effective, my next in-store experience at Peet’s needs to be impressive.
Related Posts:
Employee Engagement: Off To See The Wizard?
You should follow me on twitter here.
That is a great recovery attempt Bret. I am curious as to how they came to know that you were displeased? Peet’s following you on Twitter?
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
That’s a good question, Ajo. Someone e-mailed them a link to my article. Don’t know who it was, but assume it was one of my current or former students or someone else at UNR. Thanks! Bret
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