Have you ever been at a Starbucks, and the register prints out an extremely long “survey” receipt? That’s an invitation to complete a survey about your Starbucks experience at MyStarbucksVisit.com. Don’t throw this receipt out! Complete the survey! These receipts appear to print out very rarely. From what I can guess, it appears to be only about one survey every 500 or more customers – don’t count that as written in stone! I just know for sure that these receipts are rare and every single one of them count. I’ve occasionally wondered how Starbucks can obtain meaningful survey results with a sampling of only maybe 35 to 40 customers in one month when the store may see over 15,000 customers in one single month.
On June 21, 2010, I was at my local Starbucks, and I bought multiple items. I purchased about four items, and asked the barista to split the purchases into two transactions to earn more stars. The barista very happily broke up the transaction as per my request, and the second receipt, which included a fruit and cheese platter and Ethos water, produced the survey receipt.
Together, we’re going to walk through filling one of these out, so you’ll know just what to expect should you ever receive one of these special receipts:
Welcome Screen: The first thing that happens is that customer goes to the website MyStarbucksVisit.com. I have typed it in, and here is the welcome page that comes up. I think it is pretty obvious that I’ll be selecting the clickable button that says “Welcome U.S. and Canadian store customers!”
How Was Your Visit: The next screen asks the customer “How Was Your Visit” and asks for the entry of the customer code that appears at the bottom of the receipt. One can notice that every code for MyStarbucksVisit begins with the store number where the visit occurred. In this case, you can see I visited store number 101. (This is NOT the Pike Place Store. It would take a lot of work to explain the numbering system, so I’m not going to sidetrack to that here).
Privacy Policy: The screen that reads “How Was Your Visit” also includes a link to the Starbucks’ Privacy Policy. The lawyer in me can’t help but click it. It’s long and tedious. From that legalese, we learn that to participate in MyStarbucksVisit, you must be age 18 or older (or the age of majority under applicable laws) and we learn how Starbucks stores your private information. The privacy statement even provides an email address should you wish to contact Starbucks about changing your personal information as it pertains to their data collection. Really, at this point I’m sure Starbucks knows me. I’m not worried about giving them a little more data. They’ve got my number.
Finally, we’ve entered in the long code, and we begin our survey. The very first survey question asks whether your purchase was for here or to go. As I recall, I bought a snack to take back to my desk, planning on working a little late (often the case on Mondays for me) and so I have answered “Took Purchase To Go”.
What type of beverage: Hot or Cold? We’re on to the next question. The next question asks the participant if he or she purchased a hot or cold beverage, or one can select the option, “did not order a beverage”. This question hasn’t changed in years. This is not the first time I have completed one of these survey receipts. The one thing about that question that has irked me in the past is that it never contemplates that a person might be purchasing more than one beverage at a time. There are times that I will get both a hot and cold beverage at once. Remember, I had indicated that I was having my purchases rung up separately (or mostly so), and so on this visit I had ordered a Strawberry Banana Vivanno with dark cherry syrup added. I will select that I purchased a “cold” beverage. However, I can think of many times in the past where I have received a survey receipt, having ordered a drip-brewed coffee, a cold beverage, food, and even maybe a small Horizon vanilla milk too. The survey should consider that a person might have bought more than one item to drink.
What specific beverage did you order? Next, the survey wants you to answer specifically what beverage was purchased. In this case, I am going to answer a Vivanno, despite that that was an the receipt immediately before this one. A Vivanno is a lot more fun to talk about than an Ethos bottled water. This is another area where I’ve been mildly irked by the choices before: The choices don’t contemplate that anyone would ever order an Iced coffee from the Clover which is NOT the same thing as a standard iced coffee. However, there is a selection for “other” perhaps for that kind of situation, or other unusual beverage requests such as perhaps plain milk, plain apple juice, or any number of very non-standard ingredient combinations.
Whole Bean purchase? The next question asks if you purchased whole bean this visit. Here, my answer is “no”. I certainly have purchased plenty of whole bean from this Starbucks before, but I didn’t happen to on this particular visit, so the accurate answer is simply “no”.
The next question inquires whether a Starbucks Card was used for the purchase. I have answered “yes”. I always pay with my registered Starbucks Card.
The next question asks whether the visit was eligible for any Starbucks reward? The answer is “no”. Although I got dark cherry syrup in my Vivanno, I still did not receive any special reward: That syrup is always charged for and is never a free syrup. I assume that the question is not asking the overly obvious question of whether I was earning stars because every transaction is earning stars with a registered card. So the right answer here appears to be “no”.
Whew. Now the survey is beginning to feel long and tiresome and we’re only 27% through it. We’ve got to keep going. My baristas will be annoyed with me if I gave up on the survey. Next question asks “did you order food“? I will answer “yes” because in my mind, buying the cheese and fruit and crackers platter counts as buying food.
Next question inquires more specifically about the food purchased. The question is “What food did you order” and you can check all that apply. Here, I’ve indicated that I bought a “plate” because it seems to fit the best of the options. I had to debate a little which was the best fit, but I think the “plate” makes the most sense.
The next question gets even more specific about the food purchased. However I did not order any of the Panani sandwiches and I don’t see an option that fits for the cheese platter so I am going to answer “No I did not order one of these items.”
The next question wants to know if I was “satisfied overall with my visit to this Starbucks.” Now here’s something important for my readers to know: I have heard baristas gossip that unless their stores get a “highly satisfied” they’ll suffer flack from those above them. I don’t know if that is really true, but if you have any thought that you like your baristas, please answer “highly satisfied”. It’s a trick question! One might think that you get partial credit for just being satisfied, but it appears that these questions function more like a pass/fail test with “highly satisfied” as pass, and all else as “fail.” This is a big issue: I can remember one store manager confiding in me how upset she was at low scores – If even just one or two people are merely satisfied and not highly satisfied, it will throw off that month’s results. While an ordinary customer might think that being “satisfied” is great, the store may receive great pressure to improve because their customer voice metrics are not good enough. And this might be in the face of a store where there are lots of very satisfied customers, yet a small percentage of results can create very unpleasant experiences for the store. My story about the store manager confiding in me doesn’t have a happy ending: She left Starbucks after having been a partner for over a decade and having managed several stores.
And again, following in the same pattern as the question before it, here’s another chance to tell Starbucks partners above the store level how “highly satisfied” you are with your store. This question asks about speed of service, cleanliness, and skill of the barista.
Next question asks if the customer was highly satisfied with the taste of beverage and food, and the experience of using a card. Once again, I have indicated that I am “highly satisfied” with my store.
We’re getting there. I know this is getting painfully long. Next we’re asked if we’re highly satisfied with the price we paid. Of course I said yes again that I was highly satisfied. This is one of those questions that seems completely to be a waste of time on the survey – It seems to presume that the barista has some control over the price paid. The barista has little control, outside of perhaps minor changes to the price with syrups or milk changes. Certainly, my barista at the register didn’t set the price of a cheese platter. And honestly I think dark cherry should be a free syrup because it seems to be a poor brand experience to say, “well, you get free syrups, … except with these minor stipulations and exceptions.” But again, my local barista never set the price of a cheese platter or the cost of adding dark cherry to a Vivanno, so I’m always just going to say “highly satisfied” to this question, lest my barista be dinged over something that he or she has no control over.
Next we’re asked if we experienced a problem. The answer is definitely “no”. This visit to Starbucks was a nice normal visit of friendly baristas who all know my name and drinks.
We’re getting there. Not too many more questions. Now we’re asked about returning to this Starbucks or whether I would recommend it. The question specifically asks “based on this visit, what is the likelihood that you will return to this Starbucks in the next month?” The answer is definitely “yes”. According to the survey, I’m 83% of the way through it now.
Finally we get to a point in the survey that is a free form box. Finally a chance for the customer to speak to Starbucks in an open-ended non-structured way. In order to really capture what is happening in the experience, a few well-chosen words can be much more powerful than a scale of one to ten. This section of the survey has a character limit of 4000 characters. This too has developed and changed over time. I clearly remember that in 2008 these surveys had a small character limit for this box, I think in the range of 300 or 400 characters. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I did complain to several moderators on MSI that it would be impossible to describe a visit you had, a problem, and how it resolved, either favorably or not, in so few characters. Shortly after my loud voice about the character limit, it changed in late 2008, removing the character limit entirely. I don’t really think this was my doing, but I thought it was a good change. It appears now that there is a character limit again, only this time allowing a person to write quite a bit.
And now we’re cycling back to yet another question about my Starbucks card used as the form of payment. Yet another question which should be straight-forward but is not. The survey asks me if my card was a gift. I used my black Gold Card to pay. Just to repeat, as every barista should know, when the ten-percent discount expires, the black version of the Gold Card immediately (and automatically) is rolled into MyStarbucksRewards. A customer can pay for their purchase with ANY registered Starbucks card at the Gold Level and receive all the card perks. There is no reason to switch to the gold version of the Gold Card. I have continued to pay with my black Gold Card. It’s so unique, and has Howard’s signature on it (though almost impossible to read at this point). My black card was a gift to me from Starbucks. In October 2008, Starbucks sent out a “few thousand” free black-version Gold Cards, as pre-launch free cards for customers. Most people paid $25 for their card, but I did not. I got mine free. Of course, it did not come pre-loaded with money on it. Wouldn’t that have been nice? But the card itself was a gift from Starbucks, so I am going to answer that the card I was using was a gift.
The next question, again on the topic of my card, asks how receiving the card influenced my purchasing decision. I think it’s pretty obvious that I would go to Starbucks whether or not I had a Starbucks card in my hand. Overall though, the cards probably have helped me spend a little more, but notice that is not the question that Starbucks asks. Starbucks asks about card use in relationship to frequency of visits at Starbucks or other businesses, and does not ask for a comparison of personal spending AT Starbucks with or without the card.
The next question is harder to answer. It asks about frequency of visits during the course of one month. I would note that I remember that this question used to end at 16 times per month, but now considers that a person might go to Starbucks up to 31 times in one month. I am struggling to figure out the right answer. There are days where I skip going to Starbucks. On the other hand, Monday through Friday, I visit Starbucks pretty regularly. The answer is probably between 25 and 31 times per month, and on the high end of that, but to give a conservative guess, I’ll select 25 times a month.
We’re almost done! Towards the end we’re filling out demographic information. Though I think Starbucks knows I’m a female in Seattle, but we’ll tell them again.
Next screen is the very end! The survey gives you a code to write down (I have blacked it out here). Write down the code and take your receipt back to your local Starbucks for a free tall beverage!
**************************
Whew! It was a ton of work but we just filled out an entire MyStarbucksVisit survey receipt together. So dear customers, now you know what to expect! Please don’t throw these surveys away!
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That is a well described blog post, Melody.
I had the chance to do this survey just 1 week ago here in Germany. And I successfully received a free Tall Java Chip Chocolate Frappuccino.
I didn’t know that it is so rare to get at Starbucks…I had it 3 times in my “Starbucks-Life” so far.
It’s odd – a couple years ago, it seems like I was getting the survey receipt once a week over a period of two or three months at my two then-regular stores. Since then, nothing.
It was a lovely surprise getting a free black Gold Card! Do you know what the criteria was for who received them? At the time, I had just left the high-stress job that had driven me to a $150/month Starbucks addiction, so I figured my spending history was the trigger.
(I’d like to say I’ve cut back heavily, but then again, I’m one transaction away from earning my 10th free drink postcard…)
Melody- I have received a few surveys in the last few months more than usual. I think it is interesting how you broke down the questions. I didn’t see the survey in the same way you explained it. I find the survey pointless up to this point other than to get the free drink at the end. Do you think the info and stats they get from it really makes a difference other than rating each store? I sure have not seen any changes in my local SB good or bad.
These are rare? I fill out one every other month I think.
Thanks for reading the legal for me, i always wondered if i had sold them my soul 🙂
I never though about that “ordering multiple beverages” as i usually only get 1 drink, though on occasion i’ll do a run for the office and get 4 or more, but obviously they let you multi select food, why not beverages too?
Eligible for any Starbucks reward? i do find this question vague 🙁
Gift card? I never thought of my black card as a gift, but you are right i didn’t need to pay for it it was a gift from Starbucks. Since the 10% discount ended i have stopped using it and at first was using my red card and now my green card. (thanks to you!)
i had the survey print out once at the Starbucks in town, and the barista ripped it off and claimed it wasn’t part of my receipt. Now, she and I have had personal issues before, so this doesn’t really surprise me. Just made me mad I didn’t get the chance to comment!
I did get the survey a few times a the Kroger Starbucks in town. I’m assuming it’s the same thing, but the invitation is printed on a card since they use Kroger cash registers, not Starbucks ones. I’m guessing they get the cards because they don’t get the random printouts.
@perrik and @purple1
@perrik – Somewhere there was a USA Today article where Howard said that a “few thousand” got the free early black cards. I got one too. I’m not really sure what the criteria was. I assume you had to be using a registered card already, and be buying a lot! Don’t know though.
@purple1 – These few survey receipts – often less than one-half a percent of all customers in a month – make a huge difference on store morale, staffing, all kinds of things. I knew a store manager who left Starbucks, having been with the company for nearly a decade, because she felt pressured to leave due to a couple of months of low scores from these surveys. She was full of talent and smart, and really easily found another position. The point being that if there is a trend of a couple of months of low scores (meaning not all “highly satisfied”) the consequences can be harsh. And I question Starbucks’ belief that there should be so much emphasis on this particular metric: CV scores are volatile because of the small sampling, and don’t really tell you if partners are coffee enthusiastic, passionate about good service, and I just don’t believe they capture enough of what is going on in a store.
Melody thanks for your response. Are you then suggesting to get rid of the surveys because they do not provide a true assessment of what the customer gets (not speaking of products). How often is this data collected and shared with each store? And also curious as to what impact the district manager has on the running of the store? The district manager in my area covers 11-12 stores. Is that the norm? One more question- If SB was to find another marketing option besides the survey, what would it be? – focus groups? Perhaps that is something the district manager can organize.
Thanks for the blog post on this! I love getting those survey receipts! There was a point when I was getting them at least once a month, but now I haven’t got one for a while. Good to know they are still doing them. There are a few Starbucks that actually have a little display that shows the survey results for their stores. It’s fun reading people’s comments.
Melody, the surveys print randomly, which at my store equates to about 1 every 16 customers or so. A bunch will print out for a few days, and then depending on how many people respond, more or less will print for the remainder of the month. There is a limit to the amount of people that can respond in one month. Unless the customer rates their visit as “Highly Satisfied,” they might as well rate us as a zero because nothing else counts. We receive the results from the Customer Voice on the 1st or 2nd of the month for the previous month. The store manager is the only one who can see the actual comments left by customers.
I agree with you that 30 or 40 customers out of thousands is not a very good survey of the customer population. In my district, we have to put the surveys in a “Thank You” card with a handwritten note from the store manager before giving them out. The Customer Voice is nothing more than a PR stunt – it does not show what is really wrong in a store because the customer DOES NOT always know best! The old “Customer Voice” was called a “snapshot” – secret shoppers who were trained on the standards of Starbucks would come into a store, purchase a drink, and then fill out a detailed report about the friendliness of the baristas, the cleanliness of the store, bathroom, patio, etc., and how the drink compared to the recipe. This was a much better representation of how a store ranks vs. the customer voice. With all of the labor cuts that have taken place, I’m sure Howie and company did not want to have trained professionals ranking their stores because the stores WOULD FAIL TERRIBLY on everything – cleanliness, friendliness, speed of service. The Customer Voice lets unqualified people (sorry – customers are not qualified to judge whether or not a store is living up to the Starbucks standards) basically hold the livelihood of the store in their hands. Don’t get me wrong, I think the customer should still have a voice in saying what is good or about their favorite Starbucks, but in a way where they send their comments to the store and not in a way where they decide if the skill of the barista is up to par.
Sorry for the rant but my store just had a bad month for customer voice, despite our efforts to provide a legendary experience for every customer, especially the ones who receive a survey. How happy will the customers actually be, though, when you are running everything in a store with the LEAN mentality and pushing VIA and ICED VIA and GAZEBO BLEND and FRAPPUCCINOS down their throats day in and day out?
Our store manager posts the results and customer comments from the survey so all partners are aware of our store results. We then use any negative (and sometimes good) comments for coaching conversations and to make improvements to our service/store. For example a few customers had commented on the lack of space near our registers and after some rearranging we were able to provide the customers with additional counter space.
Without this information we wouldn’t be aware of our problem areas from a customer’s perspective. Clarifiers for some questions would be helpful. For example we have been getting low scores on beverage temperature recently. But we don’t know if this is hot beverages or cold beverages and if the complaint is too hot or too cold.
Thanks for letting customers know how important these surveys can be to their local Starbucks.
@Baroosta – I’m with you that I think that “secret shoppers” are more effective. And if you only end up at the end of the month with 35 surveys out of 18,000 customers, that WILL be volatile!
I have worked clothing retail but never food retail. Eddie Bauer uses secret shoppers like what you describe. Are the dressing rooms clean? Store appearance? We had to make eye-contact and greet every customer within 30 seconds of them coming in the door! That’s hard when you’re stuck behind a register and not enough people on the floor. We had to suggest at least one piece of clothing additionally. Be knowledgeable – including about the catalog. Suggest the Eddie Bauer credit card or “friends” (Loyalty card) card.
And baroosta, the other thing I don’t like about the CV receipts is that there are a few variables that the baristas don’t really affect but yet it will affect the results! I mean, you can’t really change the fact that a short drip is $1.40 even though it’s possible some person might score you low on price. Since much of the food is pre-packaged you can’t control its quality either, but someone who grabs an egg-salad sandwich that he or she didn’t like might end up scoring you lower too.
I’ve seen “secret shoppers” work effectively in clothing retail, and so that’s what I am a fan of.
Baroosta, I’ve seen lots of your posts around. I absolutely believe you’re doing your best to exceed the customers’ expectations on every single visit.
Melody and Baroosta very interesting comments and certainly these comments have given me a different view of those surveys. I am still not sure they are worth the time it takes to fill them out, but it seems for the baristas and the stores they do get feedback.As a result of the comments, are there competitions between stores to achieve a certain level of customer satisfaction? I just have never seen any effective changes for the positive at the store I frequent the most and I cannot tell what kind of response they give to their survey results. And I am not totally in agreement that a customer cannot be a valid judge of whether the store or barista is meeting SB standards. Why not? Certainly, we the customer knows what SB offers, what customer service should be, etc. and why not let them be valid judges.
Thanks, Melody! 🙂 I completely agree with your examples as they are true things that happen all the time.
purple1 – I’m all for giving the customer a way to provide feedback to the store, but the customer does not always know what a standard should be. Sure, customers know what good customer service is, but there are just some things that only an expert would know. I’m just trying to point out that the important things would best be left to a trained professional. For example, NASA wouldn’t just go out and find someone who has read a book about space travel and ask them to be an astronaut – they would want a trained professional piloting the rocket – not an enthusiast. How fair is it that the jobs in a store are controlled (for the most part…) by a customer who just had a bad day and decided to leave negative feedback even though their drink was made perfectly (according to Starbucks standards) and the store was very clean?
Baroosta- agree with your comments, however, I would hate to see the customer’s views and customer service be downgraded. I do understand what you are saying and really have no issue with your comments. Overall, at the store I frequent the most, customer service is not an issue. BTW re your comment on NASA- although you are right I do think they have opened up opportunities for laypeople to become astronauts with some training. Of course, I doubt they are the ones piloting the rocket.
I’ve done quite a few of these surveys in the past..maybe one in the last 6+mnths. As I remember, I got them (and did them) much more frequently in the past. ??
@Melody @purple1 @baroosta
Awesome post and conversation.
I am very mixed on this topic. Yes the old “snapshot” was nicely done by professional secret shoppers who were trained by Starbucks to Starbucks standards. However, the one thing it left out was it THAT standard what the customer was truly looking for? With the new CV program, it taps directly into the customers, and how Starbucks is impacting them directly. Yes, they metric is smaller, only 30-40 responses a month, but is more really needed? Now stores only generate a few each day, enough to receive about 30 responses a month. If trending higher, less print out in the 3rd & 4th weeks, or vice-versa. When the program first came out, surveys were generated every hour. A few months later, they tested in some areas (and we know Starbucks loves to test things), using fewer surveys. The results were basically the same. If you remember, it also started with the survey resulting in an entry into a drawing for $1000. Now, it is a free tall beverage to all completed surveys. Much better I think.
Now, not all the metrics are seen at the store level. Price, etc are not, because the stores do not have that kind of impact. However, speed of survice, taste of beverage, Overall Experience (THE ONLY REAL IMPORTANT ONE), do show up, as do the comments (good & bad). Taste of food shows up, mainly for corp, but also around freshness in store, etc. The stores see this information monthly. One really nice feature is the system know exactly WHEN the survey printed out. Because of this, the management team can address the situation if the overall score is down in certain days or day parts. They can also easily track month-to-month trends in all those areas. The most important part is it is coming directly from the people who are giving money to Starbucks every day, and NOT someone Starbucks has paid to review. Who is better to review Starbucks, and each individual store? My problem is the scoring. Does anybody really have a “highly satisfied” experience wherever they go? I don’t know if I have, even at Starbucks. Sure I have had great experiences there, but highly satisfying? No, that can only happen if they make my perfect beverage, and deliver it with my wonderful pastry, to my bedside just as I awake from a great slumber. Now that is Highly Satisfied.
…just my 2 beans
WO
@WOnet
@melody
Oh, one more thing, compare your next survey to this last survey, and answer some questions differently. There are different questions based off answers in the same survey. Just though you would like to know that, for why some surveys are different.
…just my 2 beans
WO
@WOnet
[apologies for the wall o’ text.. this is a subject I am _very_ passionate about]
@Melody @Baroosta I’m a Starbucks store manager and a retail veteran of ten years. I cannot disagree any more strongly with the idea that secret shoppers are more effective than customer surveys!
Let me start with the Starbucks Mission Statement – http://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-statement
“To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”
and in the Our Customers portion
“When we are fully engaged, we connect with, laugh with, and uplift the lives of our customers – even if just for a few moments. Sure, it starts with the promise of a perfectly made beverage, but our work goes far beyond that. It’s really about human connection.”
The two arguments are pretty clearly spelled out here for me. The secret shopper came once a month and checked a script to make sure we provided basic service and in essence provided “a perfectly made beverage.”
As my response I would say “our work goes far beyond that”. While there is no check box for “inspired and nutured the human spirit” on a secret shopper or customer survey, gauging a random customer’s satisfaction gets us a lot closer to understanding the situation.
To address baroostas point about “customers don’t know the standards”, that’s really not the point. The standards are important but to me it’s whether or not the customer who plops down $4 for a drink feels like they purchased $4 worth of satisfaction.
@WO – I remember when the survey was for a prize of money and not the tall drink. I sort of liked the chance to win a prize of money. Neither really _motivate_ me to answer the survey.
At a rate of less than one-half a percent of all customers cycling through the doors, I think that’s too small. I am not a statistician, but I think that is too small.
I definitely can appreciate that customers can tap into things tha a paid secret shopper will never connect with: For a regular customer, there may be a genuine heart-felt connection with the barista, and a chance to give real positive feedback in the free-form box, that the barista would otherwise not get to hear. Unlikely that would happen with a secret shopper.
There are plusses and minuses of both systems. But the real purpose is some un-announced evaluation of the store (the person who gets a survey receipt is random, and it’s not like Melody walks in the door, and a barista can say, “Melody is here for her scheduled survey”) and I still weigh in favor of the secret shopper. I also think it’s really instructive to see how baristas act with non-regulars.
Oh yes, you’re right that there are surveys with other variations on the questions. I just stuck exactly with this survey so that the blog post wouldn’t be too confusing.
Your two beans are greatly appreciated!
I love the customer voice receipts! If nothing else, the free tall beverage is a nice perk. I think I’ve gotten about two receipts in the past 9 months or so. Very unpredictable. Knowing that “highly satisfied” is the only passing grade makes me more likely to “round up” my experience to highly satisfied. I wish only the best for the stores I frequent, and the people working there!
[I decided to split these up]
@Melody You mentioned a story about a long term partner who left in part due to Customer Voice results for her store being very low. First off, I’d like to lay some groundwork and point you to an article by Robert Potter – http://www.rapotter.com/docs/SatisfactionIsNotEnough.pdf
Satisfied is “Did you take care of my drink?” and Highly Satisfied is “Did you take care of me?” in Potter’s model. Looking at the Mission Statement, I can tell you Starbucks clearly wants to do both. While speaking of the human spirit can seem lofty and a put-on, I can tell you there are partners who drink the kool-aid and really live this… you’ve seen them!
Melody: “CV scores are volatile because of the small sampling”
I know for myself that this number of responses is statistically valid to a particular confidence level. Even if one month is skewed, a series of months should give you a good picture of how a store truly performs.
“…and don’t really tell you if partners are coffee enthusiastic, passionate about good service, and I just don’t believe they capture enough of what is going on in a store.”
I see this as the classic Temple of Coffee vs Service Establishment. This is an old, old argument and the correct answer is we need to be both to hold our identity as Starbucks. That said, the customer’s level of satisfaction is at the heart of it all for me. I can guarantee that not one customer who is less than highly satisfied is going to feel their human spirit was inspired or nutured.
In the end it doesn’t matter if the partners feel passionately about service, but rather can they take a 2 minute encounter and turn it into the highlight of someone’s day? They might be coffee enthusiastic, but that says nothing about what the customer wants out any given encounter. The question is are we going to be company-centric or customer-centric and all signs point to the latter.
While I do feel sad to hear a long term partner leave over CV scores, I’d have to ask what role they had in creating the environment that produced these scores. If you accept that CV really is a voice, then low score are telling you that at best you’re just taking care of their drinks.
Second, what was their buy-in level to the future direction of the company? Leaving a job after 10 years is like a divorce in that it’s never about one thing. We like to simplify things but I’d guess that the partner had felt the company’s direction wasn’t right and the drifting away started long before.
Thanks for bringing up this topic!
@GreyGhostX – Okay you’ve given me a lot of information to digest and think about. I don’t have time right now to click the pdf link and read what’s there. I took a course in statistics in undergrad, and I’ve always thought that the larger the sample the better. Though perhaps there can be a statistically accurate sample when looking at several months, but I’m still not entirely happy with the mechanics of what Starbucks does with the voice receipts.
Two changes I would make immediately: (1) I would get rid of all questions that have an odd number (scale of one to five – highly satisfied to not) and reformulate them in such a way that there are an even number of choices. I remember hearing that sociologists who research sampling say that it is human nature to gravitate to a middle response, no matter what the middle is. There are sociology theories that you’ll get a more accurate analysis if you force people to make a selection – because many people just want. So scales on one to four, or one to eight, or even one to ten, might be better.
(2) If there were some way to prevent barista manipulation of this, that would be great. One thing that _can_ happen with surveys is sort of a manipulation where baristas hoard the receipts for favorite customers, or fill them out themselves. That can’t possibly be accurate either! I don’t know how this can be prevented though … I think I need to think this one through too.
Thank you for the really smart conversation on this! These comments really often have very salient points in them.
I am surprised no one has brought up the practice of stores *holding* the Customer Voice receipts for their favorite customers to fill out…although now with Starbucks tracking everyone’s MAC address with the free-wifi, they could track how many customers filled out how many CV receipts and where.
That said, whenever I receive one of these, I create a piece of art and return it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/karldotcom/3898991233/sizes/o/in/photostream/
My link didnt post? Try again.
Winners never cheat and cheaters never win… I know I’ve heard of more than one incident of a store or district manager being let go for manipulating CV results.
@GreyGhostX – the point I was trying to make about standards is that the customer might think that their drink, or pastry, or sandwich is not right, when in reality IT IS. For example, someone that I know works at a pizza place that uses the same system we do for surveys only they see the results instantly when the customer takes the survey. Often, customers will say that their pizza didn’t have enough toppings or it was too crispy, when in reality it was made exactly to standard, and because of this they will rank their visit as a “3” or “4” instead of a “5,” therefore counting against the store. I really do value the feedback that we receive from the customer voice, but I feel as though we give the customer too much power with these surveys. And I do remember when the “prize” was an entry for $1000, which wasn’t as popular as the free tall beverage. Although I did hear about a customer in another store who actually won one of those gift cards.
I was thinking earlier that the surveys could be given out to registered Starbucks card holders, as this could be a perk for someone to keep a card loaded with money. Instead of printing the survey on the receipt, it could be emailed to the customer after they pay with a Starbucks card and then printed out to be redeemed. This would prevent manipulation of the surveys because the baristas wouldn’t be able to save them for regulars or themselves. Perhaps a small message could pop up, like it does now, that alerts the barista that a survey will be emailed, and they could just say to the customer “Be sure to check your email later today because we will be sending you a survey to complete…”
Oh, and when we had the snapshot, it’s not like you knew when one was being taken. The secret shopper would just come inside or through the drive thru like any other customer. They wore plain clothes and drove unmarked cars.
At our local Starbucks, my spouse has quite frequently been handed these survey receipts. Way more times than could possibly be random! The survey receipts they hand him don’t normally show his purchase (or any purchase). Occasionally, if there is a purchase shown on the receipt, the purchase was not his. The receipt has often had the first names of 3 store employees handwritten on the top (I’m not sure what that is about – unless they are counting that the receipt is returned to the same store for the free drink and they can somehow track the ratings they got from that receipt?). They are bypassing the randomness and picking who fills out their surveys!
Wow what great comments re the survey and how the stores respond to the answers and how SB views the stats. I still believe that the customer (especially those of us that are frequent and loyal customers to one store) are the best barometer of what is working in a store. This morning at my local SB the baristas were talking about how August will be a strange month because so many of them will be on vacation. I asked one of them about coverage and she said it will be tough but the store will be covered. I will be interested to see how customer service is in this situation. I am sort of surprised that the dm and manager allows so many to take off in one month instead of doing rolling vacations. Although I love the people that work at the SB I most frequent, I do know that some are better than others so it will be interesting to see how it all works out. The question for me still remains- how does SB view the customer?
I didn’t even that these receipts existed! I’ve never seen one before. I suppose that means that I need to buy some more fraps (although I’ll wait to lose a few more pounds before I do so). 😛
-French Bean
I LOVE the CV’s! We get, roughly, about 6-7 CV receipts printed out @ my store, monthly. (Perhaps, a bit more…) Any way, TO ME, they are SO significant & meaningful because I’ve been w/ this current store since day-1 of opening until now (2 years)-we’ve worked SO HARD & diligently @ my new store over these past 2 years & we’ve DEFINITELY seen a staggering improvement in our CV surveys! Every month, we receive a print out of ALL of our beloved CV survey guests’ comments & we look forward to reading them, being that they almost ALWAYS contain positive remarks & feedback!
When I get the privilege to hand out a CV survey to 1 of my guests, I always go, “Hey! Please, PLEASE, take our customer survey & let us know how we did here! We want to ENSURE that you are HIIIIGHLY SATISFIED (wink-wink) [I literally over-exaggerate the wink w/ a smile & they laugh!] @ the end of the survey, bring back the receipt to our store & we’ll get you ANY tall-size bev OF YOUR CHOICE!” I do this, ALL, w/ genuine smile, excitement, & cheer! Mostly, they take the CV receipt from me & gladly reply, “OF COURSE I’ll take the survey! You guys treat me very well here…”
Every month, our scores have improved & we are now up to a 98% overall customer satisfaction, steadily for the last 3 mos! Each time that we would see the customer comment print-outs & stats in the back, we would get SO HAPPY to see the results! Customers are beginning to voluntarily mention our names in the survey comments, regularly~
THE CV result print-out that we see in our back-of-the-house as baristas/shift supervisors/ASM’s/SM’s is our vehicle of encouragement to improve in ANY way that we can-it is also a physical document of PRAISE, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, VALIDATION, & a REMINDER of how great of a job we are doing & how much our guests appreciate us =] @ my store, it’s as if you’re smiling from ear-to-ear already, we want to make you smile from temple-to-temple LOL
Whew! This post must have taken a massive amount of patience, but thanks so much for the walk-through! As a partner, I can’t stress just how important doing this survey is to your store of choice. The results are directly responsible for our overall standings in the district, and we see, read, and react to every single comment you all make. This is not merely busywork to make customers feel “involved”- this is your very best chance to make real changes in within your Starbucks! Besides, who doesn’t love a free tall drink?
The surveys are random, but I do notice a pattern. For one, there’s always one week where we see a ton of them print out. If your store has a low CV feedback, you will get more than if your CV is high. The survey breaks results down by both day of the week and time of day- days/times where you receive high results will see less random printouts than days/times that receive low feedback and results.
Another things customers should know is that this is not the place to complain about corporate issues. Too often we unfairly get graded lower because people want to rant about products they liked 3 years ago, the fact that someone was smoking near the building, or complain that prices went up nationally. Please fill out the survey with your Starbucks and that particular visit in mind; there are other venues to express your more general concerns. It always hurts me a little when a complaint about a corporate-level decision knocks us out of 1st place with customer service. But anyway….
As for manipulation, it does happen everywhere. At my store, we have customers who flat out refuse to accept the survey receipt. We do save those receipts (sans personal information), and give it to the next regular who comes in. Not that we are trying to manipulate the CV, but we don’t want an opportunity to hit the trash either. We don’t take them ourselves; it’s too easy to track IP addresses, and we know that this has happened. (Long story, may blog it myself one day.)
Melody, thanks again for taking the time to not only do your survey, but to talk your readers through it! Amazing job. 🙂
@baroosta “the point I was trying to make about standards is that the customer might think that their drink, or pastry, or sandwich is not right, when in reality IT IS.”
And my point would be if the customer doesn’t think it’s right, it isn’t. I’m not going with “the customer is always right” reflexively, but we owe it to our customers to make sure they’re happy with what they paid for. That’s my final standard and here are some examples of things I do for my customers.
I have a customer who orders a no foam caramel macchiato every day even though the drink doesn’t really make any sense. The caramel immediately sinks and she always asks if we put caramel on top.
I have another customer who insists that putting syrup over the ice in a no water iced americano make the flavor somehow different.
Even worse is the customer who insists on drinking fallen shots because he doesn’t want his espresso to taste sweet.
GreyGhostX – I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. If a customer is unhappy with their drink or sandwich or pastry, I completely think that they should be entitled to a new item or a refund. I’m just pointing out that you can’t please everyone, and unfortunately, these customers get the surveys sometimes and then mark us off for something that is out of our control in the store…
I have heard that only the high and low scores on these are counted – is that true?
Also, I have never understood all of the questions about what the customer orders. Getting a customer engaged to do a survey is tough. Why ask them for information like what they ordered when you can retrieve that from your registers and POS system when you could be asking them about the experience and getting real insight into their thoughts about their visit?
Re Frequency: I am not sure I have received one of these this year but I used to receive them all of the time.
Re Secret Shoppers: You and Juan Valdez have been the best “secret shoppers” of late. I hear the old secret shoppers used to weigh the drinks and take the drink temperature. There is a lot to be gained from the in-person approach.
When customers get surveys, the best thing you guys can do is use the comments section to let us know what we can do better if you didn’t rate us “highly satisfied.” And please consider only THAT visit to THAT store, not your feelings on Starbucks as a whole. I had someone rate us less than highly satisfied because we were not a drive thru! 🙂
@mnmsr4me – That’s a great comment. Shocking that someone would mark down your store because you are not a drive thru store!
Hey I am a loyal and frequest Starbucks customer and have been for years and I didn’t get any 10% Starbucks reward card for free!!!!!
Hi KP! Welcome to my blog. Hope you will poke around at some of the other blog posts. As to the 10 percent discount card: That program is long over, as you know. Very few people got a free card. There was a USA Today article where Howard Schultz was quoted as saying that “a few thousand” people were mailed an early free 10 percent off discount card. Starbucks does different things for different people. There have been a million and one events here in Seattle where other customers get invites, and I do not. I’ve heard of people who got their new-gold-version-gold-card pre-loaded with money for being loyal customers and I did not! Don’t feel bad. Starbucks loves all of us, but just does different promotions at different times.
My brother’s black card and 10% discount expires tomorrow. They even sent him a replacement a month ago (it no longer worked), which surprised me. I thought they would have been out-of-stock.
Who received a Gold Card loaded with money? I wouldn’t be surprised if “celebrities” or their agents/handlers/entourage are getting loaded cards in exchange for the staged paparazzi photos of them holding product you see on the “gossip” sites. I know Starbucks has one of those agencies on retainer.
Wow Melody I never knew SB gave out preloaded gold cards! I would love to know how SB decides what benefits to give to what customer!!! I realize it is their view probably that giving some benefits to some loyal customers over other loyal customers works in their favor. But don’t think in the end it makes some loyal customers annoyed and then what happens??? A possible loss of a loyal customer?
Mel, Purple1, Karl Dahlquist, KP,
Starbucks not only sent out the old 10% off card to LOTS of people, but every store/store manager was sent about 10 to give out to their “favorite” customers.
I did not know about the pre-loaded gold cards, but it doesn’t really surprise me. As for putting them in the hands of “celebrities”, I doubt that was something Starbucks focused on. The need of having Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton carrying a frappuccino or skinny latte around is not really needed. Lets face it, with 16,000 locations worldwide, 125,000 partners (employees), and 40,000,000 customers a week (yes 40 million), I really don’t think that Starbucks “needs” the celebrity endorsement.
…just my 2 beans
WO
@WOnet
@KP, @WO, @Purple1 @KarlD – On twitter I saw one or two tweets early Jan of people who said that they got their Gold Card loaded with a little money on it – Ordinary folks. I figured it was the same sort of “surprise and delight” that Starbucks is famous for when they would occasionally credit a registered card with $5 (At least I have heard of that happening too).
@WO – You make a great point about celebrities. The fact of the matter is that Starbucks is so big, and they believe this is THEIR game controlling content, that they can do whatever they want. They have advertising dollars to throw around, but they don’t have to do anything with celebrity placements because celebs already carry around a white cup with a green siren.
I’ve rambled way too much – I’m looking forward to a fresh new blog post tomorrow!
I was one of the group Starbucks sent the Black 10% off gold card to. But I did not not receive pre-loaded gold ‘gold’ card. Just the standard welcome packet. If I am correct those that had Duetto Visa cards were given gold cards, so maybe when the did away with the Duetto program any remaining credit was put on the gold card?
I have no idea if that’s true…just a thought!
@Hayley,
When the Duetto was discontinued, Starbucks took the remaining balance and loaded on to a new SBUX Card. Along with the card, a coupon book good for 12 free drinks, one a month, for a year. I had a Duetto, but did not get a gold card right away. I had to earn mine the same way most everyone else does. My wife had the black “10% off” card, and when that program ended, she was automatically entered in the new program at the Gold Level. Hope that helps.
…just my 2 beans
WO
twitter/@WOnet
I was in a rush and read the top section, it said enter customer code at bottom of receipt. (late at night) no lights on except light from monitor, and looking briefly at the bottom of the receipt.. I kept filling in the wrong set of numbers, when I realized there was an actual customer code the site locked me out from entering the proper code….silly me..now what??
Melody, thank you so much for highlighting the importance of giving your baristas a “highly satisfied” rating. As a partner at an extremely busy high-profile store that has received consistently low scores since the budgetary cuts began, I can scarcely express my concern and frustration about and toward the Customer Voice scoring system. It’s unfair to baristas, manages, and customers to have the system so severely crippled. We have been asked to do so much more with much much less this past year that it is unfair to judge us with a pass/fail system. Change is needed in order to give us a real opportunity to increase the quality of our stores and service that this unfit system is able to provide us with.
Hello “Highly Dissatisfied” – I know you’re interested in creating some change around the “MyStarbucksVisit” system. You can cite many of the comments in this blog article, and link to it in your efforts. For example, somewhere in the comments, a person mentioned getting a low score because their store does not have a drive thru!
I can’t really join your campaign. Between working full time and this blog, there’s nothing left of me. That’s not much of a joke.
My own personal opinion of the MyStarbucksRewards is in the comments and somewhat in the article. In a nutshell, I tend to have a bias in favor of secret shoppers. I have worked in clothing retail (The Limited and Eddie Bauer) and those businesses used secret shoppers. That really kept us on our toes, provided great feedback on the right things, and wasn’t subject to possible manipulation like baristas taking home a survey and having a friend do it. There are pros and cons of both systems, but my own personal experiences in retails leads me to believe that secret shoppers are highly effective. By the way, at Eddie Bauer the standard was every customer had to be warmly greeted with eye contact within 15 seconds of walking through the door (I don’t even remember for sure how many seconds it was). Man, that was hard to do. When there is only two people in the floor and one is stuck behind a register and the other is running around bringing clothes to people in the fitting rooms, it’s very tough to get to the people just walking in at the front of the store!
Good luck in your campaign for change!
PS: Lordy, I realize I wrote nearly the same comment to baroosta above.
Melody interesting response. I never realized partners took home surveys and had friends fill them out! Does that really happen? Wow! I also think secret shoppers are the key to insuring top customer service. Where is the store so to speak if they cannot provide top notch customer service. I still find some partners just sleep walking through their job. Also, I find it interesting of late that many of the partners are so busy chatting with each other that they don’t make that eye contact with the customer or totally ignore them.
Melody, I just got my first survey receipt the other day! The fact that I got it at a random store I happened to pass by instead of my regular store kind of made it difficult to answer the questions…but I remembered what you said about “highly satisfied” and just “satisfied” so I hope my survey answer counts for something! Just wanted to drop by and say thank you for this informative post!
I also got a free drink including free toppings so I was really happy about that 😀