Starbucks Made Me Wait ... And I "Liked" It!

A couple of weeks ago I hit a Starbucks in the lobby of a hotel where I was attending a conference.  I needed a little bit of help getting going that morning.   A grande (pronounced GRAWN-day, I learned while ordering) vanilla latte was sure to do the trick.  Upon placing my order, the young lady behind the counter asked one of her colleagues if she replaced the vanilla syrup yet.  Apparently she hadn’t but slinked off to the back to retrieve that critical ingredient.

I stood, credit card in hand waiting to pay because ... well, that’s how it works at Starbucks, right?  A few seconds passed before the young lady behind the counter suggested that I should wait down near the other end of the counter and my coffee would be ready within a couple of minutes.  I reminded her that I needed to pay, to which she replied with a sweet smile, “Today you can pay with your patience.  It’s going to take a little longer than normal.”  I happily wandered down to the other end of the counter and, as promised, a few minutes later left the store with a free grande vanilla latte.

As I sat waiting for the conference to get going, I felt rather warm and fuzzy that I’d just got a free coffee.  I took a picture of the coffee and posted it to my Facebook page accompanied by a caption explaining that I was thoroughly enjoying my free coffe and stating that Starbucks rocked .  Then I tweeted to the same effect.

Over the next couple of days, my Facebook post collected seventeen comments and four “Likes”.  My tweet spun off three replies.  I can’t guess how many other people shared in my glee but because Starbucks had the audacity to make me wait for my caffeine-inspired jolt that morning, they got in front of lots of sets of eyes and briefly became the topic of conversation for a few days.

Now the same story is up on the Fering Communications blog for all of our millions and millions of followers to see.

I’m not saying that this is going to shoot Starbucks’ sales through the roof or anything.  I have no idea if my experience sent any of my friends or blog followers charging for the nearest Starbucks cash in hand, but because of a customer-service decision they got the benefit of my word-of-mouth marketing and given the variety of social media channels at our disposal that included quite a few people.  The social media channels that are so popular today magnify the effects of word-of-mouth marketing and you want to make sure your customers and prospective customers are saying the right things about you and your company.

Got something to say?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you!  Got a question that we can address in our blog?  Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com