Free Book Summary : The Starbucks Experience 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary By Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D. McGraw-Hill, 2007 ISBN 978-0-07-147784-0 181 pages

The Big Idea
The genius of Starbucks’ success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, secure customer loyalty, stimulate business growth, generate profits, and energize employees – all at the same time. This has lead to unprecedented and astounding success; since 1992, Starbucks stock has risen by an astounding 5,000 percent.

In this celebrated book, Starbucks’ “secret recipe” has been condensed into five key principles.

PRINCIPLE 1: MAKE IT YOUR OWN

Senior management must find ways to get its partners to fully engage their passions and talents while ensuring that individual partners’ differences are blended into a good uniform customer experience.

It can be tough to find a balance between these two leadership responsibilities, but Starbucks has managed to do so through its principle of Make It Your Own. It has created a structure known as the “Five Ways of Being”, which is encapsulated in a pamphlet known as the Green Apron Book:

1. Be welcoming

• Defined as “offering everyone a sense of belonging”. Partners should do all they can to create a place where people feel that they are a priority and where their day can be brightened, at least for a moment.

2. Be genuine

• At Starbucks, being genuine means to “connect, discover, and respond”.

• Connect. Customers have repeatedly shared experiences of Starbucks partners making a connection well beyond some formulaic greeting.

• Discover. Business success requires the discovery of each person’s needs and individual situation.

• Respond. Starbucks employees not only listen to their customers, but also take action immediately based on what they hear and learn from these experiences for future customer interactions.

3. Be considerate

• Starbucks partners look beyond their needs and consider the needs of others – customers, potential customers, critics, co-workers, other shareholders, and even the environment – in sum, the entire universe of people and things Starbucks affects.

4. Be knowledgeable

• Partners are encouraged to enhance their expertise in coffee and customer service. Value is always added to partners’ efforts when they gain work-related knowledge. In addition, as they become more informed, their value to the business, self-confidence, and the impact they have on others all increase.

5. Be involved

• This means nothing less than active participation in the store, in the company, and in the community – a “yes, I will” attitude where breakthrough products and service are created. There must be a move away from a “bare minimum is OK” mentality.

PRINCIPLE 2: EVERYTHING MATTERS

All business is detail. When details are overlooked or missed, even the most patient customers can be frustrated and costly errors can occur. Leaders have to understand that they must take care of both the “below-deck” (unseen aspects) and the “above-deck” (customer-facing) components of the customer experience.

A small detail can sometimes make the difference between success and failure. Important details live in both that which is seen and that which is unseen by the customer.

PRINCIPLE 3: SURPRISE AND DELIGHT

As early back as 1912, the Rueckheim brothers, who are behind the successful candy brand Cracker Jack, already knew that adding a surprise to each package would dramatically increase the appeal of their product.

In that vein, delight is the caramelized popcorn – the basic product customers get – while surprise is the prize they get! Customers want the predictable and the consistent, while hoping for an occasional positive twist or added value thrown in. Customer delight comes from surprise as well as predictability.

PRINCIPLE 4: EMBRACE RESISTANCE

To work with resistance effectively, you must distinguish between those people who really do want their concerns resolved and those who simply want to complain. For some concerns, listening is all that is required; for other types of resistance, direct action is required. Management should know when listening is simply not enough.

PRINCIPLE 5: LEAVE YOUR MARK

We all end up leaving some mark on the world. What varies – and what is most important – is whether that mark is positive or negative. Do we give back more than we take, or do we take more than we give?

Successful leaders realize that a key component of their success is leaving a powerful and positive mark in the communities in which their businesses operate. People want to do business with, work for, invest in, and patronize socially conscious companies.

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