A Better Experience Begins with Staff
Posted on February 12, 2008
Filed Under Experience Economy, Tech Training, training | Tags experience, Experience Economy, starbucks, training
From the MSN Money site (via Steven M. Cohen’s Shared Items in Google): “This unique in-store education event signals the company’s focus on transforming the Starbucks Experience for both customers and partners. Starbucks hopes any customers inconvenienced by the early closures will see this as an investment that will have long term benefits. For their part, Starbucks partners will have an opportunity to connect and deepen their passion for coffee with the ultimate goal of transforming the customer experience.”
What’s going on? Every Starbucks is closing from 5:30pm-8:30pm on February 26 in order to “truly enjoy the art of espresso as Starbucks baristas demonstrate their passion to pull the perfect shot, steam milk to order, and customize their favorite beverage.”
OK - get past the silly corporate schnozz and focus on what Starbucks just said:
- Their goal? transforming the Starbucks Experience.
- Where did they start? Their employees.
Starbucks gave their in-store experience some thought, and realized the “main thing” is their expresso drinks. So … why not train staff to make the best expressos?
Now - what’s your library’s “expresso” or “main thing” that everyone needs to know about? Here’s an example: A “Big Thing” at my library is our new website (which I’ll be posting about soon!). This afternoon, our Digital Services Supervisor and myself are holding the first of many training sessions on how to post to it (much bloggy goodness) and how to write for the web.
What are the things everyone working at your library needs to know? And … what are you doing about it?
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4 Responses to “A Better Experience Begins with Staff”
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Imagine that, a business that will actually train you when they think you need to know something; instead of just EXPECTING you to know what it is and how to use it. I feel that more businesses should employ this technique. Instead of scheduling classes at times when no one is around, close for an afternoon and have an all-staff training session.
couldn’t agree more with the approach … the best money a library (or any other business) can spend on pr is money spent on training …
‘course, it all starts with having the right people to begin with - something else that starbucks does right! … we’re getting better at hiring, but there are still too many people hired because they match the last year’s job description and not next year’s spirit.
This reminded me of an experience that has stayed with me for 25 years… At the age of 15 I hit the pavement to find my first “real” after-school job. A friend and I both applied at the local McDonalds. When asked, “Who is the most important person at McDonalds”, my friend replied, “the customer!”. I replied, “the employee!”.
He got the job, I didn’t.(Boy was I dumb.) But behind my dumb answer, was the belief that if McDonalds took care of me, I would do a kick-ass job of taking care of the customer. It just seemed that in any service transaction equation, the customer-service focused employee logically precedes the actual customer.
Epilogue: I ended up working at Chuck E. Cheese that summer and had MUCH more fun. Later I ended up working for Nordstrom who thought my employee-first ideas meshed just fine with their culture of customer service. Take that McDonalds!
It *is* nice when a company recognizes the worth of the employees who spend a good chunk of their lives working. Before I became a librarian (at my current job it’s a big love-fest and we’re all appreciated to a lovely extent), I worked in corporate technology sales…and it was simply awful. Simple things like small recognitions, announcements, and a pat on the back are usually enough in today’s cold workplace to have employees slavering to kill themselves for you. Kudos to Starbucks for not just recognizing the importance of employees, but for paving the way for other companies to do so. If not out of the goodness of their hearts, than because it means they can ask even more of their workers.