if i owned a coffee shop

I spent some time in a local coffee shop this past weekend doing what I do there: catching up on emails, organizing photos, and writing in this blog on my laptop, while enjoying my weekend treat: cafe americano. While I was there, I noticed the owner of the coffee shop stopping in.

The line for ordering coffee was about 10 people deep and the line of people waiting for coffee was about 10 people wide. The cashier announced to both the long line and the wide line that espresso drinks were going to take 15 minutes after the order was placed. What does the owner do? Cut behind the counter and starts making some espresso. Not for the customers who have already paid or who are still waiting to order and pay. No, he was making free espresso drinks for two of his friends that he just came in with, and interrupting the workflow of the two baristas who were actually working on serving the paying customers.

Maybe my vision of customer service is a little different. If I owned the coffee shop and I came in with two friends, it would go something like this. "Wow, this line is pretty long, do you gals mind grabbing a seat while I help clear this line? When I'm done I'll be back with coffees for you both." Then I would proceed to (1) do what I could to speed up the workflow already in progress (like help grind beans while the baristas continue to operate the brewing machine) and (2) talk to the customers in line and say, "Hi, sorry about the long wait today—it's pretty busy in here. Do you usually have to wait this long when you come in for our coffee? Would you like to have a cookie while you are waiting?" Yes, there really was a box of cookies sitting on the counter.

Rolling up your sleeves shows your employees that everyone, no matter what their role is, is willing to do what it takes to deliver quality service to the customer. Talking to the customers shows that you care about them and you take pride in the place that you operate and the product that you sell. Asking them questions is a means of gathering information to see if problems are systemic and is a starting place to make improvements to make the customer experience even better. Finally, offering the customer a little token of appreciation to make up for a service that could be improved is not a means of buying them out, but rather a means of opening a dialogue that will hopefully extend far into the future when they return to the store and they see you there again. You'd be surprised how well customers remember the freebies they get, no matter how small, and how many people they tell about it.

I still haven't stopped telling people how the staff at Stormy Weather Pub in Kaohsiung, Taiwan arranged to have a cake for me on my birthday, without any prompting whatsoever. Or how the clerk at the 7-Eleven gave me a free pack of instant noodles later that same night when he found out it was my birthday. Small tokens, but they leave a very good impression.


My cake from Stormy Weather Pub

There isn't a single management book or quality improvement book in the bookstore that would lead the owner of the coffee shop to see my point of view on what I would do. It's almost too common sensical to write about, yet good customer service is strangely elusive in a marketplace that is constantly seeking to build loyal customer bases. It's especially odd when customer service in the current day has come to mean the desk people go to or the hotline people call to complain about things and get their money back. In other words, customer service tends to be reactive instead of proactive—wait until complaints come in until making improvements to the customer experience instead of making the experience good to begin with.

It really comes down to paying attention to the details and caring about your work. I don't interact face-to-face with my customer on a daily basis, but when they are in the office or when I am at their office, I pay attention to how they use our software. I look closely at when they start pounding the mouse on their desk, I walk over to ask them if they need anything when they start punching the keys on the keyboard really hard. Again, I show my customer that I am there when they have a problem (even when I don't have an immediate solution) and ask them questions about the frustration. After everyone goes home, I'm there fixing the issue, making a sensical modification that will alleive the frustration. Keep in mind, the problem is not a software bug, it's typically a usabililty issue—making something easier or faster to do. By the time the next morning comes around, I tell my customer, "I noticed you were having problems with X yesterday, I think I have something that might make things a little better." This isn't part of any ISO 9001 quality document, it isn't part of the CMMI process model. If anything, those "quality" processes just hinder my effort in getting a change into the software to make the customer happy. This is the difference between my version of software engineering and the versions being pushed by process gurus. Making quality products isn't about following steps, it's about paying attention and applying some knowledge and common sense to the solution.

On the other hand, it was the coffee shop owner and not me who was featured in a Washington Post article last year for "his conviction that how you treat people— employees, customers, suppliers, competitors and the farmers who grow coffee beans—'really, really matters.'" So it looks like the only way for me to gain some credibility in my written argument is to put some action behind my words and go prove it to the local general public :)