<$Wednesday, September 12, 2007$>
A Tale of Good Drive-Thru Service
| Decent customer service is rare these days, especially at drive-through windows where it seems that if the kids who man them have even HAD any customer service training, they can't be bothered to remember it any more than they can bother to say "Welcome to McCarl's King" or thank you for your order (or make sure you get what you ordered, for that matter). I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks, but this time of year, when the temperature dips below 65 in the mornings and actually stays below 90 all day and fall is so close you can practically smell it, I fall prey to the Pumpkin Spice Latte the same as anybody else. With yesterday being the first truly fall-like day of the season, I was jonesing for one by the time I got off work, so I went to Starbucks and placed my order at the drive-through. Now that I think of it, the kids at the Starbucks drive-through window usually are pretty courteous and thorough with the customer service. So score one for Starbucks Corp., that they actually care about such things in this age of entitlement enough to properly train their staff in the ways of treating customers like they matter. But I digress. Back to me at the drive-through yesterday. There was a line of cars in front of me, such that after I ordered I couldn't pull forward for a couple of minutes. After about half a minute passed, I realized that it was still warm enough that I'd prefer a Frappuccino, so I called out to the box and asked if it was too late to change my order. "No problem," said Taylor the Latte Boy, and adjusted my price accordingly. A few more minutes and I made it to the window, where were Taylor's dazzling All-American good looks not enough to make me fall for him while he rang up my order and handed me my beautiful cup of frozen pumpkiny, spicy goodness, I would most certainly have been done for when he then held up a lidded paper cup and said, "We already made your latte, do you want it too? No charge." And that's how I got to sip a re-heated free Pumpkin Spice Latte on the way to work this morning, filling me with a warm and happy buzz that has yet to wear off. Thanks, Starbucks. That kind of service at the very least deserves a mention. |
Amazing. Just amazing.
You might think about sharing this experience at www.measuredup.com - it's a consumer website where shoppers can vent or at least get the word out. It's pretty cool.