Review of the Service Setting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Review of the Service Setting - Essay Example The organization also sells various types of confectionary as well as pastry items along with equipment for coffee such as coffee beans, travel mugs and other such coffee related items. The company has further grown and ventured into several other options such as selling its coffee beans in retail stores operated under the name of Starbucks. Moreover, Starbucks also produces premium quality ice cream along with Frappuccino as a labeled specialty drink through its subsidiary parties. In addition, Starbucks has a sister concern by the name of Tazo Tea Company that sells premium quality tea products in retail. Starbucks works under the premise that each country and each neighborhood should know the name of Starbucks and associate it with positive feelings particularly towards the food products that the company sells. The paper will focus primarily on the customer service elements of Starbucks coffee retail outlets that focus on selling hot and cold coffee drinks along with food items su ch as pastry items (History of Starbucks, 2003). Review of the Service Setting Starbucks is a global organization with its retail outlets in a large number of countries across the world. The root of success for Starbucks has primarily been the quality of service it provides to its customers, which has helped the company to gain loyal consumers in the longer term. The channels that Starbucks uses are critical in developing a holistic customer experience thus gaining the company loyal customers (History of Starbucks, 2003). As a customer, the service experience that I had with Starbucks included several elements including a greeting, listening to my order and noting down the details about what I specifically wanted, and providing me with the service and my coffee with a smile wishing me a good day. As a customer I believe this was very important because it made me feel that they were taking time out to understand my order and make me feel involved and a part of Starbucks. Verheof et a l. (2009) believe that retail stores particularly service related retail stores consider service quality towards consumers extremely important because it helps in keeping customers involved, allowing for a stronger customer base that can bring in larger amounts of revenue. Management of customer experience is now becoming part of organizations’ longer term vision and mission because products, channels and services can become brands with their own personality through effective management of this customer experience (Michelli, 2007; Badgett, Boyce & Kleinberger, 2007). Frow and Payne (2007) suggest that the effective management of customer experience is through exceptional customer service and this can only be done if the correct touch points of the customer are managed effectively. At this point, the Starbucks staff tried to greet me nicely and wished me a good day which I felt was important as not many people are inclined towards it; as most people are too busy with their wor k. Thus I feel that Starbucks did cover some of the touch points which are important to a customer. The key touch points of the customer’s experience have to be noted for each scenario in case of a service setting and then targeted in such a manner that the customer experience can be enhanced positively towards the service or retail brand. Starbucks is one such popular example that many scholars and authors (Enquist et al., 2007; Fang & Yu, 2009) try to