There’s an entire set of photos lovingly posted to Flickr by employees at the 87th & Sunset Starbucks location in Miami Florida. Here’s a sample:
The reason for the photos of customers? (view them here) To quote the poster:
We get a lot of skanky hoe types around these parts; it is Miami.
The rest of the photo set isn’t much better. Beneath a photo of a badly-parked SUV:
I took this photo for all the people who think the stereotype of SUV-driving soccermoms who have no regard for their fellow human is a stereotype at all. Believe me, I work at Starbucks. I see them every day.
Classy move, Starbucks.
Starbucks has a bunch of Twitter followers but very little in the way of an aggressively vibrant social media presence. Searching major social media platforms and solving issues that tarnish your brand is one of the most important parts of a corporate social media effort.
Starbucks fails at this.
Is this as bad as the Domino’s video? Probably not. Does it need to be dealt with? Absolutely.
So why didn’t I simply send @Starbucks a link to the photos to make them aware of the situation? Because they ignored me in the past when I expressed discontent with service I’d received at a local store.
@Starbucks what would you say is the appropriate wait time for a regular iced coffee? (only one in line, coffee already made, 3 baristas)
Did Brad in Seattle follow me back and ask about the location for a follow-up with the manager? No. Did he say anything at all? No.
If you want your company to make continuous positive progress in social media, it’s important that you put continuous effort into connecting with customers who take the time to mention your brand.
Starbucks doesn’t owe me anything. I get that employees screw up sometimes. What I would like is to see Starbucks create a vibrant social media presence worthy of the attention they’ve been given for their Twitter account.
What do you think?
Update: @Starbucks was kind enough to respond to my tweet 5 days after it was sent. I appreciate their effort but continue in my belief that their social media presence is lopsided and understaffed at best.
Seth,
This is an important post. It’s disappointing to hear this about Starbucks – the only brand of any sort that has captivated my loyalty for the better part of two decades (DESPITE seasons of me actually disliking the taste of their espresso…we’re talking loyalty to the culture, the service, the experience). I’m not surprised to hear that many companies have yet to catch on to the fact that they need to develop and maintain an active presence in social media. But I AM surprised to hear that Starbucks (my home away from home in every city, state and country I’ve lived and visited) is not at the forefront of this new platform for customer service.
In contrast, I share my experience with Sprint (a brand to which I have no loyalty or affinity).
Email, online and phone customer service COMPLETELY sucked. It was so unbelievably bad that I wrote my first ever complaint of any kind online/publicly (on Twitter) after 33 days of trying 2 obtain a $1,067 credit for their admitted mistake in changing my plan & overcharging me. WHILE I was on a 2 hour (NO EXAGGERATION) online “Live Chat” w/Sprint, I started tweeting about my frustration then decided to look for a Sprint account on Twitter. Found @SprintCares and started complaining directly to them. Then started searching Twitter to see if others were having customer service problems and started retweeting some of their complaints to @SprintCares. Within minutes I received four concerned, helpful and accommodating replies from @SprintCares.
Someone at Sprint has empowered the social media branch of their customer service while the other avenues for communicating with customers service are slow, unresponsive, laborious and laden with excuses with no results.
Sprint impressed me (ONLY on Twitter).
Starbucks disappoints me.
Your post is an important message. The question is – are they listening?
Your blog, as usual, keeps me engaged. Thanks for posting on this topic, Seth.
Hi Allison,
I just find it ironic that Starbucks is oft-lauded for their social media presence when it now seems obvious that they’re just a dude with a Twitter account pushing new products.
I’m glad Sprint took care of you!
Hello Seth! Yes, I agree that the photos are just immature. It represents baristas having no concept that what they do reflects the brand. Furthermore, there could be legal problems of photographing real people (non public figures) and posting them online without their consent. The pictures are in poor taste no matter how you slice it or dice it.
Having said that, I turn to your second complaint that you did not hear from Brad about the wait time for an “Iced Coffee”. Here, you state that what did was *complain* but rather, what you wrote looks simply like an inquiry for information rather than a complaint. Was Brad supposed to read your mind. All you had to say was “I waited too long I think” and it would’ve been couched as a complaint.
I think that you KNOW that if you have a store related complaint you need to turn to “customer service”. I cannot imagine that you don’t know that. And given that you are savvy with the internet, I bet that if you had googled “Customer Service” with “Starbucks” you would have found the Starbucks Customer Service Department.
I don’t know what happened: Whether Brad saw your post or not, I have no idea. What I do know is that you cannot reasonably believe that one single official Starbucks twitterer represents the Customer Service department for a company that has 40 million customers per week.
Yes, actually. One single official starbucks twitterer represents the customer service department for the entire company.
Your retort represents one of the hurdles brands face online. It’s nice to have a legion of eager fans ready to defend your honor… but there’s also a cost. You don’t have any skin in the process and so have no reason to be professional, considerate, and open to my thoughts as a customer.
The chances of a real Starbucks rep telling me to Google “starbucks & customer service”? 0
Hello Seth!
I have not for a moment suggested that Brad doesn’t represent the brand. And your criticism’s of that stores photos are fair. But separately, I think you’re being disingenuous to say that you didn’t know to contact Customer Service if you were having a problem with a store. And I did NOT say that a Starbucks rep would tell you to google Starbucks Customer Service.
From one frequent internet user to another, I believed you would just simply figure out that Starbucks has this big department called customer service and use your search engine of choice to get to it.
In any event, I would suggest that you tweet at @Starbucks again if you’re looking for a response from Brad. It could simply be that since he was tweeting that he was traveling a lot over the past two-weeks that he honestly and genuinely missed your tweet.
Essentially, you tweeted once @Starbucks and without any further attempt, came online and berated their customer service.
Yes, I am a fan. Yes, that makes me a little biased. But do you not see how making ONE tweet and then deciding that their customer service is poor is a little bit of a stretch?
Melody, I’m not trying to get in touch with Starbucks customer service. That’s not the question here.
The question is why a company that gladly accepts praise for its social media presence is demonstrating such a gap in its ability to keep track of its brand online.
Yes, I tweeted @starbucks once then posted about how their social media presence is failing.
I offered the radio silence I received in response to my tweet as one of the reasons why I posted about the flickr issue instead of simply letting them know about it and going on with my day.
I’m sure their customer service is great.
Their social media presence is lacking. Like I said, I don’t want anything from Starbucks. It’ll be interesting to see how and if they do anything about the Flickr pics though.
Does that add clarity to my situation? I hope so.
Thanks!
[...] Social Media has a way of connecting things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. If I didn’t know Edward Boches, I’d probably not have known about Ben Kunz or read his rant about Starbucks (commentary below – I disagree with him) charging for wireless internet access. If I’d not decided to post a response on my blog, I’d have never searched for a photo to include with this post. If I’d never searched for a photo, the ones posted by Starbucks employees in Miami would not have come to my attention. [...]
Seth,
I’m sorry I missed your earlier tweet regarding the iced coffee. I read every single @reply and dm that is directed at the @starbucks Twitter account. Many studies have shown that starbucks is one of the most talked about brands in social media. Our philosphy is to respond when we can add the most value to the conversation. It’s impossible to estimate how long your iced coffee should have taken, obviously you feel it should have been made faster. I’m sorry about that
If you look at our tweets, you’ll notice that a vast majority of them are focused on conversation. I’m intent on keeping it that way. We understand that we can’t control the conversation online, we are only a part of it.
We have social media monitoring in place. However, Melody is correct, I’ve been traveling a great deal the past two weeks and should not have missed this. We will take actions to rectify these pictures of our customers. They do not represent our company.
Please contact me if you would like to talk more.
Brad Nelson
from @Starbucks
Hi Brad,
I’m aware of the case studies re: social media and conversations about your brand. That’s one of the reasons I was inspired with surprise when I came across photos from 2005 tagged “Starbucks”! You’ve literally had years to clean them up. Is it actually possible that Flickr was never checked?
Do a creative commons search on http://compfight.com for “Starbucks” and voila! There they are.
Doesn’t look like so much monitoring going on there. Perhaps it’s a common oversight? Domino’s taught people to check for videos… perhaps photos are a blind spot for many companies?
Re: The iced coffee. I waited 14 minutes for the barista assigned to my drink to finish a conversation with her boyfriend. When I asked the other baristas about my drink they said it was hers to take care of.
You don’t want to find out about situations like that weeks after it happened. There should be an interest in knowing about situations like that as soon as they happen so managers can be alerted and needed changes made. Yes?
Brad, having one person covering social media for a large company seems like a bit of a toe-dipping exercise in a very large pool. I hope they get you more help soon. The internet happens in real time. Coverage is key.
All that aside, I appreciate your response. Best of luck with your Miami crew!
Damn. Those are the most interesting photos of Starbucks I have ever seen do they really have to go?
**serious note, Seth is right, I feel sorry for Brad personally, the internet is a little big for one fella to be monitoring it all without his brain exploding.
Haha! I hear you.
It will be interesting to see if they switch things up!
I have to say, as a person with a camera & a desire to photograph customers and my fellow employees- I would never take pictures of that quality/ nor would I ever give the exact location of my employment.
I agree with you Seth- Starbucks should’va found the pics, and did something about them. But at the same time- I wouldn’t hold Starbucks necessarily at fault- moreso the kid who took the pictures. And the fact that he can’t censor his pictures enough himself.
I think you are completely justified in the time it takes to make an iced coffee. They’ve gotten better in my locations, but you still can’t get out of there in 10 minutes.
Just my two cents.
Hi Casey,
Starbucks has accepted praise for having a vibrant social media presence. As such, I believe it’s important for them to be aware of how their brand is being represented across major social media platforms. Flickr is arguably one of the biggest platforms out there. If they were really monitoring their brand, they’d have already found the pics and dealt with them. (as Brad says they’re going to do shortly)
Thanks!
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Sad…very sad. Social Media requires policies, procedures and at the very least a minimum of decorum. The accounts need to be monitored more than just once weekly and if the corporate office isn’t going to monitor these things then why isn’t the manager of the store. After all, his sales most likely dropped when this was exposed and that likely affected his paycheck.