38581104-HBS-Starbucks-Delivering-Customer-Service.pdfVIP

D o N o t C o p y o r P o s t Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@ or 617-783-7860. 9-504-016 R E V : J U L Y 1 0 , 2 0 0 6 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professors Youngme Moon and John Quelch prepared this case. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright ? 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to . No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. Y O U N G M E M O O N J O H N Q U E L C H Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service In late 2002, Christine Day, Starbucks’ senior vice president of administration in North America, sat in the seventh-floor conference room of Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters and reached for her second cup of toffee-nut latte. The handcrafted beverage—a buttery, toffee-nut flavored espresso concoction topped with whipped cream and toffee sprinkles—had become a regular afternoon indulgence for Day ever since its introduction earlier that year. As she waited for her colleagues to join her, Day reflected on the company’s recent performance. While other retailers were still reeling from the post-9/11 recession, Starbucks was enjoying its 11th consecutive year of 5% or higher comparable store sales growth, prompting its founder and chairman, Howard Schultz, to declare: “I think we’ve demonstrated that we are close to a recession- proof product.”1 Day, however, wa