Starbucks creates addict's customer experience trifecta

This is sheer retail brilliance. If there is anything we are more addicted to than coffee, it is our internet connectivity and our mobile phones.

For decades, Starbucks has strived to become our 'third place' - that place between work and home where we like to pop in for a while to read our mail, chat with a friend, have a business meeting, or pass the time waiting for our next flight or appointment. With this latest offering, Starbucks has created the addict's 'customer experience trifecta' of coffee, free Wifi and free juice for their phones. And for travellers accustomed to sitting on airport floors to be near a plug point, this new offering is a dream come true.

Because, for Starbucks patrons, it's less about the coffee and more about the customer experience.

Sure, there's that cozy ambience and vibe that they create with their soft jazz music, décor, and scent and sound of coffee being ground. But Starbucks solidified their position in our hearts and minds as our preferred 'third place' when they first started offering free Wifi to customers. By simply knowing their customers and observing consumer and market trends, Starbucks had a stroke of genius with this offering.

And a customer experience innovation like this shakes up the industry and leaves competitors scrambling to catch up.

Lessons learned

According to US-based technology and market research company, Forrester Research, 92% of companies surveyed last year confirmed that the customer experience would be a top priority for them. We are entering what Forrester refer to as the Age of the Customer, "a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers." For companies to thrive - and possibly survive - in this new age, they will need to offer a consistently superior customer experience.

So what lessons can we learn from Starbucks that will help us thrive in the Age of the Customer? Create a superior customer experience for your customers by one of two ways: either identify customer problems and then see how you as a business can solve them or observe and respond to consumer trends in a way that fits in to and enhances your customers' lifestyles.

Starbucks is one company that has done just that over the past few years - it did not grow into the largest coffeehouse in the world, with over 23,000 shops globally, because it has the best coffee; it did so by offering a superior customer experience.