Whats the secret to Starbucks amazing success? A quality product and an organization culture focused on customers service. Everyone of Starbucks more than 20,000 employees has completed formal training classes during his or her first six week with the company. By the time this socialization process is completed, employees have become coffee experts.
The Starbucks indoctrination begins with a history of the company, by a session on what customers need to know to brew a perfect cup of coffee at home. These include purchasing new beans weekly, the right type of water to use, and the tips like never letting coffee sit on a hotplate for more than 20 minutes. The specific techniques for drink making are learned in an eight hour class on retail skills. Here new employees learned such varied skills as how to steam milk for latte, how to clean an espresso machine, the proper way to fill one pound sacks with coffee, and how to explain Starbucks Italian drink name to baffled customer. Coffee tasting classes help employees understand why Sanani is decribed as “winey” and costa rica as “tangy and bright”.
Starbucks socialization program turns out employees stepped in the company’s culture, who understand management’s obsession with “elevating the coffee experience, ”according to the company’s senior vice president of marketing.
Comprehensive training, pay that exceeds most, entry level food service jobs, and comprehensive benefits (including health insurance, even for part timers and stock options) have produced a skilled and loyal workforce. As a result annual turnover among Starbucks employees is nearly one third less than the industry average within