Starbucks Follow-Up

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

I reported on an incident at a Long Island Starbucks two weeks ago (30 Hours to Social Networking Hero or Zero: The Starbucks Test). While crafting an e-newsletter, I decided to follow up on the incident.

I have to say that from a corporate perspective, Starbucks met the challenge of protecting their reputation and are past imminent jeopardy of the initial blog post stripping them of popular support. That’s a corporate perspective.

From a human perspective, I’m saddened to see them display just another unfeeling corporate wall. The women who initially reported the incident in a blog post that went viral have posted regular updates and had this to say on June 28th, two weeks after the incident.

“Starbucks rather than doing a through investigation took action to sweep it under the rug and hoped that people forgot or would lose interest. They were confidant that people would take them on their strongly worded email and the situation would die there.

They DID NOT take proper action.
Their investigation into the matter was not thorough and it certainly was not fair.
Their goal was not to “right a wrong” but to cover their bottom line and protect their “reputation”.”

(STARBUCKS UPDATE: Part 3. Inaction and Broken Promises)

There have also been complaints that Starbucks is now quietly deleting negative comments on their Facebook page and a look at the page indicates that the complaints are accurate.

Has this hurt Starbucks? On the face of it, no. They have nearly 300,000 more Facebook fans than they did two weeks ago, but it’s difficult to tell how many of those fans “Liked” them just to keep up with the incident. The blog poster has asked their followers to forgo one cup of Starbucks and instead donate that money to the Trevor Project, a foundation established to help the LGBT community.

From all appearances, Starbucks passed the test. With the general public’s memory so short, they really only had to survive a few days of outrage. Long-term, it’s hard to say. For myself, I can’t say that my habits have been directly affected by the incident, but I can say that I haven’t had a Starbucks product in the last two weeks. I was a reasonably regular customer, but lately I haven’t felt the desire. I’m unusual, though in that I have a long memory.