Yes indeed, the customer certainly is king. A little while ago we wrote a guest article for Maria Palma over on Customers are always … that explored the truth or otherwise in these little sayings. In that article we dared to suggest that

the customer is NOT always right!!!!

There, we said it again

he’s only making it worse for himself …
how could it possibly be worse???… JEHOVAH! JEHOVAH! etc etc etc

follow this link if that little passage went over your head

Anyway. The Christian Far Right of America. Here we have a group of potential coffee drinkers (and hence potential Starbucks customers) who have taken offence at this new logo. “Slutbucks” they suggest should be the new name of the company. Check out this article for more details

This episode, as tragic as it is, demonstrates the almost impossible challenge of keeping everyone happy. It also demonstrates the imponderable range of things that can impact customer perception. Here were all of you thinking a coffee shop was all about coffee, ambiance, service, price maybe – get those right and we’re in clover – but no. We forgot about the logo! In this case it’s the logo that is causing MAJOR upset to this sizeable and sadly influential bunch of retards (God only knows what depravity they’d see while taking an ink-blot test). But it demonstrates what a complex dynamic this all is

You have to feel sorry for Starbucks, don’t you? They’ve made a real effort to reach out to the customer over the past few months however in their case “the customer” clearly isn’t one conveniently  homogeneous demographic group. Pathetic as this clearly is, this group has some influence, it seems, so we’ll watch this one to see if Starbucks are forced to react. Maybe they’ll take the view that their coffee shops will be better (and maybe safer?) for the absence of that lot? I mean … check out this website. When this guy is in Starbucks, we should seriously consider switching to beer

• This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Customer Relationships
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