If I was to write Howard Schultz a letter, it would go something like this:
What’s up Howard!
Hey, I was just in Starbucks, my favorite store.
Everyone has a favorite store, It’s part of the Starbucks lore.
Of course, you already know this, and partners and customers know this as well.
We all drive past three Starbucks to go to “our” store.
The one where everyone knows our name, where they make the drinks right, and where people are involved… welcoming… considerate… and knowledgeable.
As Customers, we live for these days.
The days when…
Systems are down and the internet is out.
The drinks are on you, Howard.
The ‘just say, “yes” policy’ is in full effect.
And that is exactly what happened today.
If you don’t mind, let me finish this story because…
I was trying to ring up two boxes of pods, a bottle of vanilla syrup, a spinach wrap, grande nitro, avocado spread… when your POS system decided to ask for voice recognition.
“Wow, where’s the mic?” I asked.
A few minutes later the screen read, “network down.”
Of course your partners and store manager were amazing as usual.
We joked around and I reminisced about the days when I was once a store manager.
I watched, as the assistant manager called the “help desk”.
To my surprise, when they answered she said, “I am so sorry to bother you.”
Hmmm…
Why would one have to say that?
Is’t the help desk supposed to be “helpful”?
Maybe she’s just crazy polite and awesome.
Or maybe the help-desk needs to work on some star skills.
Anyhoo… no biggie.
The real point lies in the numbers.
How is this outage affecting the flow through profit on this store’s P&L?
Moving on…
It was raining like crazy.
Lightening was firing off everywhere.
The internet was down.
Should it be a big surprise that US infrastructure is affected by inclement whether?
But Howard, why should you lose thousands per hour due to a small regional outage?
Would Dunkin’ Donuts fall for that?
Common’ man this is Starbucks.
The Harvard of Coffee?
Let me employee some Starbucks coaching 101.
The famous – What What Why – technique
WHAT I noticed was that your internet was down.
WHAT you should have had in place is a reliable back up internet connection, one that is aggregated with your primary internet connection via a particular SD WAN provider, sitting outside your firewall, edge device, routed over the same IP scheme, (whatever your “intranet” is running on these days).
WHY you need to do this… is to save millions a year, because the cost is less than .004 – .009% on each stores’ P&L…
Even if your POS is batching transactions, you are still giving away free drinks, turning away sales, and the labor implications during these outages is more costly than the $99/month LTE backup.
I know you have great reporting systems, but how great is the reporting on ISP outages and the consequences related to product shrink, labor costs, and freebees given out up to two weeks later?
So let me use my star skills here (maintain and enhance your self-esteem) by first letting you know that Starbucks was the best paid for business education I could have ever asked for.
The business experience, the inward self realizations, and life altering time I spent with your company is priceless.
So let me pay it forward…
First let me say, that I understand that managing a network of 23,000+ stores is no small task.
We need to have a coaching conversation about Your disaster avoidance strategy however.
Your strategy is not at temp.
It’s weight is off.
The amount of foam is not right.
The milk is scalded and it’s been re-steamed way too many times.
Every single store of yours can remain up and running during a primary internet outage for pennies on the dollar:
No need for product shrink due to freebies
No lost sales
No upset customers
No batching
No increased labor costs due to store managers apologizing for needing IT help when they should have been grinding coffee for the morning.
The numbers my friend are astronomical.
The solution is simple and it’s really no secret.
So why has AT&T or Google or whoever not coached you correctly?
Maybe it’s the ocean of knowledge we call the cloud that makes it hard to make decisions.
Maybe it’s the vast options of technology that paralyses you.
Maybe it’s lack of proof, metrics, and business cases.
Maybe it’s the “technology roadmap” lol.
Howard… save millions.
Just do it.
This one is easy.
LeBron would slam dunk this into the finals.
It’s not a complicated load balancing roll out.
There’s no fiddling around with cords or calling the help desk when the internet goes down.
No one notices anything.
They just keep taking my money and I remain happy to pay it.
P.S. I pulled over to the side of the road and spent about 45 minutes to write this on my cell phone.
I was on my way home to my wife and seven kids, drinking out of the very cup in the picture above, that’s how much I care.
Or maybe we should just call it passion for what I do.
Thanks for everything, and the free drinks.
By the way, it took about two weeks to get the extra $70.00 that was overcharged on my debit-card credited back to my Starbucks gold card.
Your guys took care of it, and I got a few more free drinks out of it.
I’m happy.
In the end, multiple departments and people’s time was involved in this adventure.
All because you did’t have a simple retail SDWAN setup.
It’s new, I get it.
Yours truly
Phil Howard “The Most Bearded Man in Telecom”
Recent Comments