Do you have to be a paying customer to receive customer service?
Recently, two African American men were escorted out of a Starbucks in Philadelphia. They asked for the restroom and occupied a table in the store, although, they hadn’t made a purchase.
Calling the police on them seemed extreme. Many questioned whether kicking these men out was simply company protocol or racial injustice. And did it really need to be escalated to the point of police escorting them from the store in handcuffs?
Regardless of the motive, Starbucks began receiving backlash under the spotlight of social media. A resulting boycott at the store threatened to go nationwide. No surprise there.
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, reacted quickly by releasing a public apology, calling the incident “reprehensible.” He reassured everyone that the store manager, who had escalated the incident, was no longer working at that location.
“My responsibility is to look not only at that individual but to look more broadly at the circumstances that set that up, to ensure that this never happens again,” Mr. Johnson said on Good Morning America.
Then, the CEO’s actions to fly to Philadelphia to meet with the young men and offer a formal and personal apology made headlines. Together, the executive and his “customers” discussed methods for solving this issue more compassionately and instituting a simultaneous store closing throughout the country for employee training.
He began a trend including an in-person apology by the President of Nordstrom Rack after three young African American men were wrongly accused of shoplifting. And Yale University has instituted “listening sessions” to try to ease racial tensions among students after a white graduate student called police on a black graduate student who’d simply fallen asleep studying in the common area.
Mr. Johnson dealt with the crisis well by getting out in front of the problem publicly to avoid a boycott or other backlash. Then required that more than 8,000 company-owned Starbucks nationwide close on the afternoon of May 29 to host a company-wide racial sensitivity training. An opportunity for more positive media coverage.
No business needs to let non-customers use their restrooms, but Starbucks and Nordstrom Rack employees and Yale students must be trained that a crime hasn’t been committed just because the person is African American.
Bottom-line, this CEO used the media, not the police, to avoid a social media crisis and will enlist training to hopefully, have all employees “on the same page” in fairly treating customers and non-customers with personal respect; white or black, male or female.