During an interview at the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute earlier this month and published on Monday, Niccol said he was reading a Reddit thread of people going through the interview process at Starbucks, with some users asking what interview question they should be prepared for. Other users, ostensibly those who work at the coffee chain, responded that candidates should be prepared to talk about their value of customer service.
“If you don’t like customer service, you’re probably not going to like working at Starbucks. We’re in that transition of getting people to understand that,” Niccol said. “When I saw that in the Reddit thread, I was like, ‘OK, we’re making progress on what the standard of services that we want [are].’”
Customer service has been at the core of Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan he implemented when he took the help of the company in September 2024. Niccol has espoused the hopes of returning Starbucks to a cozy third space, away from the image of being a hurried pitstop to pick up a morning espresso, and toward 1990s nostalgia of lingering over a latte. He told WSJ he wants the Starbucks experience to harken back to the fictional coffee shop Central Perk, beloved by the sitcom Friends characters.
To achieve this relaxed effect, the coffee chain has implemented a swath of changes to its stores, including installing comfier seating and returning seats to thousands of locations where most furniture was moved to accommodate more mobile ordering, as well as writing customers’ names in Sharpie on each to-go cup. It cut back on its menu size in hopes of speeding up orders and introduced trendy items like protein-infused drinks to lure in customers.
“There is tremendous value in being a world-class, customer-service company combined with great craft, great quality food,” Niccol said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in September. “When you look at putting those two things together for the price that we will have to charge for it, I think it will turn out to be invaluable.”
Early signs indicate Niccol’s efforts to revive the brand are working. In October, the company reported global sales in stores open for at least one year had risen for the first time in two years.
Customer service challenges for the mobile order crowd
One complication with Niccol’s vision of a Starbucks filled with lingering patrons is that 70% of store orders—including 40% drive-thru and 30% mobile, according to the CEO—come from customers looking to grab a coffee and go. He said expectations of store employees to greet and serve customers is the same, regardless of how long they are actually in the store.
“When the ticket comes out…it doesn’t matter to [baristas] whether they’re doing a mobile order or a cafe order,” Niccol said. “What matters, though, for the customer is the mobile order expectation is, you’ve got to be on time and accurate. The in-cafe customer, they want a little bit more connection, and then they also want to know that you’re going to be on time.”
Mobile ordering has been a challenge for Starbucks, with baristas struggling to keep up with the busy flow of orders on a weekday morning. Former CEO Laxman Narasimhan said last year loyal customers were even cancelling orders, as much as a mid-teens percent, that took too long to be fulfilled, which contributed to lagging sales.
In addition to cutting down its menu size, Starbucks has also implemented AI-powered technology behind the counter to help streamline baristas’ workflow and improve efficiency with the goal of completing orders in four minutes or less. Niccol said he doesn’t know how the technology will impact the number of employees working at a given store. However, having the drink-making process completely automated would, in his eyes, undermine the warm customer service reputation Starbucks is trying to rebuild.
“This is still a craft business,” Niccol said. “I think it’s important for you to see the espresso shot get pulled, the milk get steamed, the actual handcrafting of the beverage. I know there’s a lot of people that believe you can have a robot do it. I just think it takes the soul out of the experience.”
