Spilt Beans!

Walking into the flagship store in town, of one of India’s leading coffee franchises, I witnessed this sight. Well, they said that a lot can happen over a cup of coffee, but I was not expecting this from a brand that took pride in taking coffee drinking experience to another level in this country.

I checked with the Service Team and was told that there is no storage space at the back of the store and while I was there they even walked up to boxes to extract material needed to prepare the items ordered. I wouldn’t be peturbed witnessing such a sight at a Dhaba, but it irked me to see it happening here.

I am sure the marketing team of this organisation took great pains to design each element that constituted the brand and the layout of every outlet would have been detailed to create maximum impact. But did they foresee this?

At the organisations I worked the constant message heard was that the brand is sacrosanct and can’t be tampered with. Young marketing team members incurred the wrath of the senior managers for not getting the colours and layout right in the promotional material. Colour settings, fonts and the relative sizes of the logo and brand name had to be just right – no latitude; and deviations were dealt with severely!

But the same Managers did not flip when they walked into a branded store of the company and found boxes containing promotional material stacked in an ugly pile where customers and other visitors could see it – sometimes right next to the door!

The upkeep of the customer reception area reflected the company’s ethos, its DNA and revealed the mood that prevailed among the team members. It had to be clean, easily accessible and pleasing on the eye.

If the glow-sign displayed outside the store was broken and unkempt and not lit at night customers didn’t need to be told that things are not all-right inside. No employee of the organisation should permit this to happen.

The least this coffee franchise could have done was to stack the boxes in a neat pile and cover it with a decent piece of cloth so that it did not present an ugly sight to the visitors. In fact this pile also caused some inconvenience to customers who wished to take the cosy corner seat next to the window. They had to step over a box to get there. What was the impression they were creating? This team had obviously forgotten the Moments of Truth concept.

I don’t wish to say it all; what thoughts do you wish to share on this subject?

One for the road – Black & Straight: Imagine taking the last sip from a cup of coffee you relished and the dregs flow into your mouth!