Walk into any Starbucks store in the country and become instantly greeted by the welcoming smells of freshly brewed coffee. You may also notice the happy customers going over business plans, reviewing homework, or simply surfing the Internet at their leisure. In general, the customer base of Starbucks is a happy group willing to fork over five dollars or more for their favorite coffee. However, there is always room for improvement.
How Starbucks Partnered For Even Better Service
Although Starbucks consistently receives some of the highest marks for customer service as well as high ratings from employees, they never take this for granted. Instead, they looked at potential business alliances to see if they could make the experience even better.
The company that Starbucks ended up pairing off with was a payment processor known as Square. This service allows customers to make their coffee and pastry purchases via their smartphones. It is one less step for customers to have to take as most of us now carry our smartphones with us everywhere that we go. As such, the friction between purchase and consumption shrinks.
How Both Benefit From This Deal
This particular alliance benefited both businesses. Square was able to benefit, because they gained a new location where their service exists. It added some legitimacy to a business that was dying for this kind of recognition. The Huffington Post reported on this story in this way:
Starbucks doing a deal with Square is smart because it validates both companies — Square as a legitimate payment platform and Starbucks as a big company that innovates.
Starbucks obviously made gains in terms of the fact that their customers now have more ways than ever to make their payments. It means that they can serve more customers, and frequently at a higher cost per purchase. Many customers spend more when paying via their phones than they would if they paid with a credit card or cash.
This alliance clearly has benefits for the companies involved, but also for the end customers as well. When an alliance has all of these factors in it, it is very likely to work and strengthen the underlying participants.
Contact us for more information about how strategic alliances work and how to form successful ones.