A response to Valendina’s Post regarding Starbucks and their membership program.

Many businesses from grocery stores to make-up stores have found the benefits of having rewards/savings cards for their most valued customers.  Among these businesses is Starbucks.

Starbucks has a few different status cards, with the highest being the Gold Card.  You think that with this card, customers would be treated with a little more appreciation from Starbucks, but this was not the case.  If a Gold Card member didn’t get a certain amount of points by a certain date, then their points would be reset to 0 and they would be demoted back to the lowest card.  Sure this makes sense in the end, but I too, believe that the customers should have gotten a fair warning before time ran out.

A related experience where Starbucks should have taken notes, is from Sephora, which has it’s own system of rewards as well.  They have 3 different levels with different requirements.  When the deadline is coming up for status renewal, an email will be sent warning the customer, with a fair amount of time, that a certain amount needs to be spent in order to keep status.  I personally like this system, it shows the customer that the company cares and wants you to be a returning customer.  By giving consumers no time to renew their status, Starbucks appeared to easily “drop off their customers” and not just any customers, but the highest rewards members, who have to be regular customers to get that status.

Overall, in my opinion, Starbucks should implement a warning system, like Sephora, in order to keep customers coming back, and to show that the company cares, and after 4 dollars for a cup of coffee, Starbucks should appreciate the customers who keep on coming back and treat them with the excellent customer service they deserve.