Management of the Service Encounter at Cafe Nero - Essay Example

Topic: Management of the Service Encounter at Cafe Nero Café Nero is a leading player in the café business. Café Nero (CN) is presently one of the UK’s six biggest chains of cafés and one of the UK’s quickest rising companies. Similar to Costa Coffee, it has an Italian feel to it, is well-positioned and in fact has been voted best in terms of coffee taste, trend and ambience. It has more than one hundred cafés, primarily in London, but CN are spread in wider areas from Glasgow to Portsmouth (Laurier & Philo, 2004). My visit to the Café Nero was planned as a mystery shopper. Before visiting the Café Nero, I prepared myself mentally and researched to find a list of goodies that I needed to carry with me. Out of them, I only found it fit to take my digital camera and a note pad and the rest I left on my memory to write down my experience of the visit. Finally, I visited the venue on the given date and time. It was an open lounge. I could see there a rush of customers sitting and enjoying their sips of Café Nero’s coffee. A clerk was sitting on the reception desk. I placed my order and started waiting for my product to reach me as I was expecting it to be serviced by the barista (squidoo.com, 2012). I inspected the open ambience of the Cafè Nero and could not stop myself from appreciating the baristas’ smiling faces. They were eagerly helping out customers by serving their orders with smiles on their faces. There was a feeling of warmth and they were welcoming the customers by leading them to the vacant chairs to seat them comfortably. I was also welcomed with a smile. So far, I thought, things were moving positively for my mystery shopper. Baristas’ were serving the customers as if they were quite familiar faces to them, perhaps there were a good number of regular customers from the neighbourhood. Cafè Nero’s staff was treating customers as if they were part of a big family. When work becomes a passion, the added quality of the Cafè Nero coffee can work wonders in providing optimum level of customer satisfaction but here, I was waiting for my cup of coffee. Incidentally, Cafè Nero has been successful in acclaiming the title of ‘No. 1 coffee company in the UK’ nine times in the past ten years (caffenero.com, 2012). Finally, the barista served me with my favourite espresso coffee. I could see her glowing and full of warmth smiling face while serving me my cup of coffee. I returned the smile and started sipping the coffee. Instantly, I stopped sipping and the barista noticed it. I told her that it was not as hot as I usually enjoy the most. She was forthcoming and offered to bring another hot cup. I nodded and wow! In less than five minutes, another cup of hot coffee was offered with a warm smile. I once again took a sip and nodded in satisfaction. She promptly receded back. Taking a 360 degree view while sipping the coffee, I could notice the classic mahogany back bar, adding the touch of Italy to the ambience. The stylish banquette seating with power sockets within reach were equally satisfying some of the customers’ needs of relaxing with their laptops opened (caffenero.com, 2012). The only issue that I could trace was not serving the hotter cup as I was expecting. It meant delay in servicing that made the coffee cold. Here could be a possibility of human error or machine fault but I recommend that the manager needs to check the efficiency level of baristas by inspecting the time taken by them in servicing after the order has been placed. My visit overall ended on a positive note; I had no qualms over cold coffee as the next cup of hot coffee was delivered very soon. Had the barista taken some more minutes, I would not have come out of the Cafè Nero satisfied. Overall, I find the customer servicing very good. Open ambience of the café added to the quality time spent. I came back on a positive note. If I am to point out where customer satisfaction was not met or further improvements in customer servicing could be made, I would suggest that while imparting training to baristas, trainers need to consider the time aspect, which could be critical in changing the mood of the customers for preferring other popular cafes. Those baristas who are new to their job of servicing coffee can make such mistakes although they can offer such excuses and customers can also bear their weak areas and excuse them but from the Nero perspective, any such or silly error on the part of barista as serving less hot coffee can affect the brand value of the company. The barista serving me was wearing the light grey trainee T-shirt, which offered her the customer allowance of being a trainee, justifying the error. Learning time at Nero by baristas needs to be closely observed by the trainer and see to it that all baristas are performing their duties to the desired level (Laurier & Philo, 2004). Some customers like me are very cooperative but not all customers can be depended for showing extra leniency by ignoring the servicing flaws of any type from the six steps of service. Some customers come to a cafe to just pass their time, not reading the newspaper, reading a novel, talking over a mobile, writing something or any of the other activities that is expected from long staying customers. A barista should ignore such exceptional customers for staying long time and attend to them irrespective of the long hours spent by them. These are some customer prioritisation issues, which need not be ignored (Laurier & Philo, 2004). At the first place, manager needs to ensure that not a single cup of coffee is returned by the customer for replacing it with the desired hot level. Some regular customers unlike me expect special treatment by sitting on their preferred seats only, having their routine coffee and attended by the same barista. It adds to the comfort zone of the customer (Laurier & Philo, 2004). If customer issues are not addressed by the Nero management, it can affect the brand image of the company negatively. Management needs to be always o the vigil to see that not even a single customer of the Cafè Nero feels unsatisfied from the services expectations from the baristas. It is more so essential keeping in mind the competition from other coffee restaurants, always on the lookout of taking advantage from the bad image whether it is because of human error or any mechanical fault from the coffee making process. Financial success of the Cafè Nero depends on customer satisfaction. More satisfied the customer, more robust would be the company’s financial position. There is a direct connection between the two. Once customers start detracting from a preferred coffee chain, the rest of the image loss occurs from bad publicity. It should be a policy decision to prioritise customer needs by attending to the long term reputation value expectations, a company cherishes even at the cost of short term financial loss. Finally, my mystery shopping visit to the Cafè Nero can be taken in the right spirit by the management not only for the location I visited but for all locations. Management should recurrently indulge in such policy level decisions to send mystery shoppers to the various Cafè Nero locations to see that customers’ satisfaction issues are handled in all seriousness of purpose. There could be various other issues that I have not surfaced. Management attention should be focussed on all area of customer satisfaction to bring improvement. References: Café Nero., 2012. Café Nero. Available from: http://www.caffenero.com/people/culture.aspx Laurier, Eric., Philo, Chris., 2004. The Cappuccino community: cafés and civic life in the contemporary city. ESRC Project July 2002- December 2004. Available from: http://web2.ges.gla.ac.uk/~elaurier/cafesite/texts/barista.pdf Squidoo.com., 2012. Mystery shopping - the truth behind the myth. Available from: http://www.squidoo.com/mystery-shopping-companies Read More