In his post Great Customer Relations + Good Coffee = Success! Michael Morton hits the nail on the head when it comes to treating a customer with respect and care.

Unlike many companies who claim that good customer relations is priority-one but often fail to prove it, Starbucks continually lives up to this claim.

Morton said everything I was thinking following a terrible experience at the Carlsbad Seapoint Resort in Carlsbad, California. It is incredible how businesses fail to see how important it is to go out of their way to make the customer feel like a King.

I purchased a week in a condo at the resort, but when I arrived, they had rented my condo to someone else. Apparently, it was somehow my fault. To give them credit, the staff did think it would be okay to stick all six of us in a room with one double bed. No apology at this point.

The next day they found us a two-bedroom condo and offered to move us. It looked like it might be getting better. They did move us, but lost some of our stuff. No idea where that stuff went. No apology or offer to make it right, again.

Check out day, I had given up on the staff. My wife went Texan on them and confronted the manager (it was her stuff lost). He finally apologized and blamed it on an unseasoned staff.

So to recap, after messing up my accomodations, failing to make it right and taking too long to force out an apology, I thought about my local Starbucks and wondered why the staff at Carlsbad Seapoint didn’t get it!

I believe the key components to successful public relations are remembering to treat the customer with respect, go out of your way to meet their needs and seek out opportunities to help or make it right. Starbucks meets all of my criteria flawlessly. Carlsbad Seapoint has a ways to go.