You’ve probably seen the commercials by now. Burt Reynolds, looking and sounding stately, interrupts a young man’s attempt to request a Dell laptop for Xmas because the fella isn’t famous. The message of the ad seems to be that you’re more likely to get what you want if you enlist a celebrity for your cause. The YoursIsHere website is designed to let you do just that. You can choose from an array of celebrities including Burt Reynolds, Chuck Liddell, Vivica Fox, Ice T, and Brooke Burke, all of which will help recruit funds via cheeky sales pitches that you can link to or add to MySpace or Facebook.

If you want a Dell for Xmas, setting up your celebrity sales rep is probably easy enough to do in your sleep. It took me less than 2 minutes to complete the whole process and I was definitely awarded with amusement for my efforts. Chipping in is just as easy. If you’re thoroughly impressed with the sales pitch and believe that I deserve an electronic device, you can click on the ChipIn button, get redirected to paypal, and if you already have an account you just enter the dollar amount and you’re good to go. Very smart and very simple.

Check out Brooke Burke’s soft sell approach to winning me a Dell electronic device, which I could have chosen to add to my MySpace or Facebook accounts although I’m not really in the market for a Dell electronic device, so I opted not to do this (although feel free to donate funds). There’s also a cute widget for blogs, but I was unable to embed it, so here’s a screenshot:

I really think that Dell has found a clever and fun way to marry new media and sales. I’m curious to see if the campaign is successful. I have to believe that the celebrities were compensated nicely for their time, the ad spots are pricey, and the time spent on the YoursIsHere site appears to be substantial. I’d be curious to know what they spent putting this together, how they define success, and if customers are actually using the service. I have a gut feeling that this is a little overkill and may not satisfy enough customers’ needs to justify the costs, but I’ve been known to be wrong and wish this creative campaign success so that we can all benefit from more things like this in the future.

1. Open a store in Manchester, NH – okay this is purely selfish (but also for the good of New Englanders everywhere), but I’m dying without my CBTL fix.
2. Start a blog (or Twitter) – it’s so easy and there’s no reason you guys shouldn’t be doing this now. You’ve got an amazing product that you should be talking about in the blogosphere. Let loyal customers like me in on the scoop. When can I expect the next great beverage from CBTL? Tell me why a certain drink (ie Moraccan Mint tea latte) is no longer available. Share pictures (start a flickr account?) from your expeditions to Costa Rica in search of the perfect bean or Sri Lanka for those fabulous tea leafs. Let me comment back and tell you about my CBTL experiences. Start a contest and award the winner with a fabulous trip to experience the coffee harvesting process; you do this for team members on occasion…why not loyal customers? (Twitter would be cool for the celeb factor alone. I’ve seen celebrities at CBTL in LA and I know others have too. Ask followers to tweet every time they see a celebrity drinking CBTL and where. It’s like CBTL guerilla paparazzi!)
3. Let your GM’s blog too! They’ve got stories to tell and they’re authentic so let them get the word out for you.
4. Use the blog to solicit engaged customers and start a community CBTL development team. I know there is an extensive product development cycle and I know that CBTL allows team members to sumbit ideas for new drinks, so why not open this up a bit. Put out a call to action online. Ask customers to contact you (provide an easy way – blog comments, direct email etc) if they are interested in influencing the direction of new products. Invite the most enthusiastic (dedicated to commit to the work) to join a private group (you can use a wiki, ning sonet, basecamp, anything works). Give them projects based on new products. Let me them create the next holiday beverage or marketing campaign. Inspire them to blog about their experiences behind the scenes (although you can take the NDA approach so they don’t let the cat out of the bag too early). There’s so much potential here. If only…
5. Give me a widget or a badge. I want something that I can take with me to Facebook, MySpace, or keep here at my blog. I want my friends to know what my favorite drink is (and maybe what celebrity drinks it too?). Plus any widget that’s created will result in more traffic to your site and more brand awareness. Did you know that most New Englanders have no clue about CBTL? So where do you think they’re going to get coffee when they go to Vegas or Cali?
6. Free wifi at every location – do it. I go to Panera everyday simply because they have free wifi. Yes, I make it a point to get coffee at Starbucks too (only because there is no CBTL), but I spend time and money at Panera. Plus you should be encouraging your customers to use the internet (for free). It’s good karma.

These of course are the baby steps. Any more thinking will come at a cost. I have another great idea about connecting the customer community, but I’ll keep that to myself for awhile (until I get bored anyway). Of course, if you’re a Social Media or Community Consultant I’ve just found your next lead. Go get ‘em!

I expect my coffee house to know my name because a. I made it a point to learn names and start conversations when I was in the biz and b. I get coffee from the same place every single day and I know I’m not unrecognizable given that I order soy lattes extra hot in the land of whole milk and cream.

Panera is failing me, and countless others that I hear complain, when it comes to ease of ordering and customer service. The problem starts when you enter the door – there’s two separate counters and no signs indicating that one counter and the accompanying registers serves the bakery and the other counter with more registers serves the patrons ordering lunch. Actually there is a sign over the lunch registers that reads, “Place Order Here.”

The question then becomes where do I stand in line?

At first I assumed that everyone should stand in one line, the lunch line, regardless of type of food being ordered. I made this assumption because that’s where everyone seemed to be lined up. I, like most people, tend to follow the crowd when I’m in unfamiliar situations. It was brought to my attention, however, that if I was ordering pastries, coffee, and breakfast items that I should stand in the shorter bakery line. Okay I guess this makes sense. Yet when I stand in this line during the lunch hours, the guests in the lunch line are audibly confused as to why us bakery patrons are being helped before them. Things get even more chaotic when the bakery staff start helping the lunch patrons and completely ignore the bakery patrons who come in during this mess.

Panera Tip: Don’t make your customers guess. Tell them where to go.

To make matters worse, by the time you figure out what line to stand in and you actually get up to a register the customer service staff is confused, disoriented, and rude. There have been a number of times when they’ve actually walked away from the register after beckoning me over. Mid-order I’ve had staff members disappear, start talking to other staff members, or simply not listen to what I’m trying to order. Normally I’m very forgiving if this a one time occurrence, but as a former manager it’s simply unacceptable to have the same consistently bad experience.

Panera Tip: Customer confusion leads to general chaos. Either eliminate the chaos or educate your employees on how to handle it better.

Now I’ve become so accustomed to something going wrong that I, as a customer, come in angry and ready for a fight. I’ve become the angry disgruntled customer that I always tried to win over when I was on the other side of the counter. I’m only coming to Panera because my options are limited and they happen to have an amazing Cinnamon Crunch bagel with decadent reduced-fat Hazlenut cream cheese. But I’ll forgo this bad-ass bagel the minute the Starbucks two blocks away actually opens. I’ll pay for my internet access in exchange for a consistently high quality beverage and a milieu that makes me calm (not angry).

So Panera, let me tell you how you can win me back and eliminate some of this mess:

1. Review the first two tips above and come up with an action plan to address them.
2. Pick a stance and stick to it. Either one ostentatiously marked line that serves all registers or two demarcated lines that serve just one function. Both of these options can be accomplished very easily.
3. Train your managers to develop a rush hour strategy. Chaos starts at the top and is inherited by everyone else in close proximity. When I was in charge, my strategy was very simple, put the stronger staff in the more noticeable areas. Then I would communicate the role that each staff member would play at the start of their shift, making it that much easier for everyone to feel prepared to handle chaos in a calm fashion.
4. Recognize and reward great customer service.
5. Pay attention to frustrated customers. Listen to them. Make them feel heard. Follow through and do right by them, whether that means comping their meal, giving them a coupon for a free meal on their next visit, or just acknowledging that you messed up.