Customer Insight Blog

Using Social Media To Get to the Root of Customer Experience for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Posted on November 20, 2008. Filed under: Customer Insight Portal | Tags: Coffee, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Yelp |

Meikah of Customer Relations: The New Competitive Edge visit to a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the Philippines brought up an interesting question about customer service. Should there be a limit to pleasing customers? Her visit made her realize that in its willingness to please, CBTL was allowing customers to perhaps overstay their welcome, meaning that new visitors were often unable to find seating.

To help Meikah answer her question and determine if finding available seating was a common problem for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Leximancer’s The Customer Insight Portal analyzed Yelp! reviews from Los Angeles and San Francisco. The conceptual map is a starting point to viewing the data visually, and understanding the different concepts and themes that came up in Yelp! reviews. The Customer Insight Portal allows users to drill down all information and see the direct verbatims.

Above is a conceptual map of the data analyzed by Leximancer’s The Customer Insight Portal. The circles represent frequent themes found within the reviews. The file icons on the far right and left represent feedback from Los Angeles and San Francisco. Note how the theme tea is more closely correlated to San Francisco, and coffee is more closely correlated to Los Angeles. The theme parking is also very prevalent in Los Angeles reviews, which makes sense because of how car-centric Los Angeles is. Many of the comments related to feedback on how awful the drivers were in the parking lots and how customers had to pay for parking after more than an hour.

Above is another snapshot of the conceptual map of the data analyzed by Leximancer’s The Customer Insight Portal. This time the concepts, which help determine the themes, have been filled in. As you can see Starbucks is closely aligned with Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (CBTL).

Yelpers Feel Parking is Important for Coffee Bean & Tea Leafs in Los Angeles

As Meikah noted her blog post, seating was a concern as many people are prone to settle in, which makes seating scarce for new arrivals. For the San Francisco and Los Angeles branches of CBTL, seating did show up as something that was on the minds of their customers. See the seating concept within the outdoor theme above; clearly customers are talking about outdoor seating—which we found by selecting some of the ‘evidence’ links in The Customer Insight Portal.

The majority of references related to seating were related to available outdoor seating, which makes sense in warmer California, especially Los Angeles. For CBTL, this creates actionable customer insight as they’ll know to the patio seating preference of their Califormia customers.

Leximancer’s The Customer Insight Portal let us drill down to the specific feedback given. Below are excerpts of the 47 reviews related to seating:

•    Kudos for outdoor seating so i can sit outside with my smoker friends slowly killing myself breathing in that lovely second-hand smoke. Thanks guys…i love you too. and for always getting my drink right. and for being right next to my work. and always having room for me to sit.
•    Outside seating means great people watching, if you consider the people in this neighborhood remotely interesting.
•    This is a good one because it’s pretty big inside and there’s outside seating for all the hot-body watching.
•    Solid drinks, nice Baristas and plenty of outdoor seating. I absolutely love sitting outside on a windy and chilly later afternoon enjoying a smoke, a nice cup of whatever, and some good ol’ free wi-fi.
•    Not so much seating inside, but lots outside, including a big fun firepit!
•    And, it’s right in front of a nice big park that you could relax in. Or, there is outside seating, and a firepit.
•    They only have about 4 tables outside and no indoor seating. .. but it’s the grab and go location I visit anyway.
•    Unlike most Coffee Beans in West LA that are generally located on busy streets corners, this location is in a residential area and thus you are not sucking in diesel fumes from the Blue Bus while seating outdoors. The patio alsk has a fire pit that provides cozy heat during winter months.
•    Seating is horrible, as there are a couple tables and an overstuffed chair, and the place is constantly moving.
•    This CB & T along the Market St.-strip is the busiest in terms of crowds and location. The outdoor seating area is not great and becomes a toxic-wasteland section for smokers.
•    This location is nice for the outdoor seating, assuming it’s not another one of the San Francisco bone chilling days.
•    This is one of THE best corners for people-watching and celeb-spotting in all of L. A.. Lots of outdoor seating where people and pooches soak up the sun.
•    There is plenty of seating tho, especially welcome when the rain is falling, which I suppose is the main draw.
•    The location is very central on Fillmore St so it is very tough to find outdoor seating on a nice day
•    The indoor seating is very limitied – like 2 small tables. They have a huge patio area with a fire pit that keeps you warm in the winter months.

Also, related to customer experience is the correlation between the concepts friendly and service. While not everyone rates their service highly, many of the customers felt the baristas were very friendly. The proximity to the themes of service and location are telling, as it shows that Yelp reviewers feel that service depends on the location.

Another important thread of review comments that we found was Starbucks. It was easy to find a direct correlation between reviews of Starbucks and CBTL. And we can see the most reviewers prefer CBTL to Starbucks.

•    Okay, I used to refuse to accept that Coffee Bean could possibly be better than Starbucks, but then I really gave it a chance one day and realized that it actually IS much more satisfying.
•    I love everything about the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, far better than Starbucks and any other competitors. I drink in and buy my own for home and work.
•    Coffee Bean can kick Starbucks ass any day of the week. However, my local CB is not up to par on the classy coffee joints I’m used to.
•    Coffee Bean has the best vanilla lattes. They actually still have baristas unlike Starbucks.
•    You gotta hand it to Coffee Bean despite being a chain, it feels oh-so-local compared to the corner Starbucks, and in Los Feliz, the locals do come out for their coffee here, and many leave their laptops at home in favor of a newspaper, or (*gasp!*) actually talking with other people!
•    I love everything about the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, far better than Starbucks and any other competitors. I drink in and buy my own for home and work.

While this blog post only provides a brief overview we hope that readers can see that using The Customer Insight Portal can result in actionable insight that can be used to increase customer retention and satisfaction.

If you have a question related a company’s customer experience you think The Customer Insight Portal can help you answer, e-mail Chris Westfall (chris.westfall at leximancer.com) with recommendations for a future blog post.

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