A Catalan Starbucks, "Impossible!"
I recently attended a meeting with some leading Spanish Internet gurus that was attended by the press. The next morning, the title of the article that appeared in the newspaper quoted one of the local gurus saying, "A Spanish Google? Impossible!" That was in answer to the question of whether a company of the calibre of Google could ever start and survive in Spain. That phrase came to mind again with two independent events that occured today: 1- Starbucks announced it was going to start providing 2 hours of free wifi per day to its customers. Fabulous! 2- I just had a meeting with a colleague in a local cafe in Barcelona. There's no wifi at all, but that's not the point. We took laptops and sat at a table near a power outlet. I plugged in, we ordered coffees, and had our meeting for an hour. But when we paid the bill, the lady at the cafe charged me 1 euro "for the electricity you were using all that time" (!!!!) To make things worse, I'm a regular customer, someone who's been there at least 30 times in the past year. I know, Starbucks is evil and expensive etc. But it actively encourages people to do whatever they want at their stores. Come in, get comfortable, stay as long as you like. Use our freaking electricity at no charge! It may be cheezy, formulaic customer service, but it's still customer service where the customer's needs come FIRST. There are exceptions, but generally the level of customer service here is so bad that it's not surprising at all to understand why there isn't any equivalent success as a Starbucks among local service companies.