Customer Experience for Cafe Owners
The online course. Learn what your customers are actually feeling, and what to do about it.
Your coffee is not the problem. Somewhere between the search that brought somebody to your door and the walk out of your cafe, something is quietly costing you customers. Nobody mentions it on the way out, they just stop coming.
This is a live online course for cafe owners and managers, run over two weeks. Every example, every scenario and every stage of the journey comes from real life experiences at cafes. Not a generic business, not a call centre, not a retail chain, it’s not a video library and it’s not a webinar.
A small group, live, with a week in between to look at your own cafe and bring back what you found.
The second session opens with what everyone noticed during their week, and that discussion is usually the most useful part of the course.
Who it’s for
Cafe and coffee shop owners and managers. Anyone responsible for what a customer experiences from the moment they search for you to whether they think of you again tomorrow morning.
The same principles apply for a hole the wall to a multi-site operation. No prior experience needed, and you do not need to have done anything else with us first.
If you are about to train your own team, this is worth doing first, it’s much easier to hold a standard once you can see where yours is slipping.
Why we run it for cafes only.
The framework applies to any business. Running it for cafes changes three things, and all three matter:
• The examples are yours: The morning rush, the app order jumping the queue, the regular who has been coming for a year and still gets asked whether it’s for here or takeaway. You spend the session thinking about your cafe rather than translating from somebody else’s.
• The room is other cafe owners: The most useful thing in the course is usually something another owner has already tried, and you only get that if the room shares your problems.
• The timing works: Sessions are scheduled around service rather than defaulting to an evening.
What we cover
Four programs, all built on the same framework, start with whichever one fits. They differ in depth, in who they are for, and in how much of the work is about your business specifically.
Session 1: See it
• The 6 Business Life Support Customer Experience Principles, with cafe examples for every one.
• Where each principle usually slips in a cafe, from the morning rush to the handover.
• Your customer journey, walked stage by stage, from the search that happens before anyone arrives to the decision about where to go tomorrow.
• Where you could lose somebody at every stage, including the eight that happen when nobody from your business is in the room.
Between the sessions: Check it
• Six observation pages, one for each principle.
• Every touchpoint in your cafe, mapped. What could go wrong at each one, and what you would change.
• Three questions to bring back. Session two is built on your answers.
Session 2: Fix it
• What you found, worked through with the group.
• REBOUND, our complaint resolution framework, applied to real cafe situations. The spill, the wrong order, the twenty minute wait nobody mentioned.
• What a solution actually costs, and what your team is allowed to fix without finding you first.
• Why customers keep coming back, and why recognition beats a stamp card.
• What you are taking back to your cafe: this week, this month, and beyond.
What you’ll walk away with
A map of your own cafe’s customer journey, marked with the stages most likely to be costing you. A method for handling complaints you can teach your team on Monday, and a clear read on what your online presence is telling people before they walk in.
One specific thing you are changing this week, and a list for the month after.
A competitor can buy your machine, your beans and your fit-out. They cannot buy a customer being known by name.
| Format | Two weeks, 2.5 hours per week, live online, small groups. Cafes only. |
| Investment | $345 + GST per person. |
| Includes | Workbook in two parts, a homework pack, and a combined workbook afterwards. |
Next Available Class
12 & 19 October (4pm)
Common questions
Sessions are scheduled around cafe hours rather than defaulting to an evening, usually mid-morning once the rush has cleared. If you have a time that works better for your week, tell us. We schedule cohorts as they fill, so ask about the next one.
Same framework, rebuilt around cafes. Every example, scenario and journey stage comes from a cafe rather than a generic business, and the room is other cafe owners. If you are not in hospitality, the general course is the better fit.
This course is for you rather than your team. The smaller the business, the more of the customer experience is decided by you, and the fewer people there are to notice what is slipping.
That is Customer Service Essentials, run on site for your team. Plenty of owners do this course first and then book the team session, because it is much easier to hold a standard once you can see where yours is slipping.
A small group is a better course, not a worse one. It means more time on your cafe specifically, and the work you do between sessions gets properly worked through rather than skimmed.
Yes, we run similar courses for restaurants and salons, if you would like a course tailored to your industry please reach out to our team.