Is Good Enough Good Enough for You?

The “cookie girl” never sat back and rested on her laurels. She wasn’t just going to make cookies and sell them. She was going to make the best cookie she possibly could. She kept working to improve her cookie recipe. “I found out how much butter I could put in them before it was too much. I found out how much chocolate I could put in the dough before the dough wouldn’t hold any more,” Debbi said in her speech. “I took the cookies to the extreme.”

Mrs. Fields made a cookie that almost no one could compete with. Part of the process was keeping only the freshest cookies on the shelf. “Any cookie that sat on the shelf for two hours became an orphan cookie and they were donated to charities or sent home with people,” she said.

Debbi came up with new ways to get customers into her stores, even to the extent of pumping the fresh smells out into the malls where the stores were located. Mall shoppers would be hit with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies. Who could refuse?

Debbi learned customers’ names and made sure that shopping at her store was a fun experience. She always tried to give customers the sense that they were having a good time. Today, she says that she knew that she really had something when customers would call in sick—to let her know they wouldn’t be in that day. Talk about owning your customers!

As the popularity and number of her stores grew, so did her determination to provide the same customer experience at multiple stores as she did when her company was small. She once dropped in on one of her stores and tasted a cookie. She noticed that something wasn’t right and asked the store manager what he thought. The manager said it was good enough. “Good enough never is,” she replied.