Customer Service in Hospitality Management Assignment Sample

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Customer Service in Hospitality Management

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CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

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INTRODUCTION

Hospitality is the relationship between a host and the guest. In other words it can be define as an art or

practice to reception and entertain visitors, guests or strangers. The word hospitality is derived from Latin

word hospes which means “to have power”. But nowadays hospitality is associated with entertainment and

etiquettes. Hospitality involves showing respect and etiquettes to the visitors and guests and providing

them friendly and homely ambiance so that they don’t feel uncomfortable. Moreover, hospitality requires

fulfilling the needs of guests and visitors and to treat them as equal. In recent years hospitality industry is

growing with a swift pace. Hospitality industry is classified under service industry and it includes hotels,

restaurants, theme parks, event management, cruise line, airlines, and tourism industry.

The growth in the hospitality industry has given rise to the concept of hospitality management. Hospitality

management involves study of hospitality industry. It deals with how to run a restaurant, hotel and tourism

and travel related business. Hospitality industry is mostly dependent on the quality of service. Providing

excellent customer service is the motto of the hospitality industry. Thus, scope of service quality is very wide

in the hospitality industry. In this study we will focus on to understand the customer service policies and will

analyze why it is important to promote a customer focused culture. Further, we also study some tools and

techniques by which hospitality industry can enhance the skills of its employees to serve customers in

better manner.

Customer Service

Excellent customer service is lifeblood for any hospitality industry. Hospitality industry will perform

well only when it will be able to provide excellent customer service to its customers. Only by slashing prices

and offering promotions hospitality industry can attract customers once, but it will make profits only

when the industry will be able to attract customer again and again towards it. This can be achieved

only by providing excellent customer service. Customer service is one of the major factors that can bring

back customers again and again to you. Thus your customer service must be of quick and should be of

excellent quality so that your customers always go happy from your place. Customer service will be

considered of good quality only when you get a positive reply from the customer’s end and when you are

able to attract the customers again and again. One will be able to provide excellent customer service by

simply following below mention steps:

Answer all calls





Keep all promises

Always listen to your customers

Give attention to complaints

Always be helpful and smiling

Train your staff

Take an extra step

Give something extra

Customer Service Policies

Reasons for using customer service policies

Customer service policies are drafted so as to communicate customers that what they can expect in terms of

services from the business. The customer service policy includes details regarding the roles of different

staff members and the level of courtesy the customers can expect from the business. Nowadays many

technologies and CRM software plays a significant role in designing and delivering customer service

policies. Thus, by customer service policies business can reach out to its customers and helps it in

achieving customer loyalty. Moreover, customer service policies are required to attain business goals. The

main goal of business is to attract customers towards it. But it is very important for the business to retain its

customers. Retained and referral customers are very important for a business to keep growing and sustaining

in the competitive business environment (Miller, n.d). Thus, customer service policies give an overview of

the company’s services and their quality. And helps customers to whether their needs and desires will

be satisfied by the business or not. In addition, customer service policies also help business to find out the

gaps in their services and helps business to overcome from those gaps. For example, Marriott customer

service policies include information related to: intent, Service animals, assistive devices, temporary

disruption of services, support persons, training etc. (Courtyard Marriott, 2011).

Purpose of evaluating customer service policies: Following are the purpose of evaluating the customer service

policies:

Evaluation of customer service policies helps in providing quality service to the customers

consistently.

Motivates staffs who are able to achieve and maintain the level of service quality.

Evaluation of customer service policies enhances the image of the organisation.





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Mobile communication: Mobile communication has bought revolution in the field of communication.

Managers of hotel can use mobile apps such as SMS’s and MMS’s to communicate with its existing

customers. Social Media Communication: With the rise in social media, lot and lot of people are connecting

to it. Nowadays, most of the people are connected to some or the other social networking sites. So the

manager of the hotel can use this tool for communicating with the existing customers. In addition, with the

help of social media he can also communicate his message to the masses. Managers can use social

networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to get connect to the people. For example, Bellagio uses

facebook, twitter, google+ to promote its culture and services.

Websites: One more way by which the manager of hotel can communicate with the customers is by

developing its own website. For example, Holiday Inn has developed its website

“www.holidayinn.com” to connect to the customers. Managers can also communicate through

different blogs (Sekirin, n.d).

Customer Service and Customer’s Perception

Hospitality industry and hotel business in particular, is high dependent on the quality of service offered to its

customers. If a hotel is able to provide superior service quality as compare to its competitors, customers

will prefer to go to that hotel. So providing quality customer services is very important for a hotel. On the

other hand, if a hotel is not able to deliver quality customer services to its customers, customer’s

perception will become negative towards it. So the real strength of the hotel business lies in the way his

services are perceived by the customers. If a customer’s perception is negative towards the hotel then he will

prefer to try the services of another hotel. And other hotel provides him with better services his

perception will become positive for that hotel and his perception will remain negative towards the first

hotel. So it is very important for a hotel to provide best service quality so as customers perception

remains positive for it (Rao, 2011).

The quality of customer service can be measured on the following parameters:

Empathy

Responsiveness

Tangibility

Assurance

Reliability





So if the customer service quality of hotel is able to stand on all the parameters, it will be able to make

customers perception positive towards it. On the other hand, if hotel is not able to deliver quality service, it

will be difficult for it to stand on all the parameters and thus customer’s perception towards it will become

negative. So, any hotel which is able to identify the needs of its customers and is able to fulfil it, the

customer’s perception becomes positive towards, on the other hand, if the hotel is not able to meet the

customer’s requirement, in that case customers perception will become negative towards it (Rao, 2011).

Customer Requirements and Expectations

To become successful in service industry, it is very important for a business to meet the customer’s

requirements and expectations. As hotel industry also comes under service industry, so it is very important

for a hotel to meet the expectations of all the customers. If it is able to do that, it can attract large number of

customers towards it and will grow. On the other hand, if the hotel is not able to satisfy its customer ’s

needs and requirement, it will lose its potential customers, as well as new customers (Requirement Gathering

Techniques, n.d).

Sources of Information

There are various sources of information available to a business to access information regarding the

requirements and expectations of customers are:

Customers

Staff member

Management

Customer records

Customer feedback forms

Industry Analysts

Customers: The main source of information is the customer itself. Hotel manager can personally ask each

customer about his or her requirements, or whether he or she is satisfied or not with the quality of services

provided by the hotel.

Staff Members: Staff members can also provide lot of information about customer’s requirements and

satisfaction as they are the people who interact with the customers.





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Finding from secondary research: In order to find out the quality of customer service, many government

publications and trade journals were used to gather data and it was found out that:

In order to maintain good image in the eyes of customers, hotel industry has to provide

prompt and quality service to its customers.

Quality service helps hotel industry to retain its customer and thus business reaps profits from

the existing customer, as it hotel has to invest around five times in attracting new customers as

compared to retain customers.

Here are the suggestions in order to improve the service quality of the hotel industry.

Electronic equipments must be serviced regularly.

Training should be provided to the staff members so as to enhance their skill.

Hotel must hire skilled and experienced staff.

Proper coordination must be established among various departments.





REFERENCES

Courtyard Marriott. 2011. Accessible Customer Service Policy for Courtyard by Marriott

Hotels, Residence Inn by Marriott and Crowne Plaza Hotels Managed by Concord Hospitality

Enterprises Company. [pdf]. Available through:

http://www.marriott.com/hotelwebsites/us/y/yyzmq/yyzmq_pdf/YYZMQ%20AODAth%20Customer

%20Service%20Policy.pdf> [Accessed on 18 January, 2013].

Miller, I. n.d. Customer Service Policy – What is it?. [Online] Available through:

http://www.customerservicemanager.com/customer-service-policy.htm

Rao, K. R. M. 2011. Services Marketing. Noida: Pearson Education India. Techniques. Requirement

Gathering n.d. [Online]

Available through: <

http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/openup/core.tech.common.extend_supp/guidances/guidelines/req_gatherin

g_techniques_8CB8E44C.html > [Accessed on 18 January, 2013].


Customer Service in Hospitality Management Assignment Sample

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