Research Related to Customer Service Quality

Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, or the act or practice of being hospitable for example the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, resorts, membership clubs, conventions, attractions, special events, and other services for travelers and tourists.

It is a friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers. The quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, and generous way. Hospitality meet the needs of guests with kindness and goodwill.

Hospitality is the world’s largest industry. Many peoples’ definition of hospitality extends only to restaurants and hotels. In reality, it goes far beyond this and includes any organization that provides food, shelter and other services to people away from home. When viewed in this light, the hospitality industry can be quite large and far reaching. Also, the numerous career opportunities become readily apparent.

Overall, the true meaning of hospitality “the warm and generous reception of guests and strangers. Hospitality word taken from French word “HOSPICE” which mean take care of those travelling. Hospitality is the act of generously providing care and kindness to whosoever is in need.

Customer Service Issues and Challenges in Hospitality

The first customer service issue and challenge in hospitality is poor customer service. Meanwhile when there was an issue occurred the staff keeps the customer waiting for a long time and do not resolve the issue properly, this is call as poor customer service.

Secondly, not listening to the customers. Ignoring customers and not listening to them is the biggest mistakes the staff can make in hospitality industry. It can be one of the reasons for customers to complain a company.

The next issue and challenge are not keeping the promises to the customers. If you give a promise, make sure you keep it. Some promises sound great but if there are not been kept, it may lead to multiple complaints, distrust and switching to competitors.

Beside that, the low quality of products or services are also one of the issues and challenges in hospitality. When a businessman starts a business and what he promises is high quality of the services and product publicly, he has to make sure that he achieves his promise. Otherwise, the customers will share the bad experience publicly and most likely complain in social media networks.

Lastly, the rude staff toward customers. For example, the conversations and chat records between the staff and customers. It is better to keep an eye on this as sometimes rude attitude, inability to listen and interrupting customers may become one of the reasons that the customers complain in publicly and tell the world about your customer service quality.

Communicate Effectively with Customers

Effective customer communication plays a very important role in hospitality industry. The staff who able to communicate effectively with their customer base to enjoy stronger relationship and increased their sales success. There are some steps to communicate effectively with customers and these steps can assist future staff training and development.

The first step is listening actively to the customers. Focus on what the customer is saying rather than formulating response. Use body language or small phrases, such as nodding your head or saying “I see” to demonstrate that you are paying attention and maintain eye contact if with customer. When the customer has finished talking, repeat what you think and heard to ensure that you are clearly understood their message before respond.

Next step is do not interrupt your customer. It will upset your customer and also limit your ability to communicate effectively so allow your customer to finish their thought before respond. It not only demonstrates respect, but it will also ensure that you truly understand the point of the customer is trying to make.

Therefore, use the words that are easy to understand rather than using the jargon words. This is because not all of the customers will understand the jargon words. By using the words that customer easy understand may avoid ineffective communication.

Lastly, show positive statements to your customer and demonstrate courtesy. The customer wants to hear what you can do to help them rather than what you cannot do and also asking a question in a polite and professional way to demonstrate your high-quality customer service.

Differentiate Two Communication Methods

Oral Communication
Written Communication

Direct face to face communication between two or more persons.

A medium for communication that entails the written word.

It is affected by emotion.

It is seldom affected by emotion.

It is only face to face communication so the preservation of information is quite impossible.

It is possible to preserve and may be used in future.

Quick response is possible for this communication.

Quick response is impossible for this communication.

If any party is illiterate, then oral communication is suitable.

Both parties must be educationally qualified.

Example: face-to-face, telephone conservation, meetings and tape recording.

Example: letters, notices, emails, memos and manuals are forms of written communication.

Oral communication used to best effective only when we focus on listening to the customer and trying to understand what they are trying to say overall.

By using simple words rather than using jargon words so that the readers can simply understand what you are trying to transmit.

Customer Care Provision Can Influence Customer Perception

Customer service is the act of taking care of the customers needs and wants by providing and delivering helpful, high quality service and assistance for them to fulfill their requirements and satisfaction. Customer will only happy and be worth if they spend their money and times with the good customer service. For example, a restaurant with high quality customer service and products, the customers feel comfortable to having their lunch and dinner at that restaurant. In other side, they will also recommend the restaurant to their friends or their family.

Customers would perceive different or same products in different ways depends on their outlooks, needs, preferences, nature of business and several such factors. All of these factors are easily to change and influence the customer perception in favour of. It all depends on what customers believe that what they will receive from the products or even customer service.

Customer Service General Techniques and Practices

Listening Techniques

Listen first then speak is a very important techniques in customer service. What customers want is to be heard, meanwhile they want to know that we are listening to them and also interest in what they have to say. It is also a respect for customers. If they are looking for a products from your company they may asking for the information and advice, use that time to guide them to the right product or service. Use active listening to let them know that you are listening to them and work to cover the root of the problem if they feel upset. Ask the customers questions, get to the bottom of it and give the resolutions.

Name Memorization Techniques

How was the feeling when someone forgets our name? Of course, we often forget names ourselves but how much do we appreciate it when people remember us. “ A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound n the language.”, by Dale Carnegie. Same as customers, if we remember their name they will be very happy,grateful and it may bring them a good impression on us.

Treat Employees as First Customer

Treat our employees as our first customer also a very important in hospitality industry. We have to know that happy employees mean happy customers. The behaviors and attitude of the employees will determine our customer service and satisfaction. Employees should be put first ahead customers. Southwest Airlines is an example of the company that demonstrated this well. They have built a culture by instilling entrepreneurship among their employees. Employees will look forward to work when they are happy because they are valued and appreciated. The employee wins, customers win and business wins if we first treat our employees like customer.

Organizations Customer Service Policies and Goals

Develop the goals of your customer service strategy. A policies is meaningless unless it fits into a customer service strategy. Without goals, a strategy has no purpose. Once you know your goals, you can figure out how to achieve them.
Determine what skills staff need. Customer service positions are not minimum-skill, minimum-wage jobs. Your reps need fluency in effective customer communication or you will drown in refund demands and negative reviews. See our customer service skills list for help with finding the right people or developing your current staff.
Consider the technology you will work with. Much of the policy depend o the technology involved in customer interactions. Most independent restaurants deal with little beyond phone cells and credit cards.
Locate or predict common problems. Consider the problems that both staff and customers will face regularly. Your policy must address these issues so reps don’t get bogged down in bureaucracy while customers wait. It should also encourage your employees to voice their complaints and suggestion. Allow customer give feedback and find out the solutions for the customers.

Create your customer service policy. Once you know your goals and what could stop you from achieving them, you will have the knowledge you need to pen your customer service policy.

How Customer Perceive Brand and What They Expect From Its Service Hospitality

Brand perception is what customers believe a product or service represents but not what company owning the brand says it does.Mostly customers will perceive a brand from their experience, its functionality, reputation and word of mouth recommendation even on social media channels as well as face to face.

What customers expect services from hospitality?

To understand the expectation from a hotel, we have to think from the customer’s point of view. Let say I am a customer, what I expect from a particular service or hotel?

When I am a customer, I expect that :

Wide knowledgeable help
Friendly nature of staff
Follow up with
To be informed
Professional service
Essential courtesy
To be listened to and heard
Empathetic
Explanations in customer’s term
Anticipation of customer’s need

Nowadays, the majority of the customer have increasingly higher expectations and tend to be:

Informed
Confident
Independent
Educated
Consumer-driven
Not bound by traditional demographics



New Trends in Servicing Customers and Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Self-service

Customers are getting used to using web and mobile self-service,communicate, virtual agents, automated chat dialogs, chatbots, and virtual assistants.

Intelligent service

Hospitality guests expect using innovative technological services like online reservation systems and smart devices.

Fast service

Consumers demand fast online services. Most users start their research on mobile, but make the final purchase on desktop due to security reasons. More and more purchases via smartphones are predicted.

Reviews matter

81% of the hospitality customers say that reviews impact their final decisions. 49% of site users would not book a room without checking the online reviews according to the Internet Travel and Hotel Booking Statistics.

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