OTHM LEVEL 5 DIPLOMA CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

PATHWAY TO OTHM Level 5 Diploma in Tourism and Hospitality Management Unit Reference Number L/650/1208 Unit Title Customer Relationship Management

Know about customer relationship management in the tourism and hospitality industry. LO 1

After completion of this module the learner can:• 1.1 Explain the importance of customer relationship management to a tourism and hospitality business.

• 1.2 Analyse the different functions within tourism and hospitality businesses that are linked to customer relationship management.

• 1.3 Analyse the factors that influence customer relationship management in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Introduction • The Hospitality and Tourism business is fragmented into four major facility areas: food and beverage, housing, entertainment, and travel and leisure.

• According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the Hospitality and Tourism industry is the prime business worldwide.

• The Hospitality and Tourism Business has a present yearly development frequency of near about 4.2% all over the world.

• Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

Cont’d • Tourism is a communal, educational, and financial wonder involving the public's drive to nations or locations separate from their typical atmosphere for private or corporate/occupational drives.

• These individuals are named Guests, and the guests might also be travellers or excursionists, inhabitants or nonresidents.

• Moreover, the Tourism industry also involves the actions of the guests or travellers, most of which infers leisure industry expenses.

Cont’d

According to the UNWTO, there is segregation amongst the travellers aids the tourism industry differentiate further by stating travellers can be:

Local Travellers or Domestic travellers: are those who are inhabitants of a certain nation travelling inside the same country.

Incoming Travellers: These are the non-residential travellers who are drifting in some specific country.

Outbound Travellers: These are inhabitants of some nation and are going to some other nation.

Importance: to customers • Improves the customer experience • Identifies improvements to customer service • Builds customer loyalty and reference • Supports information exchange

• Increases cross selling and up selling opportunities • Customer retention

Importance of CRM

• By using CRM and its functionalities intelligently, travel and hospitality brands can differentiate their audience as per their individual preferences and provide personalized experiences. This approach not only results in customer retention but also drives purchases higher.

Understanding the customer experience • Customer experience is customers' subjective response to direct or indirect contact with a company. It encompasses every aspect of an offering: customer care, advertising, packaging, features, ease of use, and reliability.

• Customer experience is shaped by customers' expectations, which largely reflect previous experiences.

• Few CEOs would argue against the significance of customer experience or against measuring and analysing it. However, many do not appreciate how those activities differ from CRM or how illuminating the data can be.

• For instance, the majority of the companies in a recent survey believed they have been providing "superior" experiences to customers, but most customers disagreed.

Cont’d

• Customer Experience Management (CEM) process that involves three kinds of monitoring: past patterns (evaluating completed transactions), present patterns (tracking current relationships), and potential patterns (conducting inquiries in the hope of unveiling future opportunities). Data are collected at or about touch points through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and online forums. Companies must involve every function in the effort, not just a single customer-facing group.

• With cross-functional CEM systems, companies can discover which customers are prospects for growth and which require immediate intervention.

Cont’d • If the hotel manager wants to survive their business in the long term, building customer relationship is the best way to achieve this.

• Hotel managers cannot rely on potential customers for survival; they need to build long-term relations with their existing customers to get repeat business.

• The best way to build a strong relationship with customers is to create a loyalty program that rewards customers who book hotels frequently.

• The customers can be given points every time they book and can be redeemed in exchange for discounts.

• The food industry is developing with the growth of the population, and the tourist is the major contributor to the food and beverage industry.

• So, the food services management is responsible for providing fresh foods to the tourists to get positive feedback, and it will be good for the food service management to run the business.

Three Forms of CRM Type of CRM

Dominant Characteristic

Strategic

Strategic CRM is the customer-centric business strategy that aims at winning, developing and keeping profitable customers.

Operational

Operational CRM focuses on the integration and automation of customer-facing processes such as selling, marketing and customer service.

Analytical

Analytical CRM is the process through which organizations transform customer-related data into actionable insight for use in either strategic or operational CRM.

Consumer behaviour in tourism and hospitality

Consumer behaviour concerns why consumers make the buying decisions they make. This includes understanding what consumers want, how much they are willing to pay, how they choose and what they buy, and how they finalize the buying process.

In the hospitality industry, consumer behaviour affects how guests choose hotels, restaurants, and entertainment. If you are studying your guests' behaviour, you will want to know what factors led to them choosing your business, and this information can help you attract similar customers.

Cont’d • Imagine you work at a hotel and want to increase occupancy rates.

• In order to sell more rooms, you need to understand what attracts or repels customers.

• You create a survey and ask your current and past customers to share their opinions with you.

• In the survey, you ask questions relating to how they heard about your hotel, what made them choose your facility, their impression of your property, and their experience while staying at your hotel.

• As you start to evaluate the responses, you can understand your guests' consumer behaviour.

Cont’d

• Consumer behaviour acts as an origin for every tourism and hospitality marketing activity. It offers an understanding of why people tend to choose certain products or services and what sort of factors influence them in making their decision.

• Unlike the other business organizations that deal in tangible products, the hospitality industry is mainly concerned with services. The consumers will be satisfied with the quality of the service provided compared to the quality of the products in another business environment.

The fundamental factors affecting consumer behaviour in hospitality industry

• The factors that are specific to the consumers like the religion, cultural values, beliefs and practices, the economic status of an individual, the age, sex, experience with a product/service, or peer group influence often affect the choice of a consumer on a particular product.

• The culture or religion may affect the types of foods consumed by some individual and the kind of hospitality services used by these individuals. The cultural values of a community will determine the behaviour of an individual from the community in a given context (Luna & Gupta, 2001, p.47).

The Psychological Factors Consumers rely on several fundamental factors when purchasing decisions, many of which are subconscious. Here are some key psychological factors that affect guest behaviour: • Cultural characteristics are based on learned behaviours, usually related to close relationships like family, friends, or teachers. When we consider this from a hospitality point of view, decisions are based on how a person was raised and the attitudes of their family. For instance, if you grew up in a family that frequently stayed at excellent, medium- to high-priced hotels, you may follow that pattern as you age. You will likely avoid economy hotels because your family stayed at more excellent properties. As you evaluate your guests' needs, you will want to consider habits and traditions that affect their choices. While you may be unable to change these factors, understanding them can help you better comprehend their viewpoint.

• Our social circle, or whom people interact with, dramatically affects our decisions and choices.

This is relevant in the hospitality industry because your guests will consider word-of-mouth marketing and the opinions of their friends, co-workers, and associates. When your guests check into your hotel, they are typically asked how they heard about the property. As you review the responses, you find that most of your guests choose your hotel because of a reference from someone they know. This information can be valuable in your marketing plans.

You want to ensure that your hotel meets and exceeds guest standards and that all complaints are immediately responded to. This will help improve customer service and encourage further positive comments about your property.

Global trends in consumer behaviour

• Cultural • Experiences • Ethical products • Health consciousness • Customization • Convenience and speed • Service quality

• A study by Manzur and Jogaratnam (2006) looked at cross-cultural differences in customer perceptions of employee behavior, intentions to return, and tipping between Americans and Asians living in the US.

Cultural

• Smith (2006) examined cross-cultural differences in emotional responses to negative service encounters and the consequent impact on behavioural intentions. Focusing on West African and UK consumers, she found that while both cultural groups described the basic emotion ‘anger’ as a response to frustrated goals, African participants in particular projected feelings of ‘sadness’. While UK respondents blamed service employees for failing to provide the required customer response after a service failure, Africans emphasized the need to conform to rules, suggested that staff were as helpful as they could be, and attributed the problem, or blame to the consumer. Africans were therefore less likely to complain or switch services.

Cont’d A study of business-to-business (B2B) customer service in 2009 found that North Americans are the most loyal customers when they receive good service and Asians are the least loyal (Sprague, 2009).

The Chinese have the highest switching rate (55%) due to poor customer service, and Argentineans have the lowest (7%).

According to the study, France is a particularly tough place to provide and receive good customer service, and the Japanese are the toughest self-critics of the quality of their customer service.

Finally, the study found that Indians have highly inflated evaluations of the quality of customer service compared with how well their customers evaluate them.

Experiences • According to Pine and Gilmore (1998), a service experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event.

• At theme restaurants such as the Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and the House of Blues, the food is just a prop for what’s known as ‘eatertainment.’

• And stores such as Niketown, Cabela’s, and Recreational Equipment Incorporated draw consumers in by offering fun activities, fascinating displays, and promotional events (sometimes labeled ‘shoppertainment’ or ‘entertailing’).

• But experiences are not exclusively about entertainment; companies stage an experience whenever they engage customers in a personal, memorable way.

• For example, WestJet and Southwest airlines go beyond the function of transporting people from point A to point B, and compete on the basis of providing an experience.

The companies use the base service (the travel itself) as the stage for a distinctive en route experience—one that attempts to transform air travel into a respite from the traveler’s normally frenetic life. (Hudson and Hudson, 201 2)

Ethical Products • In the last few decades, responsible tourism has emerged as a significant trend in the western world, as wider consumer market trends towards lifestyle marketing and ethical consumption have spread to tourism.

• Tourism organizations are beginning to realize that promoting their ethical stance can be good business as it potentially enhances a company’s profits, management effectiveness, public image and employee relations.

• International leisure travellers are increasingly motivated to select a destination for the quality of its environmental health and the diversity and integrity of its natural and cultural resources.

• Studies of German and US travel markets indicate that environmental considerations are now a significant aspect of travellers' destinationchoosing process, down to – in the case of the Germans – the environmental programs operated by individual hotels. Certainly in the United States, the growth in special-interest, nature-oriented travel reflects an increasing concern for the environment. (Hudson and Hudson, 2012)

Health- consciousness • A more health-conscious society is often attributed to the influence of the baby boomer.

Boomers are generally healthier, financially better off, better educated, and more interested in novelty, escape, and authentic experiences than were previous cohorts of older people.

• Many baby boomers and senior adult groups are consequently opting for more physically challenging and ‘adrenalin-driven’ activities as exemplified in the spotlight earlier in the chapter on Bumps for Boomers.

• The demographics of the baby-boom bulge are also having an impact on the health and wellness industry. Health and wellness centers are springing up in many tourism destinations, and tourists are also looking to eat healthier foods on vacation.

• Hotel chains are responding to this demand for healthier options. Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, for example, made significant changes to its menus in the US and Canada in 2011, including the use of cage-free eggs in all restaurant and room service menu items, as well as sourcing beef from Meyer Farm, which is known for raising its cattle humanely and naturally.

• Hyatt’s commitment to health and wellness is part of Hyatt’s global corporate responsibility program, Hyatt Thrive, which is creating programs that enhance the health and wellness of associates, neighbours and guests. These efforts range from promoting active lifestyles in the hotels to supporting programs that empower the people in Hyatt’s communities to live more healthy lives.

• Through Hyatt Thrive, the company’s operating philosophy focuses on delivering more healthful food and beverage choices, using fresh ingredients, and serving authentic dishes that are reflective of the local community and culinary heritage surrounding each hotel.

(Hudson and Hudson, 2012)

Customization • Requests for customized and personalized vacations are also rising sharply, and both agents and traditional tour operators are changing their businesses to meet that demand – as seen in the spotlight on G Adventures.

• In addition to booking air and hotel reservations, agents and outfitters today are arranging customized wine tastings, visits to artisan workshops, and private after-hour tours of the British crown jewels and the Vatican.

• Even companies like Butterfield and Robinson and Abercrombie and Kent – both of which have been primarily associated with pre-arranged tours – requests for customized trips are increasing.

• The Scott Dunn Travel, the company promises to craft something special for each customer – despite serving 10,000 holidaymakers every year. This type of one-on-one service has led to more than 70% repeat business for the luxury travel company through loyalty and referral. (Hudson and Hudson, 2012)

Convenience and speed • The increasing desire for convenience and speed is having a great impact on various sectors of the tourism industry.

• In the restaurant sector, drive-through sales are on the rise; in transportation, self-check-in terminals are increasingly popular; and in accommodation, business travellers are seeking convenient rooms for shorter stays.

• Theme parks are also responding to the desire for convenience and speed. At both Universal’s Orlando theme parks (Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios) visitors can get priority access to all rides and attractions at no extra cost. In front of each attraction is a Universal Express Kiosk with a computer touch screen. Guests insert their park ticket or pass and chose from a selection of times to return later in the day. The distribution centre prints out a Universal Express Pass with the attraction name and return time, and guests can use this later to proceed directly inside, by-passing the regular line-ups. The Universal Express Plus program as it is called allows customers to create their own schedule and maximize their Universal Orlando experience with shorter wait times at the attractions. (Hudson and Hudson, 2012)

Service quality • Service quality has been increasingly identified as a key factor in differentiating service products and building a competitive advantage in tourism.

• The process by which customers evaluate a purchase, thereby determining satisfaction and likelihood of repurchase, is important to all marketers, but especially to services marketers because, unlike their manufacturing counterparts, they have fewer objective measures of quality by which to judge their production.

• Many researchers believe that an outgrowth of service quality is customer satisfaction. Satisfying customers has always been a key component of the tourism industry, but never before has it been so critical.

• With increased competition, and with more discerning, experienced consumers, knowing how to win and keep customers is the single-most important business skill that anyone can learn.

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty are the keys to long-term profitability, and keeping the customer happy is everybody’s business. Becoming customer-centered and exceeding customer expectations are requirements for business success.

Customer services functions in tourism and hospitality organisations • Customer service is the practice of delivering products and services to internal and external customers via the efforts of employees or by providing an appropriate servicescape.

• Servicescape is a model that puts its onus on explaining the behaviour of customers and clients within the service environment.

• It is a popular concept from Booms and Bitner that categorically states that ambience directly impacts the customers.

• When a consumer visits a place for a particular service or product, the surroundings encourage or discourage him from following a set course of action.

• It is the first aspect of service perceived by the client or customer, and the impression that forms pave the way for further services.

• The founders of Servicescape have explained the concept as necessary if you want to improve your relationship with customers to felicitate better sales figures and larger revenues.

Cont’d

Cont’d • Aspects of serviscape • It is the role of a service provider to create an environment that will appeal to its customer and ease any discomfort.

• The important aspects of servicescape are1. Spatial layout and functionality: examples are the ATM, self-service restaurants, internet shopping, etc.

2. Signs, symbols, and artifacts: Some important examples are artwork, floor coverings, photographs on the wall, and display of prominent artifacts that have symbolic meaning and manage to connect and communicate with its reader.

3. Ambient conditions:The background conditions of an environment like color, noise, music, sound, lighting, etc. are included in ambient conditions.

Elements of servicescape Facility Exterior

Facility Interior

Others

Landscape Exterior design Surrounding environment Parking Signage

Music Layout Equipment Air quality temperature Interior design

Virtual servicescape Brochures Employee dress Billing Statements Web pages Uniforms Reports Stationary Business cards

Roles of Serviscape • Facilitator • Socialiser • Package • Differentiator

Cont’d • Types of servicescape environment • The two types of service environments identified on servicescape are – 1. Lean servicescape • Designing this environment is straightforward and includes fewer interactions, elements, and spaces between employees and customers.

• Some important examples are fast-food outlets, vending machines, and kiosks.

2. Elaborate servicescape • Designing this type of servicescape requires teams skilled in their work and fully aware of the corporate vision and desired outcome. The elaborate servicescape includes multiple spaces, elements, and interactions between employees and customers.

• Some important examples include restaurants, gyms, swimming pools, bars, ocean liners, and international hotels.

The 4 Unique Characteristics of Services 1.

Intangibility •Service products cannot be tasted, felt, seen, heard, or smelled.

Before boarding a plane, airline passengers have only an airline ticket and a promise of safe delivery to their destination. To reduce uncertainty caused by service intangibility, buyers look for tangible evidence that will provide information and confidence about the service.

2.

Inseparability •For many services, the product cannot be created or delivered without the customer’s presence. The food in a restaurant may be outstanding, but if the server has a poor attitude or provides inattentive service, customers will not enjoy the overall restaurant experience. In the same way, other customers can affect the experience in service settings.

3.

Heterogeneity •Service delivery quality depends on who provides the services. The same person can deliver differing levels of service, displaying a marked difference in tolerance and friendliness as the day wears on. Lack of consistency is a significant factor in customer dissatisfaction.

4.

Perishability •Services cannot be stored. Empty airline seats, hotel rooms, daily ski passes, restaurant covers—all these services cannot be sold the next day. If services are to maximize revenue, they must manage capacity and demand since they cannot carry forward unsold inventory.

The Services Marketing Triangle (Source: Based on Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000).

Company Internal Marketing Enabling Promises

External Marketing Making Promises

Service Providers

Customers Interactive Marketing Keeping Promises

Customer services functions in tourism and hospitality organisations Name of the firm

Short description

The Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Resort

Luxury hotel; renowned for its personalized service and famous (and generous) employee empowerment policy; has its own Leadership Centre, often used by other companies for development and training; motto, ‘We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen’ has impact internally and externally.

Harrah’s Entertainment

Gaming/entertainment; CEO is co-author of the service profit chain; uses leading edge database system to do ‘surgical marketing’; belief that business should be grown by investing heavily to focus the firm on the customer rather than investing on the tangible assets of the firm only.

The Walt Disney Company

Entertainment; in addition to its reputation as the provider of family entertainment and fun, Disney is known for many customerfocused approaches such as ‘guestology’ and the ‘imagineers.’

Four Seasons

Luxury hotel; embodies a true ‘home away from home’ experience with exceptional personal service; ranked number two in recent Business Week survey of best customer service.

Club Med

Resorts; the carefree, all-inclusive holiday package company, in search of the ‘alchemy of happiness,’ has been able to make necessary adjustments along with demographics of customer base.

Southwest Airlines

Airline; innovation of the ‘low cost’ carrier—has continually run contrary to most of the airline industry through its customer-service culture; considers itself a ‘customer service business which just happens to provide transportation.

Singapore Airlines

Airline; at the premium end of the market, has consistently outperformed its competitors throughout its three-and-a-half decade long history; have sustained their competitive advantage by effectively implementing a dual strategy: differentiation through service excellence and innovation, together with simultaneous cost leadership.

Customer service superstars. Source: from Solnet et al, 2010, pp. 895

Cont’d • In the UK, according to the Institute of Customer Service (2011) customer satisfaction levels rank higher for the tourism industry than many other industry sectors including finance, public services, telecommunications, transport and utilities.

• Virgin Atlantic, Marrio and Virgin Holidays appear in the list of ten highest scoring names organizations.

• However, as mentioned earlier, the country came a disappointing 14th in the 2010 international customer service rankings from the Nation Brand Index, in terms of its ‘welcome’ by visitors.

Cont’d • The quality of the service is in turn influenced by the interpersonal interaction as well as the humanenvironment interactions (Hui & Bateson, 1991, p.174).

• It is then important for the managers in the hospitality industry to understand how the consumers decide on the types of services they need and where to obtain them. Various models have been developed recently that attempt to explain how consumers make a decision, eventually purchase, and use a product and service.

• It has been pointed out that the ancient Utility Theory considered consumers as rational decisionmakers with perfect economic principles. The modern researches on consumer behaviour indicate that several factors affect the buying behaviour of consumers and extend beyond the mere purchase of the products (Bray, 2008, p.2).

Customer satisfaction measurement • Customer satisfaction is the leading decisive factor for determining the quality and standard delivered to the customer through the product, service or the accompanying servicing.

• (Vavra, 1997); It’s simply stated, “Customer satisfaction is essential for corporate survival”.

• Several studies have found that it costs about five times as much in time, money and resources to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer (Neumann, 1995). This creates the challenge of maintaining high levels of service, awareness of customer expectations and improvement in services and product.

• Hayes states that “Knowledge of customer expectations and requirements is essential for two reasons – it provides understanding of how the customer defines quality of services and products, and facilitates the development of a customer satisfaction questionnaire (Hayes, 1997, p7).

• Furthermore, customer satisfaction is recognized as of great importance to all commercial firms because of its influence on repeat purchases and word of mouth recommendations (Berkman and Gilson, 1986).

Cont’d • Customer satisfaction is defined as a post-consumption evaluative judgement of a specific product or service. It results from an evaluative process that contrasts pre-purchase expectations with perceptions of performance during and after the consumption experience.

• The expectancy disconfirmation theory is the most widely accepted conceptualization of the customer satisfaction concept.

The theory was developed by Oliver, who proposed that satisfaction level results from the difference between expected and perceived performance.

Social Media • In the era of new media, managing customer relationships is like playing pinball - companies serve up a "marketing ball" (brands and brandbuilding messages) into a cacophonous environment, which is then diverted and often accelerated by new media "bumpers," which change the offering's course in chaotic ways.

After the marketing ball is in play, marketing managers continue to guide it with agile use of the "flippers," but the ball does not always go where it is intended to and the slightest miscue can be amplified into a catastrophic crisis (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010, p 313).

The Impact of Social Media on Hotels • When it comes to hotels, the Internet and social media have changed how they do business over time. As Litvin et al. (2008) point out, cyberspace has presented marketers with new avenues to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of communication, and new approaches for the acquisition and retention of customers (p 458).

• Hotels and social media appear to be a great fit, as hotels are information gatherers and always try and get repeat business from their consumers. These days, hotels use the Internet to provide information and to promote and distribute their products and services (Murphy et al., 2003, p 72).

• They realize that to stay competitive in the digital world, the hotel has to be engaged or involved with their intended consumers, usually through some form of social media, while increasing awareness about their brand and building relationships with both new and loyal customers (Lee, 2010, p 11).

Cont’d • On the whole, the popularity of travel distribution over the Internet has provided hoteliers and consumers alike the opportunity to review consumer-generated content across the industry. This is important because when used together, these reviews and ratings provide a powerful tool and a wealth of data to hotel management (Stringam & Gerdes Jr., 2010, p 775).

• When it comes to social media sites, there are a lot out there, and they tend to vary in importance from place to place around the world; here is a look at some of the social media sites that are popular with hotels.

• According to a study done by Chan and Guillet (2011), among the 23 social media sites investigated in their study, Twitter (56.7%) and Facebook (53.7%) were the most widely used social media sites in the industry (p 353). Following those were YouTube (38.8%), Flickr (26.9%), and TripAdvisor (23.9%) (p 353), so as you can see, hotels appear to be on more than one social media site at a time. A few other interesting facts from their study were that only 15 out of the 67 hotels that they surveyed used blogs for marketing purposes, and that few of the hotels surveyed used Second Life, MySpace, or LinkedIn as a way to stay connected with their consumers (p 354). This is not necessarily a bad thing though, because as Chan and Guillet (2011) point out, hotels do not need to be present on all social media sites, and they should consider firm-specific traits when deciding which social media to use (p 365).

Cont’d

• CRM helps Hotel management to match the expectations of the Clients.

Apart from managing the leads, CRM also helps in managing Customer Feedback, Loyalty programs and above all, a 360-degree view of Customer information and interactions.

• CRM also includes a telephony system with proper IVR and Call distribution mechanism (ACD). A well-designed ACD, helps guests reach the right person in the shortest minimum time.

Use of performance indicators • KPIs for the hotel industry are values or metrics that measure the performance of a particular area of hotel operations – or the property as a whole. They ensure clear visibility on the functionality and sustainability of your business within the hospitality landscape.

• Analysis of customer feedback • Analysis of complaint log • Investors In People (IIP) • Use of mystery shopper/diner • Reviewing standards • Review of reputation / press coverage

Analysis of customer feedback

• Customer feedback is the information, insights, issues, and input shared by your community about their experiences with your company, product, or services. This feedback guides improvements of the customer experience and can empower positive change in any business — even (and especially) when it's negative.

Analysis of customer complaint log 1. Collate your data 2. Determine how to categorize the feedback 3. Get a quick overview 4. Code the feedback 5. Refine your coding 6. Calculate how popular each code is 7. Summarize and share

Use of mystery shopper/diner • Mystery shoppers, sometimes called secret shoppers, are often employed by a third-party company to visit stores and restaurants, banks and apartment complexes with the specific purpose of assessing customer service. They provide a record of their experience which can be used to improve the business • Mystery shopping can helps identify what your competitors are doing differently and how you may be able to take advantage of their strengths (and weaknesses) to position your hotel or restaurant for even greater success.

• Mystery shopping is the process of measuring and recording specific elements of the customer experience through the use of prerecruited and qualified consumers (or guests as they are called in the hospitality business) who serve as mystery shoppers.

Developing and maintaining a service culture Customer service culture is an approach to business management that involves placing customers at the center of service delivery and operations.

Service culture refers to a company culture that's focused on customer service: why is it important and how to promote it in your business.

“A service culture exists when you motivate the employees in your organization to take a customer-centric approach to their regular duties and work activities.”

“The service culture can be defined as a shared purpose where everyone is focused on creating value for others inside and outside the organization.”

Cont’d • Service Culture Examples • Two great examples of service culture are the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain and Zappos.

• The Ritz Carlton ensures that employees always begin their shift with customer service as a top priority by doing a 10-minute lineup meeting before each shift.

Customerfocused organisations

• Some of the customer focus examples include quality customer support, developing the best solutions for clients rather than the best products in general, using various data to understand customer behaviour better, asking for customer feedback and taking it seriously to improve, focusing on their satisfaction, Etc.

Cont’d • Personalize your service • No hotel or restaurant guest wants to feel like they are just a cog in your corporate machine. Taking the time to personalize guest experiences, whether a business lunch or a getaway weekend, goes a long way to solidify your business as one of their favorites. You can do this by remembering their name or their favorite drink when they visit your business. You can store their preferences in your database so that you'll be able to give them a favorite table, server, or room without having to ask.

Cont’d

• Be proactively helpful • Doing things for guests without having to be asked is a crucial element of good customer service. Examples might include refilling a drink or giving a guest a list of nearby restaurants when they check in.

• Listen • When guests have feedback, it's easy to become defensive and start talking immediately, especially regarding complaints.

However, the best course of action is to train yourself to listen rather than speak. By listening to your customers, you can improve their experience and make them feel heard. You may even learn something new that could help grow business for the company.

Cont’d • Use the feedback you receive • Using the feedback you receive (by listening) is another essential aspect of maintaining a good customer experience for your guests. No one can be perfect all the time nor anticipate every guest's needs.

However, a good manager or owner solicits feedback from guests, listens to that feedback, and acts on it.

Make sure that you go over feedback, both positive and negative, with your staff so that they can also improve their guest performance.

Cont’d

• Anticipate your guest's needs • When anticipating guests' needs, fulfilling their requests before voicing them is another part of providing excellent service. One good way for hotels to do this is to send out a pre-stay questionnaire. A business guest's needs will be different from those of a family travelling with small children. Communication is key here. The more you know about your guest before they arrive, the better you can enhance the guest's experience. There are software products, such as Travel Tripper, that can make this process easy.

• Don't ignore your guests once they arrive. Keeping track of how your guests are faring is important. You can't just assume that they are having a good time. You certainly don't want your first hint that something went wrong to be that negative review you read on TripAdvisor. You don't want to be intrusive, but a call can go a long way toward upping customer satisfaction every few days.

• Restaurant owners and managers have a shorter window to create a good impression. Make sure to greet each guest as they enter and instruct your staff to greet them immediately when they arrive at their table or the bar. Even if the server or bartender can't spend much time with them right then, it goes a long way to acknowledge them.

Cont’d

• Maintain a positive attitude • We all have bad days, but it's important to maintain a positive attitude in the hospitality industry. Guests can sense when you're angry or irritable, and it can affect their overall experience. To provide excellent customer service, instruct your employees to smile and react positively in all of their interactions with guests.

• Just this one element can dramatically affect your number of repeat guests. A 2019 study

by JD Power & Associates found that "moving from a pleasant guest experience to a delightful guest experience can lead to a greater than 50% increase in guest likelihood to return and recommend."

Challenging customers and conflict resolution • The hospitality industry is faced with a lot of challenges which are inclusive of environmental issues, labour cost issues, multicultural issues, and increased competition, among other issues (Jin-Zhao & Jing 54). Conflict management in the hospitality industry is therefore an area of major concern in which the human resource managers have to constantly deal with especially due to the stressful nature of hotel work (Nicolaides 2).

• While some conservative managers in the hospitality industry still view conflict as a disruptive element, certain amounts of conflict are still essential in ensuring the careful analysis of business goals and innovative performance which is essential in enhancing business performance (Nicolaides 2).

• However, persistent conflict in the hospitality industry results in destructive effects emanating from the failure of various departments to meet business objectives. Consequently, managers seek to manage conflict in the industry by promoting effective communication and boosting the morale of the employees.

Cont’d

• The hospitality industry is characterized by high rates of employee turnover (Nicolaides 3) and dynamism emanating from external environmental changes (Chew et al., 2006) which calls for the need for improved conflict management strategies in the industry.

• Managers in the hospitality industry are faced with the great challenge of implementing change and ensuring compliance while at the same time motivating a group of employees who possess different and unique individual personalities and attitudes (Chew et al.

61).

• Workers in the hospitality industry are subjected to numerous pressures emanating from low wages, overworking, and emotional exhaustion which renders them more prone to organizational conflict (Karatepe & Uludag 646).

Cont’d • Hospitality managers have to fulfil a wide range of roles that aim at promoting cohesion in the daily operations of businesses. A critical analysis of the hospitality industry in South Africa revealed that the agenda of conflict resolution had become increasingly important due to the dynamic nature of the industry as well as the conditions prevailing in the industry (Nicolaides 2).

• Most of the employees claimed that they were demotivated by inconsistent and unfair shift allocation and these negative feelings may have significantly influenced the way they related to their superiors as well as the customers (Nicolaides 9).

• Other workers complained of being overworked and underpaid while those working in bars complained of having to deal with abusive guests thus rendering them vulnerable to intimidation and violence (Nicolaides10). This significantly influenced their social interactions and stirred conflict in the industry calling for the human resource managers to intervene.

• As a result of the challenges constantly faced by employees in the hospitality industry, human resource managers should embark on the extensive motivation of their workforce to minimize the negative feelings harboured by the employees in the industry (Chew et al. 63).

Cont’d • It is especially important to motivate workers to adapt to constant changes to maintain a company’s productivity. In addition, the promotion of effective communication between the managers and the employees boosts the employees’ morale and this may enhance the employee’s willingness to embrace organizational change hence significantly reducing conflict (Chew et al. 64).

• Managers should promote employee satisfaction in the hospitality industry which in turn promotes consumer satisfaction. They should also consider the employment of mentors to assist employees in the hospitality industry to deal with workplace conflict and emotional exhaustion to enhance their efficiency (Uludag 18).

• In addition, the managers should create opportunities for interaction and socializing with the frontline employees to reduce tension and improve their interaction skills which significantly reduce incidences of conflict (Uludag 18).

Complaint management • A negative hotel customer experience has the potential to affect a property's success in a variety of ways. Whether by raising an alarm while on the property or by harming your ranking with a poor online review, a hotel guest with a complaint can leave a lasting mark.

Successful hoteliers and hospitality professionals understand how an unresolved guest issue can affect a hotel’s performance, and they place significant value on handling guest complaints smoothly.

• There are endless reasons that a hotel guest may make a complaint.

Some complaints are based on physical concerns, such as hotel cleanliness or maintenance problems, while other complaints may pertain more to the guest experience. One guest may complain about the service they received at your property. Another traveller may arrive and be surprised to find they did not book the room type they expected from a third-party site. You may even encounter a guest who feels they were misled by the sales team, an online offer, or a confusing promotion.

Cont’

• Common guest complaints, such as: ✓ In-room cleanliness concerns ✓ Unpleasant odours (e.g., smoke, pets) ✓ Problems with the temperature (too hot or too cold) ✓ Trouble with the Wi-Fi ✓ A lack of free services or amenities ✓ The hotel is too noisy ✓ Too much traffic near guest rooms ✓ Lack of customer service ✓ In-room amenities not working ✓ Broken elevators or other maintenance issues ✓ Other guests not respecting hotel rules ✓ Displeased with the food/food and beverage service

Cont’d • How to handle customer complaints in the hospitality industry? ✓Stay calm and listen. ✓Identify the type of guest to whom you are speaking. ✓Find the real source of the complaint. ✓Find and offer a solution. ✓Follow up to confirm that the problem was resolved. ✓Respond to all complaints as quickly as possible.

Understand the nature of customer decision making.

LO 2

After completion of this module the learner can:-

• 2.1 Explain approaches to customer decision making.

• 2.2 Assess the factors that influence consumer purchase decisions in the tourism and hospitality industry.

• 2.3 Analyse the different techniques and methods organisations can apply to increase customer relationships and customer loyalty.

Approaches to customer decision making • The consumer decision-making process involves five basic steps. This is the process by which consumers evaluate making a purchasing decision. ✓Recognition of need/ Problem recognition ✓Information search ✓Alternatives evaluation /comparing the alternatives ✓Purchase decision ✓Post-purchase evaluation

Cont’d Problem recognition: Recognizes the need for a service or product

Information search: Gathers information Alternatives evaluation: Weighs choices against comparable alternatives Purchase decision: Makes the actual purchase Post-purchase evaluation: Reflects on the purchase they made

Cont’d 1. Problem recognition • The first step of the consumer decision-making process is recognizing the need for a service or product. Need recognition, whether prompted internally or externally, results in the same response: a want. Once consumers recognize a want, they need to gather information to understand how they can fulfil that want, which leads to step two.

• But how can you influence consumers at this stage? Since internal stimulus comes from within and includes basic impulses like hunger or a lifestyle change, focus your sales and marketing efforts on external stimulus.

• Develop a comprehensive brand campaign to build brand awareness and recognition––you want consumers to know you and trust you.

Most importantly, you want them to feel like they have a problem only you can solve.

• Example: Winter is coming. This particular customer has several light jackets, but she’ll need a heavy-duty winter coat if she’s going to survive the snow and lower temperatures.

Cont’d • 2. Information Search • When researching their options, consumers again rely on internal and external factors, as well as past interactions with a product or brand, both positive and negative. In the information stage, they may browse through options at a physical location or consult online resources, such as Google or customer reviews.

• Your job as a brand is to give potential customer access to the information they want, with the hopes that they decide to purchase your product or service. Create a funnel and plan out the types of content that people will need. Present yourself as a trustworthy source of knowledge and information.

• Another important strategy is word of mouth—since consumers trust each other more than they do businesses, make sure to include consumer-generated content, like customer reviews or video testimonials, on your website.

• Example: The customer searches “women’s winter coats” on Google to see what options are out there. When she sees someone with a cute coat, she asks them where they bought it and what they think of that brand.

3. Alternatives evaluation • At this point in the consumer decision-making process, prospective buyers have developed criteria for what they want in a product. Now they weigh their prospective choices against comparable alternatives.

• Alternatives may present themselves in the form of lower prices, additional product benefits, product availability, or something as personal as colour or style options. Your marketing material should be geared towards convincing consumers that your product is superior to other alternatives.

Be ready to overcome objections—e.g., in sales calls, know your competitors so you can answer questions and compare benefits.

• Example: The customer compares a few brands that she likes.

She knows that she wants a brightly coloured coat that will complement the rest of her wardrobe, and though she would rather spend less money, she also wants to find a coat made from sustainable materials.

Cont’d

Cont’d

4.Purchase decision • This is the moment the consumer has been waiting for: the purchase. Once they have gathered all the facts, including feedback from previous customers, consumers should arrive at a logical conclusion on the product or service to purchase.

• If you’ve done your job correctly, the consumer will recognize that your product is the best option and decide to purchase it.

• Example: The customer finds a pink winter coat that’s on sale for 20% off. After confirming that the brand uses sustainable materials and asking friends for their feedback, she orders the coat online.

Cont’d 5.Post-purchase evaluation • This part of the consumer decision-making process involves reflection from both the consumer and the seller. As a seller, you should try to gauge the following: • Did the purchase meet the need the consumer identified?

• Is the customer happy with the purchase?

• How can you continue to engage with this customer?

• Remember, it’s your job to ensure your customer continues to have a positive experience with your product. Post-purchase engagement could include follow-up emails, discount coupons, and newsletters to entice the customer to make an additional purchase. You want to gain life-long customers, and in an age where anyone can leave an online review, it is more important than ever to keep customers happy.

Assess the factors that influence consumer purchase decisions in the tourism and hospitality industry

• Nowadays, motivation is determined as a major determinant of tourists' behaviour. Needs are seen as the force that arouses motivated behaviour, and it is assumed that to understand human motivation, it is necessary to discover what needs people have and how they can be fulfilled.

• Maslow, in 1943 was the first to attempt to do this with his needs hierarchy theory, now the best known of all motivation theories.

• For example, Mill and Morrison (1985) see travel as a need or want satisfier and show how Maslow's hierarchy ties in with travel motivations and the travel literature.

Cont’d • Physiological needs ❖Hunger, thirst, sex, sleep, air ❖Safety needs ❖Freedom from threat or danger • Social needs ❖Feeling of belonging, affection and friendship

• Esteem needs ❖Self- respect, achievement. Self-confidence, reputation, recognition, prestige • Needs for self- actualization ❖Self-fulfillment, realizing one’s potential Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Source: Maslow, 1943)

Cont’d

• Similarly, Dann's (1977) tourism motivators can be linked to Maslow's list of needs. He argued that there are basically two factors in a decision to travel, the push factors and the pull factors.

• The push factors are those that make you want to travel, and the pull factors are those that affect where you travel.

• Dann proposed seven categories of travel motivation: 1. Travel as a response to what is lacking yet desired. We live in an anomic society and this, according to Dann, fosters a need in people for social interaction that is missing from the home environment.

2. Destination pull in response to motivational push 3. Motivation as a fantasy 4. Motivation as a classified purpose, such as visiting friends and relatives or study.

5. Motivational typologies 6. Motivation and tourist experiences 7. Motivation as auto-definition and meaning, suggesting that the way tourists define their situations will provide a greater understanding of tourist motivation than simply observing their behavior.

Various personal and external factors that influence consumer purchase decisions • Personal Factors • The personal factors include age, occupation, lifestyle, social and economic status and the gender of the consumer. These factors can individually or collectively affect the buying decisions of consumers.

• External Factors • External factors can refer to the productivity level of hotel and restaurant branches in the region, location of businesses, competitors' price, tourist demand, etc. The needs, wants, motivations, previous experiences, and objectives of consumers that they bring into the decision-making process.

The influence of cultures, social classes, family, and opinion leaders on consumers.

Managing quality in customer relations • Quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

• To meet or exceed customer expectations, organizations must fully understand all service attributes that contribute to customer value and lead to satisfaction and loyalty (Evans & Lindsay,2010) • The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality management as “all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives and responsibilities and implement them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement within the quality system”. (International Standard, Quality Management and Quality Assurance-Vocabulary, 1994).

Cont’d

• Total Quality is a people-focused management system that aims at continual increase of customer satisfaction at a continually lower real cost.

• In the area of hospitality, total quality management (TQM) is a participatory process that empowers all levels of employees to work in groups in order to establish guest service expectations and determine the best way to meet or exceed these expectations.

• A successful property will employ leader-managers who create a stimulating work environment in which guests and employees become integral parts of the mission by participating in goal and objective setting (Walker, 2010).

Cont’d

Quality assurance refers to any planned and systematic activity directed towards providing consumers with goods and services of appropriate quality, along with the confidence that they meet consumers’ requirements.

Quality assurance depends on excellence of two important focal points in business: the design of goods and services and the control of quality during execution of service delivery which is often aided by some form of measurement and inspection activity (Evans & Lindsay, 2010).

Cont’d • The components of quality in the hospitality industry that can be used to develop and implement a quality service system are the following: • 1. Consider the guests being served • 2. Determine what the guests desire • 3. Develop procedures to deliver what guests want • 4. Train and empower staff • 5. Implement revised systems • 6.Evaluate and modify service delivery systems.

Source: Foundations of lodging management, p.

48,Pearson Education (2011)

Cont’d Regular and systematic analysis of the evaluation results may lead to a wide range of advantages, amongst them: • Measuring the matching degree of customers’ needs and expectations, and comparing the results with perceived quality, • Acting as a basis for the strategic process, identifying improvement activities; and • Controlling competitiveness in quality with the help of benchmarking (Soteriadis, 2006).

Cont’d • In case of UK, an alternative to ISO 9000, which is the BS 5750, is used in some hotels. SERVQUAL is one of the most famous approaches that are used for measuring and controlling the quality.

SERVQUAL examine the quality of service by comparing the expectation of customers and quality of services actually received by them.

• Tips to improve customer relations at hotel ➢Treat every guest like a VIP ➢Make training an everyday priority and not just a one-time event ➢Provide personalized customer service ➢Create a positive start for new employees ➢Update technology toolbox ➢Take measure of your customer service performance ➢Tie staff’s actions to the hotel’s overall performance

Cont’d

Cont’d

Developing and maintaining a service culture • Internal marketing • Promises are easy to make, but unless, like at the Four Seasons, employees are recruited, trained, equipped with tools and appropriate internal systems, and rewarded for good service, the promises may not be kept.

• Internal marketing was first proposed in the 1970s (Berry, Hensel and Burke, 1976) as a way to deliver consistently high service quality, but despite the rapidly growing literature on internal marketing, very few organizations actually apply the concept in practice.

• One of the main problems is that a single unified concept of what is meant by internal marketing does not exist. Lack of investment in internal marketing may also be the result of corporate distraction.

• Companies that are busy trying to boost revenues and cut costs may not see why they should spend money on employees, thus missing the point that these are the very people who ultimately deliver the brand promises the company makes.

Cont’d

• However, there is a growing awareness that an effective internal marketing program will have a positive effect on service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and eventually profits.

• One study of the hotel sector in Turkey found a significant positive relationship between internal marketing and dimensions of hotel performance such as occupancy ratio, customer loyalty, profitability, and service quality (Turkoz and Akyol, 2008).

The link between internal marketing and profits

Internal marketing •1. Service Culture 2. Marketing Approach to HRM 3. Communication 4. Reward & Recognition

Service Quality •1.GAPS Model 2. Measuring Service Quality

Customer Satisfaction

Loyalty Relationship Marketing

Profits

Cont’d • The main objective of internal marketing is to enable employees to deliver satisfying products to guests.

• For the tourism and hospitality sector, this takes place through a four-step process: 1. establishment of a service culture; 2. development of a marketing approach to human resource management; 3. dissemination of marketing information to employees; and 4. implementation of a reward and recognition system.

Establishment of a service culture • Due to the unique characteristics of services (i.e., intangibility, the inseparability of production and consumption, perishability, and heterogeneity), the nature of the culture of a service organization is particularly important and worthy of attention.

• Marketing culture refers to the unwritten policies and guidelines that provide employees with behavioural norms, the importance the organization as whole places on the marketing function, and to the manner in which marketing activities are executed.

• Since service quality is one dimension of marketing culture, it follows that the kind of marketing culture an organization has would be particularly important for a service organization, as the simultaneous delivery and receipt of services bring the provider and customer physically and psychologically close.

• Research has shown a strong positive relationship between the kind of marketing culture a service organization has and its profitability and degree of marketing effectiveness (Webster, 1995).

• A strong service culture will also assist in retaining good employees (Moncarz, Zhao and Kay, 2008)

• A service culture is a culture that supports customer service through policies, procedures, reward systems, and actions.

• An internal marketing program flows out of a service culture.

• A services marketing program is doomed to failure if its organizational culture does not support servicing the customer.

• Such a program requires a strong commitment from management.

Cont’d

• If management expects employees to have a positive attitude toward customers, management must have a positive attitude toward the customer and the employees.

• All organizational leaders are crucial in transmitting and preserving the culture (Ford and Heaton, 2001; Jiang et al., 2020).

Cont’d • For companies without a strong service culture, the change to a customer-oriented system may require changes in hiring, training, reward systems, and customer complaint resolution, as well as empowerment of employees moment, will want to do the right thing, and will be empowered to do so by the organization (Ford and Heaton, 2001).

• Disney indoctrinates all new employees in the culture as soon as they arrive. It puts all newcomers through a ‘traditions’ course that details the company’s history with customer service and how it is the backbone of Disney.

• Southwest Airlines created a ‘Culture Committee’ whose responsibility is to perpetuate the Southwest spirit. Members promote the company’s unique, caring culture to fellow employees, appearing anywhere, at any time, to lend a helping hand.

Cont’d • Establishing a service culture may be easier in some parts of the world.

• In Japan, for example, a high standard of customer service is the norm. The Japanese word for ‘customer’ translates as ‘the invited’ or ‘guest’, showing the status they give to their customers.

• At the Peninsula Tokyo, Malcolm Thompson, the hotel’s general manager, says the hotel has been successful by incorporating deep Japanese hospitality into its model.

• ‘In other parts of the world, I would have to train staff on how to behave toward guests,’ Thompson says. ‘Here, that’s the kind of knowledge every Japanese employee already possesses on an almost instinctive level.’

• The formality of Japanese culture takes a subtle yet distinctive form at the hotel. Upon seeing a guest returning from a run, a doorman outside radios in so that just as he crosses the threshold, the runner is greeted with a bottle of water and a hand towel. ‘That’s omotenashi,’ Thompson explains, ‘a kind of hospitality that involves anticipating what your guest needs’ (Downey, 2012). (Hudson and Hudson, 2022)

Cont’d • The importance of empowerment • Turning potentially dissatisfied guests into satisfied guests is a major challenge for tourism and hospitality organizations, and empowering employees to go the extra mile in satisfying guests is recognized as one of the most powerful tools available to a service organization.

• Empowerment is the act of giving employees the authority to identify and solve guest problems or complaints on the spot, and to make improvements in the work processes when necessary.

Cont’d Benefits of empowerment

Drawbacks of Disempowerment

More responsive service

Limited authority to meet service needs

Complaints dealt with quickly

Complaints dealt with slowly

Greater customer satisfaction

Higher level costs in generating new customers

More repeat business

Fewer loyal customers

Well- motivated staff

Poor motivation and low morale

Less turnover of staff

High turnover of staff

Increased productivity

Low productivity

Lower labor costs

Low wages but high labor costs

Increased profits

Low profits

Empowerment and disempowerment in tourism and hospitality operations (Source: Based on Lashley, 1995, pp. 28

Cont’d

• Weak Culture ➢Few or no common values or norms ➢Employees unsure of their roles ➢Lack of empowerment affects guest service

Customer-focused organisation • Customer-centricity - or guest-centricity - should be one of the major concerns of managers in the hospitality industry.

• Customer-centricity deals with a deeply embedded mind-set and norms prioritising customer relationships within a hospitality organisation.

• It means redefining the whole organisation’s orientation and culture, encouraging employees at all levels to engage with customers and generating value for them and the establishment.

• In the hospitality industry, the success of these particular businesses often resides in the differential value the organisation can provide to their guests by relationship-building and personalising certain aspects of the service.

• One of the seminal academic pieces on customer-centricity (published in 2006 entitled “The Path to Customer Centricity”) describes the areas of intervention for achieving customer-centricity in practice: (i) leadership commitment; (ii) organization realignment (i.e. cultural and operational shift); (iii) systems and process support and (iv) revised metrics (i.e. key performance indicators).

Customers in hospitality The hospitality industry has many types of customer, all with different needs. Therefore, it is important that you know how to cater for them.

Cont’d • Babies and young children • Bottle warmer/ microwave to heat baby food.

• Baby listening service allows the parents to relax and unwind.

• Provide a children's menu with healthy choices and child-sized portions.

• Offer a suitable eating area with low-level tables and chairs to make the experience pleasurable.

• Supply safe and clean baby seats to hold babies securely in place, allowing parents to relax.

• Bring children's orders quickly, so they do not have to wait too long and get restless.

• Include colouring books and pencils to keep children occupied while waiting for their food or after finishing.

• Provide a children's entertainer for Sunday lunches to keep children amused.

• Have a set family meal time so that other diners are not disturbed, and families can relax with other families.

• Train staff to engage with the children to provide a friendly and welcoming atmosphere.

Cont’d • Teenagers • Provide a games/recreation room with table tennis, table football Etc. for teenagers to join with others their age or get away from adults and unwind.

• Provide PC and Wi-Fi areas for teenagers to access the internet and keep in contact with their friends.

• Provide a teenage club where staff organise activities to keep them occupied.

• Provide a recreational room/area.

• Provide evening entertainment, like a film, to keep young people occupied • Designated times allocated for teenagers to use the leisure facilities, like a swimming pool, to make their stay more enjoyable.

• Provide books/games suitable for teenagers to borrow.

Cont’d

• Older people • A suitable diet as older people may have difficulty chewing or digestive problems, so this needs to be considered when planning their meals.

• Leisure facilities like bowling green allow the guests to participate in therapeutic exercise.

• Spacious bedrooms/bathrooms with specialised equipment installed, such as grab rails in the bathroom, to avoid accidents.

• Rooms on the ground floor to reduce the number of stairs needed to access the room.

• Porter to carry their luggage to the bedroom to avoid guests lifting heavy objects.

• Providing large print of hotel literature for easy reading.

• Arrange taxis to help the guests get to their destination with ease.

• On-site carers to support and assist with daily activities.

Cont’d

• Different cultures and religions • To respect a customer’s beliefs and values and ensure that their needs are being met, employees must have an understanding of various cultures and religions.

• To ensure that customers feel welcomed and are satisfied with their experience, a hotel should: • Be aware of different cultures' food requirements; for instance, Muslim guests will require Halal meat.

• Accommodate religious beliefs. A hotel should offer private rooms for prayer or reflection. It is also important to be aware of any religious observances when a guest is visiting, for instance, during Ramadan.

• Understand customs and preferences; for instance, if a guest is Muslim, remove the alcohol from the mini bar, as consuming alcohol is forbidden in Islamic law.

Cont’d •

Customers with disabilities

•

Some customers may have a disability, and staff must treat them with dignity and respect to ensure they do not feel patronised or inferior.

•

Disabilities can occur in the form of a physical condition or special consideration required to meet their dietary needs. Examples of how to cater for their needs: ❑ Staff should speak slowly and clearly if a customer has a hearing impairment.

❑ If a guest has a sight impairment, large print hotel literature should be provided ❑ Ensuring the customer’s dietary needs have been met by offering a suitable menu and signposting allergens.

To meet the needs of guests with mobility issues, there should be: ❖ Disabled parking to reduce the distance to the hotel entrance. ❖ Wheelchair ramps to aid access around the hotel. ❖ Automatic doors to enable guests to enter the hotel.

❖ Adapted bedroom including particular levels for wash hand basin, toilet, sockets and light switches.

Cont’d • Corporate and leisure groups • Many guests may be booked together, for example, business groups, training groups, teaching organisations, charity organisations or a club with a shared interest like trains or gardening.

• They usually have a group leader or tour guide that will liaise with the hotel to meet their needs. It is important to remember that all group members will not have the same requirements.

• Typical needs of groups may include: ❑ ICT facilities enable the guests to access the internet or emails and continue working in the evening. ❑ Express check-in and check-out for customers, so they are not wasting time in reception. ❑ International newspaper available in the Business Centre for reference purposes. ❑ Rooms are laid out for business meetings to meet the group's needs.

Cont’d

• Corporate • This term means relating to large companies, e.g. business people.

Business people are often regular customers who expect efficient and speedy service, e.g. room service or laundry faculties.

• Services that they may expect include: ❑ Access to a quiet business lounge to work in privacy. ❑ Quick check-in/out service as they do not want to waste time. ❑ A wake-up call to ensure they are not late for meetings or flights. ❑ Leisure facilities to relax after meetings. ❑ Newspaper delivered to keep them up-to-date with current affairs.

Cont’d • VIP • This term refers to 'Very Important Person', meaning the person has special privileges due to their status and importance or high spending power.

• Typical examples of services they would expect include: ❑ Enhanced security to ensure guests' safety. ❑ Menu tailored to suit their dietary requirements. ❑ Mini bar restocked with preferred drinks. ❑ Specific times are allocated to use the leisure facilities to ensure privacy. ❑ A dedicated member of staff assigned to meet personal requirements. ❑ Superior complimentary items are placed in the room to make the guest feel special, like a fruit bowl, champagne, flowers or additional toiletries.

Cont’d • Tourist • This is a person who is visiting or travelling for pleasure. People travel to experience other cultures and to relax. Therefore needs must be met so they have a pleasant experience.

• They may require: ❑Transfer service to collect and return them from the airport. ❑Provision of relevant information on local tourist attractions, like maps and leaflets. ❑Opportunity to purchase tickets for tourist attractions or events. ❑A range of hotel packages, like accommodation and food included in the overall rate, so they can select the package that best suits their needs.

Cont’d • Families • The establishment must make all members of a family feel welcome.

• They may require: ❑Highchairs and baby feeding facilities. ❑Babysitting services allow parents to spend some time together with the reassurance children are safe. ❑Suitable menu for young children. ❑Play area in the hotel. ❑Children’s channels on the TV in the bedroom. ❑Free Wi-Fi to allow the family to access the Internet.

Cont’d • Non-English speakers • It is important that staff can communicate with nonEnglish speaking guests. Some staff members, particularly at reception, should speak a foreign language; however, this can be difficult for smaller establishments.

• Other methods of communicating with non-English speaking guests include: ❑ Use of common phrases and words by the hotel staff dealing with customers. ❑ Locating all guests from the same party on the same floor within the hotel. ❑ Use pictures and images to help guests find products or services within the hotel. ❑ Interpreter to communicate with guests. ❑ Staff should speak slowly and clearly to allow guests to try and understand keywords and phrases. ❑ Menus are printed in various languages to ensure guests know what they will be eating. ❑ Effective use of non-verbal communication, like smiling, pointing and gesticulating.

Challenging customers and conflict resolution • Characteristics of Challenging Customers ➢Language and/or cultural barriers ➢Older customers ➢Impatient customers ➢Angry customers ➢Analytical customers ➢Superior customers ➢Non-committal customers ➢Customers with special needs ➢Talkative customers ➢Immature customers

Cont’d • Conflict resolution • Conflict exists when there is some argument, or disagreement between interested parties.

• Conflict would arise only when there is an issue around positions; where there is some emotion or affect, some angst.

• It arises also when there is the need for a united front or view and this does not exist.

• Resolution means that the parties agree to proceed down a particular path. There needn’t be 100 per cent agreement to be able to do this.

Cont’d Conflict management in hotels is the issue related to the resolution of conflicts in hotels which occur between clients and staff of the institution.

Nowadays, with the rapid growth of the hotel business, the problem of conflicts has become very urgent, and there are several reasons for it.

First of all, the number of hotels worldwide has increased enormously. The competition in this sector has become quite tense.

Hotels must constantly improve the quality of their services to attract clients and satisfy their needs.

Modern hotel visitors can compare the quality of services and the prices in different hotels and decide whether they want to stay at a hotel for such a price.

Many clients demand better service for the money they pay, and various conflicts with the administration occur.

Another reason for conflicts is the disability of specific visitors to coexist with others.

Very often visitors claim that their neighbour is too noisy and they will not live next to him because they have paid money to have a rest.

Cont’d

• The majority of conflicts still occur because of the poor quality of the service, for example, the absence of hot water, the TV set of a refrigerator which is out of order, Etc. • All these slight problems can be solved easily if the administrator is a good psychologist and is good at communicating with others.

• Every conflict can be solved if the manager turns on his communicative skills and speaks to the offended client suggesting the on-time solution of the problem in the room or just suggesting moving to another room.

Complaint management

• Common complaints that customers have : • Attitude to server • Waiting times • Mistakes • Quality of product

Handling a customer complaint: What not to do • When dealing with a complaint, you should never: • Play the blame game: Making the customer happy should be the priority, and once that has been achieved, you can check what went wrong and why afterwards.

• Be defensive: It is important to remember that the customer is paying for a service they feel hasn't met their expectations. Acting defensive suggests they are in the wrong, which will only irritate them further.

• Raise your voice: It can be instinctive to match someone's volume, especially when dealing with an angry customer. However, this will only serve to prolong the confrontation. Also, remember that other customers may be listening to your conversation.

Cont’d

• In the hospitality industry, Lewis and McCann (2004) focused on service failure and recovery in the UK hotel industry, finding that guests who were satisfied with the hotel’s response to their problems, were much more likely to return than those who were not satisfied with recovery efforts. (Hudson and Hudson, 2012) • In the opening spotlight, Paul Hudson of Luxury Hotels UK, trains his staff in the art of service recovery using case studies, role-plays, and letters of complaints.

The service recovery paradox

(Source: Adapted from Schindlholzer, 2008)

The Service recovery process • Every tourism and hospitality organization should have a systematic plan for winning back customers who have been disappointed by some facet of service delivery.

• One such plan is proposed by Zemke and Schaaf (1989) which is a five-step procedure 1. Apology 2. Urgent reinstatement 3. Empathy 4. Symbolic atonement 5. Follow-up

Guidelines for soliciting, tracking and handling complaints

1.

Make it easy for customers to complain

2.

Respond quickly to each and every complaint

3.

Educate employees

4.

Approach complaints as operational problems and strategic opportunities

5.

Make complaints and complainers visible

6.

Adjust quality measures, performance reviews and compensation accordingly

7.

Reward complainers

8.

Stop calling them ‘complainers’!

Customer satisfaction measurement • Customer satisfaction is the leading decisive factor for determining the quality and standard delivered to the customer through the product, service or the accompanying servicing.

• (Vavra, 1997); It’s simply stated, “Customer satisfaction is essential for corporate survival”.

• Several studies have found that it costs about five times as much in time, money and resources to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer (Neumann, 1995). This creates the challenge of maintaining high levels of service, awareness of customer expectations and improvement in services and product.

• Hayes states that “Knowledge of customer expectations and requirements is essential for two reasons – it provides understanding of how the customer defines quality of services and products, and facilitates the development of a customer satisfaction questionnaire (Hayes, 1997, p7).

• Furthermore, customer satisfaction is recognized as of great importance to all commercial firms because of its influence on repeat purchases and word of mouth recommendations (Berkman and Gilson, 1986).

Cont’d • Customer satisfaction is defined as a post-consumption evaluative judgement of a specific product or service. It results from an evaluative process that contrasts pre-purchase expectations with perceptions of performance during and after the consumption experience.

• The expectancy disconfirmation theory is the most widely accepted conceptualization of the customer satisfaction concept. The theory was developed by Oliver, who proposed that satisfaction level results from the difference between expected and perceived performance.

Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory • Richard Oliver developed the expectancy disconfirmation theory in 1980. According to his theory, customers purchase goods and services with pre-purchase expectations about anticipated performance. Once the product or service has been purchased and used, outcomes are compared against expectations. When the outcome matches expectations, confirmation occurs. On the other hand, when there are differences between expectations and outcomes, then disconfirmation occurs. Negative disconfirmation occurs when product/service performance is less than expected. Positive disconfirmation occurs when product/service performance is better than expected. Satisfaction is caused by confirmation or positive disconfirmation of consumer expectations, and dissatisfaction is caused by negative disconfirmation of consumer expectations.

• We may say that Customer satisfaction is a psychological concept that involves the feeling of well-being and pleasure that results from obtaining what one hopes for and expects from an appealing product and/or service.

• Satisfaction is not a universal phenomenon; not everyone gets the same satisfaction from the same hospitality experience.

The reason is that customers have different needs, objectives and past experiences that influence their expectations.

Therefore, it is important to understand the customer needs and objectives that correspond to different kinds of satisfaction. This necessitates market segmentation because no service or product can offer everyone the same degree of satisfaction. Experience may result from changes in the perception of the actual quality of outcomes received or from changes in the expectations against which these outcomes are compared.

• The components of satisfaction • Most hospitality experiences are an amalgam of products and services. Therefore it is possible to say that satisfaction with a hospitality experience such as a hotel stay or a restaurant meal is total satisfaction with the individual elements or attributes of all the products and services that make up the experience.

Reuland Model of Satisfaction

• There is no uniformity opinion among marketing experts regarding the classification of the elements in service encounters.

• Reuland suggests that hospitality services consist of a harmonious mixture of three elements: 1. The material product in a narrow sense which in the case of a restaurant is the food and beverages; 2. The behaviour and attitude of the employees who are responsible for hosting the guest, serving the meal and beverages and who come in direct contact with the guests, 3. The environment, such as the building, the layout, the furnishing, the lighting in the restaurant, etc. Reuland et al.

(1985, p. 142)

Czepiel Model of Satisfaction • Czepiel suggests that satisfaction with a service is a function of satisfaction with two independent elements, the functional element, i.e. the food and beverage in a restaurant, and the performancedelivery element, i.e. the service.

• To prove the independence of the two elements from each other, the authors claim that restaurant clients are quite capable of having responses to each element that differ one from the other: “The service was great, the food poor” or conversely. (Czepiel et al.) (1985. P. 13)

David and Stone's Model of Satisfaction • Davis and Stone divide the service encounter into two elements: ➢Direct Services ➢Indirect Services • For example, direct services may be the actual check-in/check-out process in hotels, while the indirect services include the provision of parking facilities, concierge, public telephones for guests' use, Etc. (Davis and Stone (1985, p.29)

Dimensions of satisfaction • In service organizations, the quality of service is assessed during the actual delivery of the service – usually an encounter between the customer and a service contact person.

• Parasuraman identified the following five generic dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) that must be present in the service delivery for it to result in customer satisfaction: 1.

Reliability – the ability to perform the promised services dependably and accurately.

2.

Responsiveness – the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

3.

Assurance – employees' knowledge and courtesy and ability to convey trust and confidence.

4.

Empathy – the provision of caring, individualized attention to customers, and 5.

Tangibles, the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials.

• The model conceptualizes service quality as a gap between customers' expectations (E) and the perception of the service providers' performance (P). According to Parasuraman that service quality should be measured by subtracting customer's perception scores from customer expectation scores: • (Q = P – E) • The greater the positive score represents, the greater the positive amount of service quality or vice versa.

• The gap between the customers' expected and perceived service is not only a measure of the service's quality but also a determinant of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Measuring the gap between expected and perceived service is a routine method of utilizing customer feedback.

Cont’d

• Measuring service quality via customer satisfaction • Hayes states that Knowledge of customer expectations and requirements is essential for two reasons: • It provides understanding of how the customer defines quality of service and products and facilitates the development of customer satisfaction questionnaires.

(Hayes, 1997) • Customer satisfaction is recognized as of great importance to all commercial firm because of its influence on repeat purchases and word of mouth recommendation (Berkman and Gilson, 1986).

• Satisfaction, reinforces positive attitudes towards the brand, leading to a greater likelihood that the same brand will be purchased again, but on the other hand dissatisfaction leads to negative brand attitudes and lessens the likelihood of buying the same brand again (Assael, 1987)

Cadotte and Turgeon attribute model of performance

• Cadotte and Turgeon divided the attributes into the following four categories: ➢Satisfiers ➢Dissatisfiers ➢Critical ➢Neutral

Technology and customer services • Not long ago, computer reservation systems revolutionized the travel and hospitality industry.

• With the evolution of the internet, the smartphone and other technologies now provide significant convenience and savings to travel consumers.

• Travel websites that allow travellers to find the best deals, self-guided tour audio apps, and real-time updates on flight times and arrivals are now standard travel tools and access to travel professionals and consumers alike.

Cont’d • Travel Websites and Apps • There is a plethora of online travel sites and apps, which can be used for many different purposes: • Research: Individual vendor websites, third-party booking sites, and online travel publications provide information, reviews, and price comparisons for travel products, including transportation, accommodation, excursions and car rental.

• Travellers who prefer not to work with a travel agent can easily complete the necessary research and select the vendors with the best prices.

Cont’d Booking: Both travel agents and consumers alike can book travel online without ever having to speak to a vendor representative

Travel updates: Travelers can now check in regarding their flight status via a website or a mobile app. In addition, many airlines directly provide updated flight information via text or automated calls. In addition, family and friends can also us e online systems to track the arrival of their guests.

Loyalty points: Many airlines and hotels offer loyalty point programs. Apps and websites allow loyalty point program members to check their status and redeem points as they wish.

Boarding passes: Travelers can check in to their flights online and print boarding passes from their computers. Today, however, travellers can add a boarding pass to their mobile phone wallet and skip the printing process.

Peer-to-peer systems: Apps like Airbnb connect travellers directly with homeowners and others with temporary space to rent, bypassing traditional services like hotels.

Customizable, interactive maps: Google Maps, and similar online mapping systems, now allow user input. You can add your favourite restaurants, museums and other tourist sites to a local map and even see the locations your circle of friends added.

Cont’d • Tour Information and Guiding Systems : New technology allows individuals on group or self-guided tours to get the information they need as they view historical landmarks, architecture and artefacts: • Self-guided tours: Travelers can download an app to their smartphones, which provides expert commentary as they move through a museum exhibit, attraction or neighbourhood.

• Group tours: During a conventional group tour, guides sometimes struggle to make themselves heard. As a result, group members get jostled about as others close in so they can listen to what the guide has to say.

• New technology now allows a guide to wear a microphone and transmitter, and the guide's words are broadcast to tour members wearing earpieces tuned into the transmitter. This ensures that everyone can hear the guide and allows tour members to move around freely while taking in what the guide has to say.

Cont’d • Smartphone Communication Apps • When things go wrong while travelling, it's essential to communicate with people who can help, such as customer service representatives and travel agents.

• Some travel agents use apps to make themselves available to travellers who may need to reschedule a missed flight or book a new hotel.

• In addition, some resorts are also using smartphone apps, which enable guests to bring problems to management's attention so that they can be sorted out immediately.

Cont’d What Tomorrow May Bring: Technology moves ahead by leaps and bounds. Travel is already witnessing inroads in several new areas, including: • Customer recognition: Camera-based technology can recognize a customer's face as they enter your hotel, or Bluetooth systems can pick up a signal from a familiar cell phone, letting management know a repeat visitor is in the house.

• Robots: A Roomba in your room? Machines may take over some of the cleaning and maintenance tasks formerly done by staff, such as self-guided vacuums for keeping things tidy.

• Virtual Reality: Travelers like to be entertained, and in-room movies may not be enough. Virtual reality might be the next wave of entertainment and can also find use in introducing visitors to an area's delights, even well before they arrive.

Managing quality in customer relations • Quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

• To meet or exceed customer expectations, organizations must fully understand all service attributes that contribute to customer value and lead to satisfaction and loyalty (Evans & Lindsay,2010) • The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality management as “all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives and responsibilities and implement them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement within the quality system”. (International Standard, Quality Management and Quality Assurance-Vocabulary, 1994).

Cont’d • Total Quality is a people-focused management system that aims at continual increase of customer satisfaction at a continually lower real cost.

• In the area of hospitality, total quality management (TQM) is a participatory process that empowers all levels of employees to work in groups in order to establish guest service expectations and determine the best way to meet or exceed these expectations.

• A successful property will employ leader-managers who create a stimulating work environment in which guests and employees become integral parts of the mission by participating in goal and objective setting (Walker, 2010).

Cont’d

Quality assurance refers to any planned and systematic activity directed towards providing consumers with goods and services of appropriate quality, along with the confidence that they meet consumers’ requirements.

Quality assurance depends on excellence of two important focal points in business: the design of goods and services and the control of quality during execution of service delivery which is often aided by some form of measurement and inspection activity (Evans & Lindsay, 2010).

Cont’d The components of quality in the hospitality industry that can be used to develop and implement a quality service system are the following:

1. Consider the guests being served 2. Determine what the guests desire 3. Develop procedures to deliver what guests want 4. Train and empower staff 5. Implement revised systems 6.Evaluate and modify service delivery systems.

Source: Foundations of lodging management, p.

48,Pearson Education (2011)

Cont’d

Regular and systematic analysis of the evaluation results may lead to a wide range of advantages, amongst them: • Measuring the matching degree of customers’ needs and expectations, and comparing the results with perceived quality, • Acting as a basis for the strategic process, identifying improvement activities; and • Controlling competitiveness in quality with the help of benchmarking (Soteriadis, 2006).

Cont’d

Cont’d

Cont’d

Strategies for building long-term customer relationships

• Digital strategies, including increased connectivity with customers through mobile device, apps, social media and online chats/forums.

• Use of advanced technology such as ‘Internet of Things’ and Cognitive systems to gather real-time data and predict and forecast market trends.

Creating brand loyalty • Customer loyalty in the hotel industry is when a customer provides repeat business to a specific hotel location or chain. In other words, a loyal or satisfied customer will choose a single location or company over alternative options. This can even be the case when a hotel has stricter policies or higher prices, as more often than not, customers are willing to spend a bit more to receive familiar quality or assurance of their expectations.

• Customer loyalty is the result of a hotel providing superior service. Guests will return if they know their needs will be met at that particular hotel, and promote your hotel through social media or word-of-mouth to create more potentially loyal guests. Brand loyalty can enhance tourists' feelings towards places. Taking the feeling-asinformation perspective, people use existing positive affect embedded in brand loyalty as a source of information to form a positive image of the associated place.

Cont’d

❑How can create brand loyalty? ✓Know your customers (and let them know you). ✓Create a customer loyalty program. ✓Set up a referral program. ✓Play to your strengths and values. ✓Engage customers on social media. ✓Encourage customer feedback. ✓Store customers' data.

Cont’d • Types Of Loyalty Programs In The Hotel Industry • Points Programs • Points programs have been around for hundreds of years, long before the idea of digital currency had ever laid its roots. With a points program, a customer will spend money upfront to reap rewards in the future.

• Essentially, they make a transaction first and benefit from that transaction down the line.

• Points programs can be great for getting tons of guests to sign up, though when it comes to increasing engagement, the value and differentiation factors are daily low. These work best when they are paired with loyalty tiers.

Cont’d

• Tiered Loyalty Programs • Tiered loyalty programs are very popular in the hotel industry, as they are based on giving rewards based on specific milestones that guests cross. These kinds of milestones are often measured in dollar values.

• Essentially, the more a guest spends at a hotel, the higher the tier they enter.

• Tiered loyalty programs are wonderful for increasing your member engagement; they make guests feel as if they’ve entered a more exclusive program. When it comes to traditional points programs, which are nontiered, all guests or customers get the same thing.

With tiered loyalty programs, it becomes a thing of status.

Cont’d • The higher the tier, the better the benefits. The element of gamification comes into play, incorporating addictive elements that keep people coming back. These kinds of elements can make a program far more exciting for people to traverse.

• Some of the most successful tiered loyalty programs out there will give customers insight into how many people are in each tier, which is usually based on a percentage. That customer can then see how their status ranks compared to other customers in the program, bringing their competitive nature into play.

• Plus, being in a higher tier with more benefits makes the customer feel more valuable.

• IHG and Marriott have some of the best-tiered loyalty programs in the hospitality industry.

Cont’d • Premium Loyalty Programs • Premium loyalty programs are great for higher-end hospitality establishments that are looking to increase customer retention. These kinds of programs are fee-based, meaning they require members to make upfront payments to reap instant benefits.

• The moment a guest enters a premium loyalty program, they receive instant gratification in getting to engage with the culture and benefits of the program at any time they choose.

• These programs can be very valuable, though it’s important to make sure that you don’t create too large of a barrier for your demographic. Of course, the idea is that the barrier should be a bit larger than what the average customer could commit to, as that is the point. With a program like this in place, you can strengthen your relationship with your best customers and keep them coming back for more.

Cont’d • Examples Of Guest Benefits In Loyalty Rewards Programs In Hotels • Wyndham Rewards Program • One of the rewards programs comes from Wyndham. A member with Wyndham Rewards can earn rewards and cash in at one of the many 9,000+ properties that this brand runs.

• Guests can redeem their points for a wide range of things, such as hotel stays, car rentals, retail items, and much more.

• Wyndham even optimized guests’ point-earning opportunities by partnering with other large companies, such as American Airlines, Amtrack, and United Airlines.

Cont’d • World of Hyatt • World of Hyatt is Hyatt’s top-notch loyalty program, which provides benefits to members that stay in one of their many 700+ properties throughout North America, Asia, Europe, and beyond.

• Guests that are involved in the World of Hyatt program can use points they earn for free nights, stay experiences, and room upgrades. Hyatt has also allowed for these points to be transformed into car rentals and airline miles.

• Recently, Hyatt partnered with Visa to offer a credit card for members that want to earn points with every purchase they make.

Cont’d

• Marriott Bonvoy • One of the most effective hotel loyalty programs in the industry today is the Marriott Bonvoy program. When guests sign up for this program, they can get points for staying within Marriott’s network of hotels.

• Beyond standard Marriott hotels, the company has 30+ affiliate brands attached to this program. They include The Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Resorts, Westin Hotels and Resorts, and St. Regis Hotels and Resorts.

• Members who are a part of this program receive unique and exclusive benefits, including mobile keys, special member rates, food and beverages, and free hotel room internet. By using specific Chase Visa or American Express Cards, members can even score extra Marriott reward points.

Cross-selling and up-selling • Cross-selling is when you offer a product or service that's different but complementary to something your guest already has. An example of this is a waiter who suggests a bottle of wine with dinner or a receptionist who proposes booking a spa treatment.

• Often 'upselling' serves as an umbrella term that also includes cross-selling and suggestive selling. For hotels, upselling in its purest form means suggesting a paid upgrade to a fancier room type or promoting more expensive versions of services a guest has already booked.

• Suggestive selling is about planting a seed in the traveller’s mind and encouraging guests to take action. You can do this by telling them about the next higher room category’s incredible benefits or by providing attractive information about your services. The goal is to entice hotel guests to do something they enjoy but was not planning on when they booked their stay.

Choosing the right rewards and incentives • Torrington et al. (2005) recognize how, ‘the contract for payment will be satisfactory in so far as it meets the objectives of the parties’ (p. 569). In recognizing this point we can now consider how these objectives are likely to differ depending on whether it is employees or employers.

Cont’d

Employee objectives for the contract for payment Purchasing power Felt to be fair Rights Relativities Recognition Composition

Cont’d

• Employer objectives for the contract of payment • Prestige • Competition • Control • Motivation and performance • Cost

Cont’d • The approach that an organization develops towards reward strategies does not exist in isolation and there will be a number of other influences on pay determination that will affect such considerations, including:

• Beliefs about the worth of the job – for example, the size, responsibility, skill requirements and ‘objectionableness’ of duties.

• Individual characteristics –- for example, age, experience, seniority, general qualifications, special skills, contribution, performance and potential.

• Labour market – the level and composition of any given reward package will be influenced by labour supply and demand at either national or local labour market level, and whether an organization is seeking to create a strong internal labour market.

Cont’d • Strength of bargaining groups – for example, the potential for trade unions to influence pay determination. At any given time the relative strength of trade unions will be influenced by other external economic factors, such as the level of unemployment and feelings of job security.

• Government intervention and regulatory pressures – for example, public sector policy and other policy initiatives. Most obviously, the statutory national minimum wage (NMW), but also in terms of public policy towards aspects such as trade unions and collective bargaining.

Remuneration in tourism and hospitality

• Basic or base pay • Wage regulation in tourism and hospitality • The practice of tipping • Fiddles and knock-offs • Other benefits

Developing multiple points and channels of contact • The main goal of a Customer Relationship Management multichannel strategy should be to find out which channel mix created the most value for an organization and its customers.

• Offering brand-relevant experiences through multiple touchpoints gives the ability to combine effectiveness in achieving relationship goals while being as cost executive as possible.

• Consumers have begun to make their own choices and use multiple channels at different times and for different purposes. As a consequence, the multichannel strategy is more about how to combine the different channels.

(Peelen, 2013).

• Channels also provide consumers access to hotels and they can significantly affect the revenues and cost structure of an organisation. (Peelen & Beltman, 2013).

Cont’d •

Experts confirmed once that tv and print advertising are not as useful to use for promotion. However, in 2012 experts proved that both traditional and new advertising methods are very popular among consumers. Marketing and advertising experts looked at what the most effective marketing strategy would be and which would provide the most value for a company, out of this research they concluded that Multi channelled strategy and building brand awareness would be the most beneficial to use for promotion and make a name of your company. (Freed, 2013).

•

According to a study, Nothofer and Remy using both traditional and electronic channels are very popular in the hotel industry. Besides this, they have their websites and are using online tour operators and travel agencies.

However, there could be risks in using a Multi channel strategy. When the Multi channel system is poorly coordinated the use of it would not be beneficial for the company. Customers do not like to read different information through different channels. All channels should be linked to each other and provide the same information.

Using marketing specialists who are specialised in multichannel strategy can cover this. (Nothofer & Remy, n.d.).

Cont’d • In a world of multi-channel marketing and distribution, hotels have greater opportunities of increasing revenue and drive brand awareness. In this way, a hotel should implement a good multichannel strategy. A multichannel strategy mostly concerns the millennials target group (Social tables, 2020).

• In a multichannel approach, the bigger the number of channels there is, the wider the hotel’s range. Consequently, the bigger the number of interested travellers. With this in mind, multiple communication channels are offered to clients, such as social media, email, website, and text messaging channels. (Asksuite, 2019).

• The channels that you can see in the model ‘contact processes across different channels’ (Peelen, 2013), are used for other purposes, during the different phases of the customer journey. Different channels will need to be combined at the right place at the right time.

Cont’d

Contact processes across different channels, Peelen book page 268.

Cont’d • The customer journey describes the series of contacts that a customer has with in this case the hotel. Customer touchpoints are where customers interact with the hotel. The term “touchpoints” occur during orientation, booking, preparing for the event, etc. However, the touchpoints will not take place within the same channels. (Peelen, 2013).

• The main goal of these touchpoints is to create a logical unity that has a clear brand identity, which is consistent in content. It is important to gain insight into the way the customer experiences this journey. An experience that moves a customer is about touching and moving customers more than it is about only reaching them, so for a hotel getting more insight into the customer journey of its visitors, can help them create a good multichannel strategy as seen in the model down below which combines different channels at different stages of the customer journey.

Cont’d

The customer journey, Peelen book page 260

Cont’d • E.g.,: If a promotional offer is being sent out to a customer who has just cancelled, it may provide an awkward situation.

If it is sent to a customer who just ordered, it will cost money and potentially damage the relationship (why didn’t my account manager give me the benefit of this offer?) (Peelen, 2013).

Cont’d

The innovation wheel of multichannel strategy, Peelen book page 258

• When looking at the innovation wheel of a multi-channel strategy, (Peelen, 2013) this can be explained when looking at the Marriott hotel.

• The hotel makes user-generated content to capture their millennials’ attention. Their social media marketing strategy differs in many ways.

• The campaign reaches out of Snapchat to Facebook sharing, YouTube, and other channels to capture the attention of other demographics.

Their content is really good and it resembles barely any advertising. (Social tables, 2020).

Understand the importance of teamwork in the context of managing customer relations. LO 3

After completion of this module the learner can:3.1 Describe the characteristics of effective teams.

3.2 Explain the importance to a tourism and hospitality business of effective team work.

3.3 Discuss how tourism and hospitality managers can promote effective team working in their areas of responsibility.

Defining team roles • The process of working collaboratively with a group of people, in order to achieve a goal. Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to corporate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.”

• The division of a company that is focused on activities relating to employees. These activities normally including recruiting and hiring of new employees, orientation and training of current employees, employee benefits, and retention” (BusinessDictionary.com, 2010)

Cont’d

• If there is proper human resource management (HRM) in the hotel, the hotel will run smoothly and achieve its goal.

• There are several different areas in HRM that are very important. They are as follows: • When recruiting and hiring new employees, the human resource manager should be very careful when choosing the new staff for the hotel.

• The manager should choose a smart person, dedicated to working and suitable for the job.

• Employee progression and promotion are other significant issue for the hotel industry.

• For progress and promotion, the employee should be well trained in some skills, and the manager should provide personal skill training for the advanced position.

• Training and orientation to the new employee on how to work in the organisation and orientation of the hotel are to provide the knowledge to the new employee by showing them the hotel as a whole.

Effective team work

• Increased sales • Fewer complaints • New customers • Numbers of compliments • Repeat business/brand loyalty • Reduced staff turnover • Referred business • Increased market share • Job satisfaction • Staff motivation

Characteristics of effective teams

• Objectives: The team must understand and accept common goals.

• Roles: Each team member must know how they fit into the overall picture.

• Guidelines: Team members must understand the systems and methods to accomplish goals.

• Relationships: Team members must develop trust and respect before coming together for a common cause.

Cont’d

Adaptability • Adaptable leaders are not afraid to get their hands dirty.

• Individuals who can adjust to change possess great people skills and poise under pressure.

• Flexible hospitality and tourism professionals are ready to tackle any task, including responding to a weary traveller’s demands or completing a team checklist.

Cont’d

Team – Oriented • Being a team player is an essential trait to develop as an individual in the hospitality and tourism industry. Team players work constructively with everyone in the business, from employees and co-workers to managers, customers, and guests. They create weekly schedules to staff the hotel or event, and they resolve conflicts between employees should they arise.

• A team leader is always a positive force—when profits are high and when cash flow is tight. Knowing what strengths are essential to company performance helps team players make valuable use of time and resources. CEO of Zipline Logistics, Walter Lynch, told Business News Daily that leaders "need to be genuinely interested in growing the skills of others, not just in delegating tasks or managing processes."

• Likewise, when team members need reassurance, guidance or additional support, an exemplary team player is there to offer assistance, trust, and clear communication.

Cont’d

• Entrepreneurial • Not every person with an entrepreneurial mind-set is a business owner.

• Entrepreneurs come in all shapes, sizes, and ranges of abilities.

• They have different strengths and weaknesses, but a few common ways most entrepreneurs think and act to become successful leaders.

• First, entrepreneurs seek out new opportunities.

• Whether working toward a manager’s position or starting a new career from scratch, entrepreneurs have a clear vision of the future they want.

• Most importantly, entrepreneurs take ownership of outcomes.

• Good, bad, and everything in between—entrepreneurs step up to the plate when scheduling preventative maintenance on a property or resolving a shortage of housekeeping supplies.

Cont’d • Passionate • Finally, to keep growing and improving, hospitality and tourism management leaders must be passionate about what they do daily.

Passion takes the form of energy, excitement, kindness, and other characteristics that will make a difference for the team and guests or clients.

• It's important to remember that becoming an effective leader takes practice and commitment. "Becoming a leader is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time and effort to develop effective leadership skills," Lynch says.

Cont’d

• Some of the roles of team member are as follows, • Listen to the manager and supervisor and stay open to their ideas.

• Assist the team leader with managing meetings and with discussions.

• Communicate effectively with colleagues.

• Dedicated to the work and share the knowledge to implement the problem arise.

Cont’d

Groups that work effectively have the following characteristics: • Group members share a sense of purpose or common goals each member is willing to work toward. Members feel they played a role in determining these goals and the methods used to achieve them. When a task is accomplished or the demands of the situation change, the group can change its focus or direction to meet the new goals.

• The group is concerned not only with the task but also with its processes and operating procedures. The group periodically evaluates its performance.

• The group members use one another as a resource. The group willingly accepts the influence and leadership of members whose resources are relevant to the immediate task. Roles are balanced and shared to ensure that the tasks are accomplished, and that group cohesion and morale are enhanced.

• Communication is clear and direct. Group members continually try to listen to and clarify what is being said and show interest in what others say and feel. Differences of opinion are encouraged and freely expressed.

• The group focuses on problem-solving rather than expending energy on competitive struggles or interpersonal issues. The group is willing to deal with conflict and focus on it until it is resolved or managed in a way that does not reduce the effectiveness of the group and its members. Confrontation is accepted as a challenge to examine one’s behaviour or ideas. It is not viewed as an uncaring personal attack.

• Mistakes are seen as sources of learning rather than reasons for punishment. This encourages creativity and risk-taking.

• The group has a clear set of expectations and standards for the behaviour of group members.

• Developing a climate of trust underlies all of these elements. To trust one another, individuals in a group must understand and get to know one another.

Cont’d Here are a few tactics to increase productivity through effective teamwork: • Make the work environment enjoyable.

• Have fun together.

• Provide training, so individuals feel they are being invested in and stay current and marketable in their competency set.

• Give the team a common cause.

• Cultivate interdependence among team members.

• Team members should know and understand each other’s strengths to trust and leverage each other as needed.

• Use challenges to strengthen bonds. It is a well-known psychological principle that rivals often become allies when working on solutions to common problems.

• Use a buddy system to begin working together, especially when helping to orient and on board new hires.

• Develop a team slogan, symbol, Etc., if appropriate.

• Recognize both team and individual accomplishments in public ways, as appropriate.

Promoting teamwork can be very fulfilling for everyone involved. It strengthens employee bonds and enhances your leadership abilities.

• Leadership • Leadership is important in a team.

Managing and leading teams

• A good supervisor is a leader who can bring the group together and build an environment where the team can work together effectively.

• A leader acts as a: ➢Representative of management ➢Role model ➢Problem solver ➢Motivator ➢Manager of daily operations

Cont’d • A group leader does not have to perform all of these functions.

Some of the most influential leaders lead from behind. They lead the group unobtrusively, sharing the responsibilities and rewards of leadership.

• That does not mean that they do nothing. They work hard to "catch people doing it right" and acknowledge their efforts.

They value the contributions of others and share decisionmaking. They also recognize when it is essential to step in and take charge.

• A successful leader can influence employees by making suggestions and guiding the discussion. Every supervisor has legitimate power, the authority associated with being a boss. In addition to this authority, effective leaders have a second type of power: the ability to influence or persuade people. This power depends on the employee's acceptance of the supervisor as a person who makes sound judgments and merits respect.

• Influence is a very strong form of power. Employees may obey authority requests but will go above and beyond the call of duty for someone with influence. Of course, a supervisor needs both authority and influence. Suppose the supervisor has no authority to make decisions. In that case, he or she will be unable to create a climate where work can be performed. In turn, he or she will not enjoy the respect and acceptance that creates influence.

Cont’d • Successful leaders focus on the task (getting the job done) with a commitment to helping employees achieve their personal goals. If a supervisor concentrates only on accomplishing tasks, they will be perceived as uncaring and unsupportive. Employees may feel that they are not appreciated for their unique skills and interests.

• On the other hand, the supervisor concentrates only on making employees feel comfortable and fostering a pleasant work environment; may not accomplish the tasks for which the group is responsible. The company owner will not get the necessary job performance, and profits and customer service will suffer.

Although you might expect employees to be satisfied, they will not feel accomplished in their work, and morale will suffer.

Cont’d

Leadership styles • The style of leadership that supervisors use can be categorized into four types: • Authoritarian • Passive • Bureaucratic • Participative

Cont’d • Authoritarian leaders plan, organize, coordinate, control, and direct very commandingly. They make the decisions and expect their subordinates to obey. Most military units function under this type of leadership.

This does not mean that the leader is not concerned about the welfare of the staff. This type of leader may be a caring individual but may feel that they are in the best position to judge what is best for the supervised staff. They may be likewise and caring father in a traditional family.

• Passive leaders do not want to face conflict. They avoid situations where decisions have to be made, or they have to interact with others. They have little concern for either people or production. This leadership style is seldom appropriate in the type of situations encountered in the food service industry.

• A bureaucratic leader expects employees to put in an honest day’s work for a fair day’s pay. They expect everyone to play by the rules. The results may be predictable, but this type of leadership does not foster creativity or initiative.

• Participative leaders believe that participation in decision-making is the key to achieving the company’s goals. In today’s world, where most people have a strong streak of individualism, this style may complement the personality and needs of employees well.

Cont’d

Regardless of what the leadership goals are, the principles to success are the same:

Consider each employee's ideas valuable – Remember that there is no such thing as a stupid idea.

Be aware of employees' unspoken feelings – Set an example to team members by being open with employees and sensitive to their moods and emotions.

Act as a harmonising influence – Look for chances to mediate and resolve minor disputes; point continually toward the team's higher goals.

Be clear when communicating – Be careful to clarify directives.

Encourage trust and cooperation among employees on your team – Remember that the relationship team members establish among themselves are equally important as those you establish with them. As the team begins to take shape, pay close attention to how team members work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation, trust, and respect in those relationships.

Cont’d

• Encourage team members to share information – Emphasise the importance of each member's contribution and demonstrate how all of their jobs operate together to move the entire team closer to its goal.

• Delegate problem-solving tasks to the team – Let the team work on creative solutions together.

• Facilitate communication – Remember that communication is the most important factor in successful teamwork. Facilitating communication does not mean holding meetings all the time. Instead, it means setting an example by remaining open to suggestions and concerns, asking questions and offering help, and doing everything you can to avoid confusion in your communication.

Cont’d • Establish team values and goals; evaluate team performance – Be sure to talk with members about the progress they are making toward established goals so that employees get a sense of their success and of the challenges ahead. Address teamwork in performance standards. Discuss with your team: • What do we care about in performing our job?

• What does the word success mean to this team?

• What actions can we take to live up to our stated values?

• Make sure you have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish – that you know your success standards, that you have established clear time frames, and that team members understand their responsibilities.

• Use consensus – Set objectives, solve problems, and plan for action. While it takes much longer to establish consensus, this method ultimately provides better decisions and greater productivity because it secures every employee's commitment to all phases of the work.

• Set ground rules for the team – These are the norms you and the team establish to ensure efficiency and success. They can be simple policies, E.g. (Team members are to be punctual for meetings) or general guidelines, E.g. (Every team member has the right to offer ideas and suggestions). However, you should ensure that the team creates these ground rules by consensus and commits to them, both as a group and as individuals.

Cont’d

• Establish a method for arriving at a consensus.

You may want to conduct an open debate about the pros and cons of proposals or establish research committees to investigate issues and deliver reports.

• Encourage listening and brainstorming – As a supervisor, your priority in creating consensus is to stimulate debate. Remember that employees are often afraid to disagree with one another and that this fear can lead your team to make mediocre decisions. When you encourage debate, you inspire creativity, and that's how you'll spur your team on to better results.

• Establish the parameters of consensus-building sessions – Be sensitive to the frustration that can mount when the team is not achieving consensus. At the outset of your meeting, establish time limits, and work with the team to achieve consensus within those parameters.

Watch out for false consensus; if an agreement is struck too quickly, be careful to probe individual team members to discover their real feelings about the proposed solution.

Cont’d • Delegation • Delegation of tasks provides you with time to meet your responsibilities. It recognizes the abilities of others and provides them with opportunities to develop their skills and talents. It divides the work among the team members, increasing effectiveness and efficiency.

• When you delegate a task to a junior staff member, it is not enough to ask the person to do the job. You must ensure that you: ➢ Please explain why the task is necessary and how it relates to the goals of the company ➢ Explain what is to be done ➢ Set performance standards ➢ Give a timeline for completion of the task ➢ Give the person the necessary resources, authority, and responsibility to carry out the task ➢ Provide adequate training ➢ Give support and guidance during the initial period ➢ Provide feedback on the completion of the task

Cont’d • Managing and leading teams: 1. Adaptable 2. Team-oriented 3. Entrepreneurial 4. Passionate 5. Monitor and assess performance • E.g., Observation • Psychometric testing • Training Needs Analysis (TNA) • Feedback • Questioning

Cont’d 6. Set objectives and targets that relate to customer service in area of responsibility.

7. Use an effective communication channel 8. Improve hiring and onboarding 9. Bring your culture and values to life 10. Specify clear goals 11. Make life easier 12. Offer a great experience 13. Reward good teamwork.

Effective communication strategies for teamwork 1. First impressions 2. Non-verbal communication

3. Show respect 4. Listening skills 5. Active listening 6. Stay focused when you listen 7. Other Languages and Cultures 8. Communicating in a Noisy Environment 9. Making oral reports 10. Using the Telephone 11. Giving Directions and Feedback 12. Handling Criticism

Cont’d

First Impressions To create an excellent first impression of your business, you should: • Keep all work areas tidy • Greet guests as soon as they enter, even if seating guests are not your responsibility • Make eye contact and smile at guests when in the dining room • Ensure that uniforms are spotless when you enter a public area • Maintain an erect posture and alert manner

Cont’d • Non-Verbal Communication • Non-verbal communication is an important component of effective communication.

• Non-verbal communication includes tone of voice, voice quality (nasal, whiny, musical), making eye contact with the person you are talking to, paying attention when somebody else talks, body position, distance from the person, and body movement.

• It is easy to say one thing but to communicate the opposite with your non-verbal communication.

• When the non-verbal part of your communication conflicts with the verbal message, others tend to trust the non-verbal message.

Cont’d

• Show Respect Showing respect for somebody is not difficult. If you treat people how you would like to be treated, respectful communication will come naturally. Here are some additional guidelines to maintain respectful relationships: • Acknowledge other people’s presence with a “hello” or a smile even when you do not need to speak with them • Remember their names • Listen when they speak • Do not intimidate them or make them feel uncomfortable • Show honesty and consistency • Show agreement when possible • Say thank you often • Offer your help • Ask advice • Avoid status battles

Cont’d

• Listening Skills • A good communicator talks about important things to you and says them in a way you can understand.

• When good communicators tell you important information, they often stop to ask you whether you have understood so far.

• Good communicators avoid annoying mannerisms of speech, such as “you know” or “like,” or annoying gestures, like playing with a pencil or looking at the clock.

• A good communicator is someone who practices active listening.

Cont’d • Active listening • Practise being an active listener by focusing on what the speaker is saying.

• Show that you are listening by facing the person and looking at their eyes at least part of the time.

• Tell yourself that you are interested in what others are saying and try understanding their point of view.

• Do not interfere with your listening by forming your opinions while they are still speaking.

• Let the speakers finish their sentences; do not help slow speakers by finishing their sentences for them.

• Repeat what you heard in another way when a speaker has finished speaking or asks if you have understood.

• You can say, for example, “In other words, you are saying that….”

Cont’d • Stay focused when you listen • Some people will repeat themselves because they want to emphasize what they are saying.

• If you do not have time, you will have to let the speaker know.

• People will appreciate if you remember details of their personal life, such as the names of their children, or what sports they enjoy.

• Some people who are poor communicators may rarely speak. When they do speak, they may appear angry or disrespectful to you. Keep your focus.

• As you show your willingness to listen, the people you listen to will show a greater willingness to speak. They will tell you about problems that they notice sooner. On the other hand, if you take poor communication personally and respond by ignoring or insulting the person, those people are less likely to speak to you.

• Other Languages and Cultures • The way that we communicate depends on our culture.

• Language is a big part of the culture, and so is non-verbal communication.

• In some cultures, making eye contact or standing in front of the person you are speaking to is insulting.

• In others, it is good manners to speak very loudly.

Cont’d

• Many cultures have different communication norms for women, men, older people, and younger people.

• When speaking to people from different cultures, remember that their communication norms may differ from yours.

• What you think is a sign of disrespect may be the opposite — a sign of respect in that person’s culture.

• You may need to ask them what certain non-verbal communication actions mean to them and explain the meaning in your culture.

Cont’d • Communicating in a Noisy Environment

• For more extended conversations or when you must be sure the listener has understood you, go to a place with less noise.

• You may meet people who do not hear very well because of hearing damage.

• A person who is deaf in one ear may never tell you but always stand to one side during conversations.

• Be sure to give those people a chance to take their preferred position before speaking to them.

• Not all people with hearing damage know that they do or want to be reminded of it.

• Be aware of how loudly they speak and adjust the volume of your voice to match theirs.

Cont’d • Making Oral Reports • An effective oral report has the same parts as an effectively written report: an introduction, a body (or explanation), and a conclusion.

• In the introduction, you must get the listener’s attention and introduce the subject.

• In the body of your oral report, identify the key points or ideas of the subject matter.

• In the conclusion, summarize your main points.

This is a chance to re-emphasize those points, but do not repeat everything you have already said.

Cont’d

• Using the telephone Communicating on the telephone can be more difficult than speaking in person because many non-verbal cues are missing. When dealing with guests and other outsiders, creating an excellent first impression of your business is particularly important. This first impression is created almost solely by your voice.

To communicate effectively on the telephone, follow these tips: • Answer the phone quickly, within three rings.

• Use a pleasant tone of voice when answering telephone calls. Avoid sounding harried, angry, or distracted.

• Greet the caller and identify the business and yourself. For example, you could say, “Pleasant Stay Hotel kitchen.

Carl is speaking.”

• Keep a message pad and pen handy when you take calls.

• Do not carry on a conversation with someone else while you are on the phone. If it is necessary to speak to someone else, excuse yourself or offer to call back at a more appropriate time.

• If there is an uncomfortable pause on the other end of the phone, ask for clarification: “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

• Summarize the conversation at the end. For example, if you have made a reservation for dinner, you might say, “I’ve made a reservation for February 12 at 7:00 p.m. for eight people under the name of Smith.”

• If you have to put someone on hold, ask the person to hold and wait for a response.

• Return to calls placed on hold quickly, and thank the person for waiting.

• If you have to transfer the call to someone else, explain that you are transferring the call to a person who can help and state the name of the person to whom you are transferring the call. Give the person to whom you are transferring the call a summary of the caller’s request so that the caller does not have to repeat the request.

• Be prepared when you make calls. Have a plan of what you will say. Have everything you need for the call at your fingertips. For example, if you are phoning a supplier, ensure you have the restaurant account number, a list of the items you require, order numbers, the quantity needed, and other information beside you when you call.

Cont’d • Giving Directions and Feedback A form of an oral report you will have to make if you supervise other people's feedback on others' performance. Feedback can be constructive or destructive. As these words imply, only constructive feedback serves any useful purpose.

When you must give feedback on someone's work, keep these tips in mind: • Focus on the work performance, not on the person • Be objective and descriptive rather than too personal • Start by mentioning things that the person is doing well • Keep the feedback to the point • Focus feedback on two or three things that the participant might be able to change in a short period • Give feedback as soon as possible after an event • Focus feedback on something a person can do something about • Never criticize a person in front of guests or other staff • Give the person a chance to comment

Cont’d • If you are responsible for the work of others, you will be checking that they do it correctly. You may find fault with some of their work even if they perform most of their job well. If you mention only the faults, the message is that they are doing everything wrong. By mentioning what they are doing right, they will better accept some things that could improve.

• Tell people what they are doing right.

• Give feedback that is specific and descriptive.

• Focus on the behaviour that needs changing.

• Give suggestions for improvement.

• Give criticism in private.

• Provide opportunities for the person to respond.

Cont’d • Handling Criticism • When your behaviour is criticized, it is easy to take it very personally, especially if the person giving the criticism is angry, frustrated, or blaming. Constructive criticism can provide feedback that can help you improve your skills, so it is important to pay attention to the criticism you receive.

• The following tips will help you make best use of the suggestions you receive for improving your work: ➢Relax and pay attention ➢Paraphrase the criticism ➢Decide whether the criticism is fair ➢Ask for clarification ➢Ask for suggestions ➢Admit your mistakes ➢State your opinion if you disagree ➢Respond calmly ➢Share your feelings

Understand how to effectively monitor and communicate levels of customer service. LO 4

After completion of this module the learner can:4.1 Explain methods used to monitor and measure the customer experience.

4.2 Recommend approaches to improve the customer experience in a selected tourist or hospitality organisation.

Methods used to monitor and measure the customer experience

• Measures • Key performance indicators • Complaints • Retention • Perceptions • Reach and revenue • Willingness to recommend

Cont’d • Brand advocacy • Customer lifetime value • Net Promoter Score (NPS) • Polls • Badges • Ratings • Observation • Surveys • Analysis of data • Reporting cycles • Benchmarking

Customer experience (CX)

• Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buyer's journey. It results in their view of your brand and impacts factors related to your bottom line including revenue.

• Customer experience management (CXM) is the process of surveying, analyzing, and enhancing customer interactions with your business.

CXM monitors customer touch points and evaluates how you can improve the experience related to each.

Cont’d

• How to Measure Customer Experience 1.Analyze customer satisfaction survey results.

2.Identify the rate of and reasons for customer churn.

3.Ask customers for product or feature requests.

4.Analyze customer support ticket trends.

Cont’d

• Customer Experience Metrics ✓Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) ✓Net Promoter Score (NPS) ✓Customer Effort Score (CES) ✓Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) ✓Customer Churn Rate ✓Customer Retention Rate ✓Customer Journey Analytics ✓Customer Support Ticket Trends

Approaches to improve the customer experience

• Reporting structure • levels of authority • Resource implications • Business case • Learning and development • Quality improvement • Business process improvement • Software solutions • Customer support improvements

Cont’d • 1. Brief each other with guests’ pre-arrival • 2. Provide an early check-in option • 3. Ensure a seamless check-in process • 4. A smile goes a long way • 5. Make it easy for your guests to get in touch • 6. Be an insider of your local area • 7. Build partnerships with local vendors and attractions • 8. Offer personalized stays to guests • 9. Provide free and fast Wi-Fi • 10. Celebrate special occasions • 11. Track your guests’ preferences • 12. Give guests the option to refuse housekeeping – and reward them for doing so • 13. Develop strategies for resolving guest complaints in hotels

• 14. Offer clear directions around the property • 15. Seek feedback from guests

References

•

Kalacas, M. R. (2019) Service Management Principles for Hospitality and Tourism. [edition unavailable]. Society Publishing.

•

Buttle, F. and Maklan, S. (2019) Customer Relationship Management. 4th edn. Taylor and Francis. Hudson, S. and Hudson, L. (2012)

•

Customer Service in Tourism and Hospitality. [edition unavailable]. Goodfellow Publishers Ltd.

•

https://www.marketing91.com

•

Duval, D.T. (2007) Tourism and Transport: Modes, Networks and Flows.

•

Channel View Publications, Clevedon, UK.Page, S.J. (2009) Transport and Tourism: Global Perspectives, 3rd edn. PrenticeHall, Harlow, UK.

•

Dowling, R. and Weeden, C. (eds) (2017) Cruise Ship Tourism, 2nd edn. CAB International, Wallingford, UK.

•

Lück, M., Maher, P.T. and Stewart, E.J. (eds) (2010) Cruise Tourism in Polar Regions: Promoting Environmental and Social Sustainability? Earthscan, London.

•

Ocean Conservancy (2002) Cruise Control: A report on how Cruise Ships Affect Marine Environment. Available at: http://www.cruiseresearch.org/Cruise%20Control.pdf.

•

Vogel, M., Papathanassis, A. and Wolber, B. (eds) (2012) The Business and Management of Ocean Cruises. CAB International, Wallingford, UK.

•

Fostering a caring culture: Interview with Robert Palmer, 14 November 2011; Jang and Grant (2006); Baginski (2002); Fitzpatrick, P. (2001 ); Quinn, P. (2001); Welner and Briggs (2002).

•

Interview with Bruce Poon Tip, 18 November 2011; Interview with Bruce Poon Tip, 15 December 2006; Baginski, M. (2002); Anon (2005); Anon (2010)

•

Robinson, P., Lück, M. and Smith, S. (2020) Tourism. 2nd edn. CABI

•

Brotherton, B. (2015) Researching Hospitality and Tourism. 2nd edn. SAGE Publications.

•

Hudson, S. and Hudson, L. (2012) Customer Service in Tourism and Hospitality. [edition unavailable]. Goodfellow Publishers Ltd.

•

https://acasestudy.com/case-study-on-conflict-management-in-hotels/

•

https://www.academia.edu/7304864/Customer_satisfaction_and_its_measurement_in_hospitality_enterprises

•

UKEssays. November 2018. Teamwork In Hospitality Industry.

• https://studycorgi.com/management-and-leadership-in-the-hospitality-industry/ • https://opentextbc.ca/workinginfoodserviceindustry/chapter/working-as-a-part-ofa-team/ • https://www.icao.int/sustainability/pages/economic-policy.aspx • https://www.tts.com/ • Inversini, A., De Carlo, M., & Masiero, L. (2020). The effects of customer-centricity in hospitality. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 86, 102436.

References

• Shah, D., Rust, R. T., Parasuraman, A., Staelin, R., & Day, G. S. (2006). The Path to Customer Centricity. Journal of Service Research, 9(2), 113–124.

• Ulaga, W. (2018). The journey towards customer centricity and service growth in B2B: A commentary and research directions. AMS Review, 8(1), 80–83.

• Anderson, C. (2012). The Impact of Social Media on Lodging Performance. Center for Hospitality Research Publications. Retrieved from https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/chrpubs/5 • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278431919312290 • https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zjsgt39/revision/4 • Hudson, S. and Hudson, L. (2012) Customer Service in Tourism and Hospitality. [edition unavailable]. Goodfellow Publishers Ltd.

• https://opentextbc.ca/introtourism2e/chapter/reaching-the-consumer/ • https://www.c-zentrix.com/blog/6-methods-of-measuring-customersatisfaction

• https://blog.hubspot.com/service/measuring-customer-experience • https://www.c-zentrix.com/blog/6-methods-of-measuring-customersatisfaction • https://www.mews.com/en/blog/enhance-hotel-guest-experience

Cont’d

• https://acropolium.com/blog/10-ways-to-improve-customer-experience-inhospitality-industry/

• https://nscpolteksby.ac.id/ebook/files/Ebook/Hospitality/Personnel%20Manag ement%20(2007)/10.%20Chapter%209%20%20Reward%20strategies%20in%20the%20tourism%20and%20hospitality%20i ndustry.pdf • http:// www.livingwage.org.uk/

• Wood, R. C. (1997a) Working in Hotels and Catering, International Thomson Press, 2nd edition. Wood, R. C (1997b) ‘Rhetoric, reason and rationality: the national minimum wage debate and the UK hospitality industry’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 16(4), 329–344.

• Freed, B. &. (2013, March 7). HNN – Multichannel marketing strategies prove best. Retrieved October 13, 2016,

Thank You.