Hospitality Service Experiences Reflections
Service Experience Paper / Journals
Ya Gao
Temple University: THM 5311
December 2015
There are plenty of methods for firms to create a satisfied service experience. The service experience is the most direct way to show how the manager’s policy works. A pleasant service experience contributes to the forming of the long-term customers while an unpleasant one may lead to a dozen of clients.
Through personal experience, rational observation and critical thinking, three themes will be discussed, which can have a large impact on improving service experience. First, it is important for firms to adopt the Service Profit Chain framework in order to help the managers understand the important status of customer centric. By putting this framework, managers can better know how to create a pleasant service experience and furthermore, to provide an exceptional one. Then, the recruitment and the employee fit is another essential question. Customer’s feeling about the service experience is directly related to the employees on the front lines. An employee who can well fit in the relevant culture and can solve the customer’s issue flexibility can be crucial to the service experience. Lastly, we are going to discuss the service failure and the recovery. There is rare perfect service management, so the failure may occur. The service recovery can now be important to make up for the lost and even turn it into a pleasant one. The three themes will be examined through a series of service encounters.
Top managers of the top-level service organizations will put the customer in the first place rather than the market share. Those successful executives of service management pay much more attention at the investment in people and adopt the customer centric (James et al, 1994). People have found the great merits in this policy. Customer centricity is related to the process of dual value creation, the customer and the firm. It is not telling you how to sell products but to create the value for both sides (Boulding et al, 2005). The Service Profit Chain framework lies in creating loyal customer. Customers might feel pleased if their expectations and demands are meted but it is harder to turn it into loyal. By giving customers the value they want or even they do not expect can make it an exceptional service experience and contributes to the transformation of loyal customer. Take an example, Diamond Green Grocery provides some pleasant service. But they seem to like stay in their comfort zone about treating customers. Giving that they can provide high quality of American and Chinese food, if they can treat all the customers in the same way, it will likely gain more loyal customers. Diamond Green Grocery has the most favorable term that it does not lack customers. Since they also offer good foods, taking the Service Profit Chain framework into account may help it expand to a much more successful business. It also fit for the big firm. The Service Profit Chain help managers to develop service satisfaction levels to maximum their customer’s loyalty and to beat their merely good competitors by the exceptional service (James et al, 1994).
Another important question is about the recruitment and employee fit. The employees on the front lines can be essential to the success of the management. The service can also be seemed as a product, a product intangible. And the seller of this product is put the employees on the front lines. There are always interpersonal interaction between the customers and the employees. Given that, service becomes tangible as service provider’s appearance, voice, expression, attitudes and behaviors, which mean that the service provider has become part of the product (Bitner, 1990). That is why the firms should be more serious about the recruitment. Furthermore, the employee fit can be also important during the process of recruitment. Because the main outputs of tourism and hospitality organizations is services, which is mostly driven by the human resource (Salih et al, 2010), if the employee who directly face the customer fit well in the relevant environment, it means there is already the fundament of the successful service. The employees, themselves, represent the service organization. So how these employees are managed and how their behaviors, attitudes and expressions become the key of the service quality and customer satisfaction that can help the forming of loyal customer in long term (Bitner, Booms, and Tetrault 1990; Nickson et al. 2002; Schneider 2003). Take the note of the service experience in SEPTA, Philadelphia public transport system. The poor attitude and the impatience can really leave a very bad impression to the customers after such an awful service experience. Although it does not have any competitors but it will surely have a bad impact on the firm reputation. Especially when people are out travelling, they will need to purchase various services. One of the most important is traffic. A bad service can destroy a wonderful trip, let alone a good time on the transportation. Another example is the service experience in the Hertz Car Rental firm. Employee’s overselling can really influence a good service experience. Since the importance of the employee, firm should recruit employees carefully and training them from all dimension. This will help employees to gain their empowerment so they can deal with the customer issue better and more flexible.