Excellence in Customer Service

The staff members of every hospitality and tourism organization are its most important resource. How their work is managed (facilitated) directly impacts the success or failure of the organization. The basic management process is the same in almost any type of organization, and it consists of six basic functions that relate to all resources, including staff members. These functions are listed in Figure which also provides an example of human resources responsibilities applicable to each function.

Customer relationship marketing

The appreciation of relationship marketing is in building and retaining long-standing relationships with customers, which has a huge impression for various organizations in the West. In any case, because of standards and ethnic modifications, the same term cannot be applied in the local context. This study is mainly drawn from the data collected through an online survey at five star hotels in the city of Bangalore. The purpose of this research is to draw the hoteliers’ attention about relationship marketing and propose the use of this term for the existing strategies currently used in hotels. The extensive literature review related to strategies practiced in the hotel industry supports the mapping of strategies into one distinguished term: Relationship Marketing. The primary aim of the study is to develop a framework based on literature for hoteliers to implement and practice the new term in the hotel industry. The study ends with a blueprint as well as recommendations in using the new term to enhance customer relationship and loyalty. The proposed of this attempts to investigate the relationship of employees’ branding, employees’ behaviors and service quality. There has been a considerable improvement in the service delivery system of the hotel industry and the concept of CRM has taken a new dimension and is gaining momentum in this sector. The present study on CRM concludes that almost all the owners/managers of the selected hotels in Ludhiana were aware about the CRM concept and are practicing it in their respective hotels. However, high/medium tariff hotels are practicing it at a greater extent and low tariff hotels are practicing it according to their convenience. The companies are undertaking various activities for acquiring customers, for customer development through personalization and customization, and for customer retention. Further, CRM practices help the hoteliers to increase customer satisfaction, win customer loyalty and retain the customers which results in increased market share and high profitability. Relationship marketing is a topic that extensively deals with customer loyalty. By satisfying customers, it is the aim of relationship marketing to make customers loyal to buy further products from the company and recommend others to do the same. It is an essential marketing strategy that has to be used in tandem with almost all products and services today for the parent company to remain successful. Relationship marketing is one of the areas with the most expression in the field of marketing, recognized not only by academics but also by practitioners. Its application in the business world is ever more visible. It is not only the multiple direct marketing configurations that are being increasingly utilized and which enter the field (not being restricted to physical mail) as mobile marketing; rather, it is also the individualization of products, it is the increasing use of services, it is loyalty programs, and in fact it is the multiple channels of interaction with the customer. The present work is an open book of information for newcomers in the hotel sector. This study is an auxiliary information tool to consider as one of the elements for service delivery in the hotel sector. This study concept can be applied in other industries by adding the common secondary terms used in that particular industry.

Service communications

Communication may be defined as the activity aiming to constitute an arrangement to convey information as one of the fundamental pillars of social life and organizational structure as well as the activity of forming relationships between organizations and groups. A healthy communication is needed for people to know and understand each other better, to create better functioning organizations and to resolve problems easier (Sabuncuoglu & Tüz, 2001; Ruck & Welch, 2012). If an adequate importance is not placed on communication problems in an organization, it may not be possible, for example, for people to have better relationships within that organization. Communication has various definitions and descriptions in the literature. Writers have suggested that communication is the activity of exchanging messages or thoughts through speaking, pointing or writing; on reciprocal terms, however, they define it as a message exchange process and they suggest that communication event happens when messages have been completely conveyed. Communication has also been defined as the process of conveying a message containing information from a source to a recipient and has been indicated to be a term expressing the exchange of feelings and thoughts between people. Human factor comes forth as the most important factor for the organizations in hospitality sector due to its labor-intensive quality. Communication is considered as an important factor in tourism establishments and especially in accommodation establishments where human factor is significantly important for the constancy and regularity of the activity of workers as well as sustainability and efficiency of organizations. An accommodation establishment which does not use communication channels properly may not be able to conduct operations regularly and correctly as well, since this specific sector provides services for human beings by human beings as a labor-intensive sector. Human beings who are positively or negatively affected by any behavior, spoken word and attitude make their decisions as a result of these interactions. And communication is one of the fundamental characteristics differentiating human beings from all other living creatures (Sener, 2001; Öztürk & Seyhan, 2005).

Demand and capacity management

Capacity management is an essential responsibility of the operations function. The objective is to match the level of capacity to the level of demand both in terms of quantity (how much) and capability (the skill mix to meet the product/service specification(Hill, 2000, p. 184). The increasing competition in the hotel market is a great challenge for hotel managers. Hoteliers are forced to respond, because simply selling landscape, nature or comfortable hotel beds is no longer sufficient. Hotels thus need to adopt appropriate strategies in order to succeed. Several strategies are used by hoteliers to ensure the survival and growth of their hotels through profitability in this competitive era. One of such strategies is capacity management. Capacity management is the ability to balance demand from customers and the ability of the service delivery system to satisfy that demand (Armistead & Clark, 1994). Demand for hotel rooms, hence, fluctuates annually, weekly, and daily posing difficulties in predicting demand. Consequently, when dealing with the issue of fixed capacity, a balance between occupancy rate and average room rate must be achieved in order to achieve optimal revenue. The focus must not only be on high occupancy rates, attention must also be paid to the revenue that is generated. Selling too many rooms at a low rate may not be a good solution (Inkpen, 1998).

Performance measurement

• An ideal performance management system is one that energizes the people in an organization to focus effort on
• Improving things that really matter
• One that gives people the information and freedom that they need to realize
• Their potential within their own roles and that aligns their contribution with the success of the enterprise.

Conclusion

There is no pretence that striving for service excellence is easy, but it is possible to excel as many small and large enterprises have shown to be the case. However, it is a longer term journey, one fuelled by passion and commitment, a structured approach, engaged employees and total customer focus. The principles described here are readily applicable in any business and should help to revise and enhance the existing approach of Identifying service management excellence.