Introduction
The primary objective of any business organisation is to maximise on its profits and maintain a sustainable market. To achieve this primary objective, a number of factors have to be well considered for implementation among which include the extension of quality services into sectors such as marketing and customer service (Westcott, 2003). In a service oriented business, customers’ satisfaction is a key factor to the well being of the business. Customers have their expectations of the services offered by the particular organisation. Organisations should understand the current and the future needs of their customers and try to exceed their expectations (Reardon, 2004). Customer requirements must be met to ensure that both the internal and external customers are satisfied (Moore, 1995). The management of any organisation is usually charged with the responsibly to employ various measures that will help it determine if its customers are satisfied or not.
Sometimes, the organisation may listen to customers’ complaints but address them in unsystematic ways. Due to irregularities and unsystematic ways of addressing customers’ complaints, the gap created can lead to the eventual fallout between the organisation and its customers. It is important, therefore, for any organisation to get a means of addressing such a gap. Any company must define a means of addressing complaints generated by its customers in one of its business processes. There is also a need for organisations to continually re-examine their business processes and designs so that any existing or upcoming loopholes regarding customer dissatisfaction may be identified and modified forthwith. Organisations must then draw proper guidelines to look in to how customers’ dissatisfaction may be addressed. A team of well trained employees must be appointed to deal with customers’ complaints as per the guidelines set by their particular organisations.
Work may not be always well done as expected at some point in the history of an organisation, hence, the need for companies to always engage service recovery programs. With a service recovery program, customer complaints may be identified and addressed (Baker, 1992). A well implemented service recovery report may ensure that an organisation is sustainable in the market and able to retain its customers. The purpose of this study is to generate a service report recovery. A look at a service organisation’s overview, front stage functions, backstage functions, moments of truth, determinants of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and the summary report’s strategic plan is meant to bring to light the objective of this study.
A service organisation’s overview
Kenton Hotel & Resort is a chain of hotels based in Australia but with key business interests in East Africa. Most of the guests of Kenton Hotel & Resort visit its East Africa’s outlets. Most of the customers of Kenton Hotel & Resort are mainly comprised of tourists from Europe, Asia and America. The hotel offers luxurious services to its guests. Kenton Hotel & Resort Kenya and Kenton Hotel & Resort Tanzania are situated in the coastal regions of Kenya and Tanzania. The two branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort are in the 5 Star categories. Kenton Hotel & Resort Highlands is situated in the highland regions of East Africa. This hotel is in a 4 Star category. Kenton Hotel & Resort Riftvalley is situated in the Rift Valley of East Africa. It is in a 3 Star category.
Front stage functions
In all the braches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, there are waiting areas and reception desks. All the guests of the hotel are received in these areas and also these are the points where they wait for clearance during booking and after booking. In all the braches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, the dress code is the same for its entire staff who work in the two mentioned areas. The staff in the waiting areas and reception desks in all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort put on red suits with white tops. In the 5 Star branches of the hotel, there are usually 3 members of staff at any given time and work on duty schedules.
In the 5 and 4 Star branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, there are conference rooms. Each of the conference rooms is fully equipped with the state of the art audio and visual equipments. At any given time, there are always technical personnel on standby that assist in the installation of any needed equipment and to address any eventualities that may arise. The conference rooms are designed in different sizes to cater for different numbers of guests. Various organisations hire these conference rooms during their workshops and seminars.
The company has invested heavily in the restaurants in all its branches. The restaurants are furnished with high quality furniture. In all the corners of the restaurants, giant television screens have been mounted. Numerous waiters are always on standby to serve the streaming guests. Their dress code is made up of green suits with white tops. In the 5 and 4 Star branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, over 30 types of sumptuous delicacies may be served to the hotel’s guests. In the 3 Star branches of the hotel chain, only 10 different types of delicacies may be served. In the bars of Kenton Hotel & Resort, all type of whiskies, wines, and beers can be sold in the 5 and 4 Star categories of its branches. In the 3 Star categories of the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, only a few brands of whiskies and beers may be sold. They do not sell wines in the 3 Star categories of the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort. The setup of the bars of Kenton Hotel & Resort is more or less like the one in its restaurants only that the staff working in its bars put on navy blue suits with white tops.
The bars operate 24 hours. The Kenton Hotel & Resort hotel chain has invested on different recreation activities. The recreation facilities are offered to guests at designated fees. Fully serviced gyms with state of the art gym equipments are available in the 5 Star categories of the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort. Qualified trainers are employed to help guests during the gym sessions. The recreational facilities in all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort operate only during the day from 6.00 am to 6.00pm. Accommodation is offered to guests in all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort regardless of the categories. The rooms in the 5 Star categories of the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort are better equipped and quite luxurious as compared to the other categories of the hotel chain. Large parking areas are available in all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort. Qualified and armed security personnel manage the parking bays. All staff vehicles and guests’ vehicles are parked in the parking areas.
Back stage functions
In all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort, there are kitchens which are headed by senior chefs. The chefs usually have several assistants. All the preparation of food and the cleaning of utensils take place in the kitchens. The kitchens are well organised to cater for their activities like areas used for food preparation, cooking and washing of utensils. There are administration offices in all the branches of Kenton Hotel & Resort.This is where all administration and management issues are handled and addressed. In most of these offices, there are computers, faxes, telephones and other equipments that aid in the smooth flow of work.
Moments of truth
Kenton Hotel & Resort is a brand name used in all its hotel chain. Recently, the management decided to do a major international campaign that will market and advertise its organisation worldwide. The organisation’s website was restructured and modified.Classic brochures and newsletters were prepared and sent to its agents abroad and locally. Unfortunately, some crucial information was omitted in the website, brochures and newsletters. No one remembered to indicate that Kenton Hotel & Resort Highlands and Kenton Hotel & Resort Rift valley are 4 Star and 3 Star hotels respectively. The campaign was quite successful. The management had put everything in place including financial resources to cater for the expected peak season. One of the agents in Asia managed to book over 300 tourists for a one month’s stay in Kenton Hotel & Resort Highlands and Kenton Hotel & Resort Rift valley. The rates were affordable to guests and they were eagerly waiting to travel to Africa.
On arrival at their expected destinations in the hotel’s branches in East Africa, there was total a disappointment for the tourists. This was as a result of the omission to indicate the categories of each of the hotels. The tourists who had booked for Kenton Hotel & Resort Rift valley found that the hotel did not even have accommodation rooms. Those tourists that had booked for Kenton Hotel & Resort Highlands were unhappy with the services. Though the services were not bad, they were not up to their expectations. All through, they had expected luxurious 5 Star services. There was a lot of confusion as most of the tourists indicated that they had been conned. Some invited the press who aired the story and their plight in national televisions.
Determinants of satisfaction and dissatisfaction
Customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in regard to service quality may be influenced by several factors. When a customer is satisfied or dissatisfied with the quality of service offered, he or she can always give negative or positive reports orally to someone else depending on the customer’s perception of the kind of service accorded to him or her by a given company. This a form direct marketing where there is personal presentation of goods and services (Belch & Belch 2006). The word of mouth should not be underrated as a factor of communication regarding service quality delivery of a certain company. It can do a lot of good if the customer is happy because it acts as a marketing tool. It can also do a lot of harm if the customer is unhappy because it will create a negative image of the organisation.
The other determinant factor of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction is the personal needs of a customer. A tourist going on holiday with the entire family will not have the same needs with the one going on holiday alone.
Lastly, the past experience of customer in regard to the service quality is also a factor that determines if the customer was satisfied or not. If prior experiences of a customer in regard to service quality were good, then he or she will always want to have it again and again. The idea that each organisation has some functional area in which it excels means that the business should focus on opportunities in that area (Lum, 2011). Customers can be satisfied if the employees who served them in the organisation are competent. In a hotel gym facility, an incompetent employee may mishandle some of the equipments in the gym and end up causing injury to a given customer. Security is a concern to everybody. Guests in a hotel may be satisfied if all the security issues and concerns are well addressed by the management. Customers also may want to confirm the existence of the service offered. When customers get tangible evidence to prove that the service offered is really available, they may be satisfied.
Customers always become dissatisfied in improper communication arising from any changes in the system. An example is when meals may not be served on time in a hotel due to unavoidable circumstances. Customers’ needs should be addressed in a language that they understand. Customers are again unhappy if the organisation is unreliable and may not be able to deliver the promised services. When customers’ needs are taken care of and the staff is readily available to assist the customers, the customers end up satisfied with the quality of services.
Service-recovery strategy plan
A strategic plan is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet the current and future aspirations of a given organisation (Kotter, 1980). A strategic plan should be seen as laying out the general path rather than precise steps (Popp & Meyer, 2010 ). In Kenton Hotel & Resort chain of hotels, several gaps may exist and a service recovery strategy may be required to steer normalcy into the operations of the hotel chain.
Gap 1: A gap between the management’s perception of customer expectations
The hotel’s management assumed that everybody knew that its hotel chains are of different categories. They had not done adequate market research to know how well the consumers knew them. It is important then that Kenton Hotel & Resort streamlines upward communication which is communication between the management and staff. The relationship between the staff and the management should be strengthened. Employees are the company’s representatives and in most cases, they are the ones in contact with the customers.
Gap 2: A gap between the management’s perception of customer expectations and the standards of services
Kenton Hotel & Resort chain of hotels experienced this type of gap. There seemed to be no clear standards in regard to the services offered. If there had been any, they could have been indicated in the brochures and newsletters and again, they could also have been featured in the company’s website. There seemed to have been inadequate leadership skills. This is quite evident especially when there was confusion and the customers felt that they had been conned and even invited the press (Boyden 1984). If leadership skills had existed, the management would have been at the forefront in identifying the cause of the confusion and would have addressed it before it got out of hand.
The top managers of Kenton Hotel & Resort chain of hotels should be retrained on leadership and management skills. Poor service delivery was also evident in Kenton Hotel & Resort. By the time the bookings were done for the guests, at least someone should have identified that the tourists had been booked into a 3 Star hotel and that the number of tourists booked was more than the hotel could accommodate. In future, measures should be put in place to help the organisation, for instance, as regards the number of accommodation slots available at any given time like an online computer system to manage accommodation. The company’s web site should be structured in a model that works by offering basic web services, or a basic downloadable digital product (Hamel& Prahalad, 1990).
Gap 3: The gap between the standard of service and service delivery
If a given organisation has set standards to sell high quality fruits to its customers and the suppliers end up supplying low quality fruits, then a gap may be created between the standards of service and service delivery. In another example, the hotel may set a standard of service to indicate that all the accommodation rooms have hot water for bathing. On several occasions, the company may have experienced prolonged power black outs and hot water may not have been available. A gap may be created between the standard of service and service delivery. It is important to make sure that all business processes complement each other (Popp & Meyer, 2010). As a remedy, Kenton Hotel & Resort chain of hotels should restructure the human resource department and equip it in such way that it has the capacity to recruit the right employees. Over-reliance on any particular strategic approach can be dangerous (Argyris, 1957). Some delicate services should have alternatives, for instance, a backup power unit should be installed to serve as an alternative power source in case of power blackouts.
Gap 4: A gap between service delivery and external communication to customers
Employees who are the company’s representatives may make too many promises to customers hence make promises that they cannot fulfill.This leads to over expectation by consumers in the organisation. In such a scenario, the company should device a measure of effectively managing consumers’ expectations. The company should have ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing environments (Clark, 1976). A public relations department is ideal to handle this type of gap. It can address the issues of organisational publicity so as to ensure that only the positive image of the organisation is portrayed to the public. It may also manage public relations so to ensure that consumers get the correct information about the organisation and its services. Staff training should also be done to ensure that workers are familiar with all the services the organisation offers. Additionally, the organisation administrative structure should be well defined. Systematic review and analysis of the business model and processes should be adequate (Armstrong, 1987). This may ensure smooth flow of work and communication.
Gap 5: Gap between expected service and perceived service
Customers usually have their expectations towards a certain service delivery. Organisations too may have set standards for the services they provide. Due to poor structures in the organisation, the organisations may perceive that the services they offer are what have been set in their standards.
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