Quality management
Dimensions of Customer Satisfaction
Starwood Hotels and Resorts employed the Six Sigma model to measure its performance and offer quality services to its clients. It had all the necessary inputs to ensure customers got what they wanted.
However, it was unable to define or classify them and this means that customers were sometimes unable to get what they wanted yet the company had the potential of providing all the customer requirements.
Therefore, the first stage involved defining or identifying the problem that customers were experiencing. This company managed to do this by introducing phones that contained the information about the services that clients wanted (Goldratt and Cox 2010).
Guests were required to dial the numbers stored on the phones and hotel attendants would be on their doorsteps to serve them. The numbers were coded to represent various services. Secondly, the introduction of call logs enabled the company to track the efficiency of employees that handled specific tasks.
The third stage involved the use of Pareto charts to analyze what employees could do within 15 minutes after receiving calls from clients. The fourth stage involved the introduction of improvement strategies that ensured clients got quality services from the company.
This included improving how telephone operators handled requests from customers. In addition, it involved procedures that were used to determine the person to call when a client requests the services of this hotel (Krajewski, Ritzman and Malhotra 2012).
Moreover, this organization faced serious challenges like engineering workloads, but it ensured that qualified people were assigned different roles in the control room to check technical issues that may affect communication between clients and employees.
Lastly, it was necessary to establish effective ways of controlling and measuring the performance of the telephone system. This ensured that this service produced the expected results within the specified time.
The services were monitored for 12-18 months and the managers were supposed to be given monthly reports to ensure the Sheraton Service Promise program improved the quality of services offered by this company.
Costs of Process Performance and Quality
The costs included service delivery, time, quality and products. There was the need for the new program to facilitate coordination among these aspects to help the company to achieve its targets.
This was important in helping the company to offer its services properly and eliminate the chances of being unable to supply products that were available due to poor communication systems (Krajewski et al., 2012). Secondly, the company saved time because clients were introduced to mobile phones and how to use them to request for room services.
The use of phones ensured that clients got what they wanted because these gadgets offered a list of the services and products offered by the company. Customers did not waste time deciding where to get what they wanted. They were very happy that they could get the services of this company without struggling to ask or wait for long before being assisted.
The Six Sigma Model
The Six Sigma model is an efficient tool of measuring performance in an organization. However, it has various disadvantages that make it unsuitable in the hospitality industry. First, this model requires a company to define key factors that are necessary for problem resolution (Krajewski et al., 2012).
This creates ambiguity and does not place the company in a good position to know its problems. Therefore, it becomes difficult for a hotel to know its challenges because this process does not limit a manager’s scope of defining the speed and efficiency of employees and services offered (Sherwood and Barnsteiner 2012).
Secondly, the measures used to determine the efficiency of workers and services are abstract. There is no guarantee that short call durations mean that employees offer efficient services. The use of Pareto charts is an effective way of measuring performance; however, it falls short of defining the meaning of a reasonable time employees are supposed to use to serve their clients.
Lastly, the time taken to measure the performance of a service is very long and this creates room for other inefficiencies that affect productivity (Krajewski et al., 2012). This model requires employees to submit responses to their managers or heads of departments, but the duration required to do this is too long.
There is the need for hotel changes to produce immediate results because this is a delicate industry. In addition, this will limit the chances of creating room for customers to be fed up with inefficiencies because it enables employees to make immediate changes to their products or services.
Case Study
Implementing the Six Sigma Model in Starwood
It is not easy to implement the Six Sigma program to improve and track the performance of employees and services offered in the hotel industry. This program required Sheraton hotel to employ the Top-Down Commitment model that required all employees to work together to improve the performance of this company.
The hotel developed the Black Belts team to ensure it supervises the roles played by managers and subordinates to improve its efficiency. The measurement systems used to track progress involved giving clients research questionnaires (Guest Satisfaction Survey) to express their views regarding the services offered by the hotel.
In addition, the Sheraton Service Promise program was established to help guests to report any problem regarding the quality of services offered by the hotel. The management had set high goals to compel employees to work hard to promote the image of this company.
This was not an effective way of improving performance because it sets unrealistic goals for workers (Sherwood and Barnsteiner 2012). Education was an effective way of promoting performance because it enabled workers to acquire new knowledge and skills on how to do their jobs.
Lastly, customers may be stubborn and thus affect the attitudes of employees. This hotel managed to establish ways of knowing how customers and employees treat each other.
It is necessary to explain that this was an indispensable aspect that helped the management to know how to train its employees (Goldratt and Cox 2010).
The New Sheraton Service Promise Process
Prevention of poor process performance is a key aspect in all organizations. The new Sheraton Service Promise process enabled employees to predict the possibility of service failure and inform the management. Early preparation enables organizations to prepare to solve problems before they escalate to unmanageable levels (Krajewski et al., 2012).
In addition, employee and service assessment were successful because the new process forced workers to be transparent and accountable. Internal failure was managed by developing a team that was responsible for periodic assessment and evaluation of the new program (Goldratt and Cox 2010).
This process ensured appropriate measures were taken to solve problems in good time. Lastly, the possibilities of external failures to affect this company were minimized.
The questionnaires used to evaluate the response of guests regarding the quality of services offered; therefore, they helped it to train workers and improve its services (Sherwood and Barnsteiner 2012).
Alternative Strategies
Most organizations and individuals do not know the existence of the Six Sigma model of measuring performance. Moreover, most of them do not pay attention to theories and this makes them reluctant to use performance models.
In addition, they are usually not ready and comfortable to use information from their clients to measure the performance of their employees (Krajewski et al., 2012).
Lastly, they need quality assessment procedures that produce immediate results; therefore, this discourages them from using the Six Sigma model. Starwood Hotels and Resorts can use performance appraisal, market penetration and the value of its shares in the stock market to measure the quality of its services.
References
Goldratt, E. M. and Cox, J. (2010). The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. New York: Wiley.
Krajewski, L. J., Ritzman, L. P. and Malhotra, M. K. (2012). Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Sherwood, G. and Barnsteiner. (2012). Quality and Safety in Nursing: A Competency Approach to Improving Outcomes. New York: McGraw-Hill.