Identifying Service Failure In A Brisbane Cafe: A Case Study

You are required to choose a recent service failure experience you have encountered. 

You are to apply service quality and customer satisfaction theories learnt in class and analyse the service experience. You are then required to develop a service recovery strategy and customer service function that will assist in improving the customer post purchase behaviour and promote customer loyalty. 

The Worst Experience at a Brisbane Cafe

I enjoy going to different cafes as I am addicted to coffee and in love with the café culture. There are many great coffee places in Brisbane with different themes. I have my share of good and bad experiences with them. But the worst experience that I had was two weeks back at the Coffee Club. This is the second time I was visiting this place. The first time my experience over here was average and then I decided not to visit this place again as it was not that good. But, I had a meeting with a friend who selected this place. This time the experience was terrible and on certain levels horrifying. I visited the café during the morning time around 10:30 a.m. So, my friend and I decided to go for a breakfast meal. We ordered the all-day breakfast that consisted of baked tomatoes, served with bacon, toast, an egg cooked according to our preference, a glass of juice and tea or coffee. The waiter said it would take eight minutes for our order, but it took around twenty-five minutes. I would have ignored it if the café was crowded, but apart from our table, only two other tables were occupied. So, the service at this café was very slow. When our ordered arrived, I somehow did not like the way the food items looked at my plate, everything was greasy with oil and water dripping on the entire plate. The tomatoes were supposed to be baked, but they were pan-fried, I ordered a poached egg, which was well-done and with water dripping from it, the bacon was burnt instead of being charred, the juice was not sifted and the tea had a weird smell to it. My friend’s plate was having the same issue except he ordered a medium fried egg, which was burnt from the base and the sunny side had undercooked egg whites and yolks. I was flabbergasted. I called the waiter to make a complaint. When I complain about the food he called the manager. When I tried explaining the issues to the manager, he did not listen even for a minute and said that I must talk to the chef and he instantly vanished. My friend and I sat there for fifteen minutes, but nobody turned up. After another ten minutes, the manager arrived and told us that the chef who cooked our breakfast has left and the manager left without offering any apologies or replacement of our order. My friend and I were so irritated that we left for another café nearby without paying.

Issues with the Cafe Identified Through Service Failure Experience

Through this service failure experience, some of the issues with the café can be prominently identified. The café has a slow customer service, the quality of food delivered is below standard, and the café staff is indifferent towards customers and their issues. According to service marketing GAP theory, the gap that has been identified in the coffee club incident is the delivery gap. This highlights that the café has failed to provide good customer experience as the manager, waiter and the chef does not care about the customers’ needs and desires (Akroush et al., 2013). The quality of food that was served to us was very bad and showcased that it was prepared by an amateur chef. The other issue with the Coffee Club is that the whole management of this organization is working in an ad hoc manner due to the bad attitude that prevails in the management from top to bottom. The management did not even care for once to provide a replacement of dishes and furthermore, they did not even care to ask for the payment (Brewster, 2011).

The one complaint type that can be identified in this complete incident is the instrumental complaint. I wanted to complain to the waiter so he could rectify the mistake that the café has conducted. I addressed the complaint to the manager with the same objective as I wanted them to improve. But the management displayed no interest in the entire situation. The main root cause of this problem is the abrupt and indifferent behavior of the management towards the customers (Clauzel and Riche, 2015). The management does not have knowledge about customer service, customer experience and standard of service. The other root cause that has been identified is the ill-trained management from top to bottom. The manager of the café would be in his early twenties and it seemed like he was unaware of many aspects related to the café and that’s why he wanted the chef to address the issue (Chan, Hsiao and Lee, 2016).

This service quality of this incident has to be measured with the help of SERVQUAL scale that will give a score to the five dimensions that are part of the SERVQUAL measuring scale. The five dimensions of this scale are responsiveness, tangibles, reliability, assurance, and empathy.

For selecting a service recovery strategy, it is very important to examine the various processes that will enable better formulation of the service recovery program.

Complaint Type and Root Causes of the Problem

The main objective for implicating a recovery program is to identify the failures of the organization. The service failure is of four types, that includes service delivery system failures, unprompted employee, customer requests and needs and the problematic customers. For the organization Coffee Café, the main failure that occurred in the organization is the service delivery system failure. This is due to the reason, as there was a huge gap between customer expectations and the customer experience (Dimitrovski and Topalovic, 2013).

The root cause of the incident is the bad attitude of the management towards the customers and this is also due to the fact that the management is untrained and does not possess the required knowledge about customer experience and customer expectations (Ferreira, 2016). The process of service failure attribution-

In my opinion, on the complete incident, the main person responsible for such a bad service experience is the management. The management is dysfunctional and does not have the knowledge to identify and rectify their mistakes (M. Dubas, 2017).

If the Coffee Club, did not implement some changes in the organization for improving their service quality, then the chance of such incident to occur again is very high. But the situation can be controlled with effective measures.

The main problem with the organization is the lack of an effective workforce that is well-trained and possess the knowledge for handling the customers. The organization, thus, have to work on this aspect to control the situation from expanding (Namkung and Jang, 2010).

After analyzing the complete incident, the most appropriate strategy for the organization Coffee Club is the recovery strategy of restoration. There is an urgent need for the organization to work on their image that is deteriorating in the market and in the opinion of the customers. The restoration strategy of recovery focus on controlling the damage and saving the organization’s image. This strategy requires an overall examination of the organization that includes analysis of all the management process, distribution method, resource allocation, resource utilization and the root cause of all the problems. The changes that will be suggested under this strategy have to be implemented and require regular monitoring. The main focus on all these analysis will be the organization’s objectives, high quality service, and customer experience (Silber et al., 2009).

The organization Coffee Club has to implement some changes that have to be regularly evaluated at equal intervals. The organization also requires some recommendation that will further help the organization in high service delivery.

• Implementation
• The organization requires to educate the management about dealing and handling the customers and the knowledge about customer experience. This process of educating also requires proper training of the management, they have to acquire skills of managing a café and also their individual task (Wang, Deng and Ji, 2018).
• The Coffee Club is in an urgent need for some highly skilled workforce. The organization has to hire a new manager, waiters, and chefs.
• Evaluation
• The Coffee Club has to regularly evaluate their brand image in the market, to evaluate the level of improvement the organization is making (Zhang, Kim and Goodsir, 2018).
• The organization also should conduct regular surveys, involving the customers to get a genuine feedback and suggestions.
• Recommendations
• It is very important for the organization to build strong bonds with their customers. This can be done by knowing the needs and desires of the customers. The organization has to know and understand the customer in and out (Yang, 2012).
• The organization has to conduct a regular assessment of their services. It is also very important for the organization to regularly perform an assessment on the management and the employees.

Conclusion:

The incident displayed a service failure in the organization Coffee Club. This is due to the reason that bad quality service. In today’s competitive world, there is a huge competition in every industry. The organization has to improve themselves to survive in the market. An organization has an image in the market, whether good or bad, is due to the services they provide to the customers. An organization that improves its mistake with time, gets more appreciation in the market. The organization Coffee Club should implement the restoration strategy and along with the various tactics and recommendations proposed in the report, for building a newer, stronger and better image in the market.

References:

Akroush, M., Abu?ElSamen, A., Samawi, G. and Odetallah, A. (2013). Internal marketing and service quality in restaurants. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 31(4), pp.304-336.

Brewster, Z. (2011). Racialized Customer Service in Restaurants: A Quantitative Assessment of the Statistical Discrimination Explanatory Framework*. Sociological Inquiry, 82(1), pp.3-28.

Chan, G., Hsiao, A. and Lee, A. (2016). Exploration of Customer Compliant Behavior toward Asain Full-Service Restaurants. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 8(2), p.46.

Clauzel, A. and Riche, C. (2015). Rencontre de service et role de la distance sociospatiale : le cas des restaurants. Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 30(2), pp.4-29.

Dimitrovski, D. and Topalovic, S. (2013). Inquiry about key dimensions of service qualities and guests satisfaction in restaurants. Marketing, 44(3), pp.221-230.

Ferreira, J. (2016). Café nation? Exploring the growth of the UK café industry. Area, 49(1), pp.69-76.

Dubas, K. (2017). An exploratory analysis of quick service restaurants using tidyverse tools in R. Innovative Marketing, 13(2), pp.23-40.

Namkung, Y. and Jang, S. (2010). Effects of perceived service fairness on emotions, and behavioral intentions in restaurants. European Journal of Marketing, 44(9/10), pp.1233-1259.

Silber, I., Israeli, A., Bustin, A. and Zvi, O. (2009). Recovery Strategies for Service Failures: The Case of Restaurants. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 18(7), pp.730-740.

Wang, Y., Deng, Q. and Ji, S. (2018). Understanding Café Culture: Toward a Dynamic and Holistic Research Framework. Journal of Global Marketing, 1(1), pp.1-12.

Yang, M. (2012). The Construction of IC Service and University Library’s Café. Advanced Materials Research, 452-453(3), pp.872-875.

Zhang, M., Kim, P. and Goodsir, W. (2018). Effects of service experience attributes on customer attitudes and behaviours: the case of New Zealand café industry. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 1(1), pp.1-23.