Essay: Service Quality Dimensions And Management Strategies For Craig Credence Hotel.

Service Quality Dimensions and SERVQUAL Model

Discuss about the Service Management Strategies for Craig Credence Hotel.

In the competitive climate, customer service is an essential element for the hotel. Hence, the service quality dimension should be used by Craig Credence Hotel to get success in the hospitality industry. Furthermore, hotel managers should have good knowledge regarding the needs and preference of customers as it may lead to provide effective customer services. This report evaluates the key service quality dimensions that are used in Craig Credence Hotel. It also addresses and determines existing service management strategies of Craig Credence Hotel. This report also recommends modified and new service management strategies that may improve the customer service and experience towards Craig Credence Hotel. 

In certain research, service quality is defined as the degree to which the service meets the need and expectation of the customers. It is the overall impression of customers that contains both weakness and excellence of services. But, the service quality is referred to as ‘what the customer gets out and is keen to pay for’ as compared to ‘what the suppliers put in’. Hence, service quality is demonstrated as the gap between the projected services and actual perceived services (Erdem and Jiang, 2016).  According to Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry, there are five dimensions of customer services that are used to evaluate the service quality. It is assessed by the SERVQUAL model. Hence, Craig Credence Hotel should focus on these dimensions in an appropriate manner as it would be beneficial to create loyalty among customers due to receiving excellent services.

These SERVQUAL dimensions are discussed as below:

TANGIBLES- this dimension contains the appearance of physical services, personnel, communication material and equipment. Some of the customers have shared their feedback that the rooms are a bit aged, but the location and the service make up for it. Moreover, “face-lift” to the lobby and reception area was amazing. Therefore, on the reliability dimension of service quality, Craig Credence Hotel scored low and was not positively succeed. 

RELIABILITY- This dimension incorporates the ability to perform the promised service accurately and dependable. Some of customers have responded that “Not impressed with the room. It was too minimalist and lacked warmth. This may decline the reliability of hotel. Some customers responded that Craig Credence Hotel offers added extras like free coffee in the morning that may create reliability among customers. But, insufficient gatekeeper declines its reliability.      

Evaluation of Service Quality Dimensions at Craig Credence Hotel

RESPONSIVENESS- this dimension shows the willingness of employees to help the customers and offer prompt services (Rahimi and Kozak, 2017). The Craig Credence Hotel got moderate score in this dimension because one of customer has responded that only select staff members were accommodating and most seemed to not know what they were doing. Some customers have responded that while some members of the staff were polite, most had a bad attitude. Hence, there is needed to make modification in their strategy.       

ASSURANCE-This dimension depicts the understanding and courtesy of workforces and their competency to convey trust with confidence. Service providers are projected to be experts of service they are delivering. Some of customers have said that “the main reason of selecting this hotel was its location. Upon arrival, room was not even ready at 3.00pm when it was ‘guaranteed’ and we requested an early check in. They came up with every excuse in the book as to why the room wasn't ready and why they couldn't give us a different one. It was our anniversary and everywhere we had been had congratulated us and even given us a bottle of champagne. They could not care less here. At the price we were paying, I would have expected more. In this dimension, Craig Credence Hotel got minimum score due to not offering services as expected. 

EMPATHY- This dimension shows the caring and individualized attention that the company should provide to its customer. Service should be delivered completely to specification (Dzhandzhugazova, Zaitseva, Larionova, Petrovskaya, and Chaplyuk, 2015). Some of customers have responded that “Our rooms were reasonably clean at time of check-in, but after a few days, we found the cleaning service was rather shoddy. On one occasion, the lady who "cleaned" our room just changed the towels, refilled the teas/cutlery but did not touch the rest of the room. In addition, not all cleaners were qualified nor trained which shows Craig Credence Hotel has scored moderate score in this dimension. 

Considering the feedback gathered through the employees of Craig Credence Hotel, it can be concluded that there are many service strategies made by management of Craig Credence Hotel but it was not supportive for them. This could create many issues in terms of retaining the customer. These strategies are customer-centric approach, tangible approach, appearance, and action of employee’s strategy, motivational approach, effective leadership style, and service design. Some of employees gave feedback that “Management had made it easy for us to communicate with hotel guests with some simple scripting and situations when we had to ‘think on our feet’. I wish there is update on this so that we as employees are given more leeway conversation-wise to make us look and sound less robotic.” Craig Credence Hotel made the customer-centric approach that is used to attracting a large number of consumers and the accomplishment of the desired goal. Customer centricity is a strategy to do the business that concentrates on offering an optimistic word of mouth (Kimes and Wirtz, 2015). It supports to decline all friction between consumers and employees. Craig Credence Hotel offers free morning coffee to their consumers that enable to make a positive relationship with them. But at the same time, it is analysed negative attitude of a staff member could decline the satisfaction level of consumers. From the survey of customers, it is analysed that staff members do not give preference to their consumers as it makes a negative image of firm among consumer’s mind.  

Existing Service Management Strategies at Craig Credence Hotel

Another strategy is a tangible approach as it used by Craig Credence Hotel to attract a huge amount of the consumers. Through this approach, the organization has offered a convenient location to their customer for consuming the goods and services of the firm (Lu, Capezio, Restubog, Garcia, and Wang, 2016).  The location and cleanness of hotel attract consumers for using their services. But at the same time, it is also evaluated that there is lack of power-points to plug and lacked warmth as it declines the satisfaction level of consumers towards services of the organization.

Appearance and action of employee’s strategy could enable the employees for performing an appropriate behaviour at the working place. It could lead an employee to make a real relationship with their consumers (Fraj, Matute, and Melero, 2015).  In addition, it is analysed that employees could also be responsible for managing all the issues of the customers and treat as the family members. There are many responsibilities that are performed by the employees like displaying courteous behaviour, information sharing, being uncommonly attentive, and personalization of services process and output. But at the same time, it is observed by the customer’s feedback that employee performs an inappropriate behaviour to their consumers. It could make a negative image of the Craig Credence Hotel in the consumer’s mind. The employee has a lack of empathy that could also dissatisfy the consumers as it would negatively influence the financial condition of the firm. 

The motivational approach is used to increase the morale of the employee. It could also be effective for increasing the productivity of the organization as well as an employee in the least time (Molina-Azorín, Tarí, Pereira-Moliner, López-Gamero, and Pertusa-Ortega, 2015).  Through this method, Craig Credence Hotel understand intrinsic and extrinsic factor and increase the interest of the employee in their allocated work by satisfying their needs. But, at the same time, it is also observed by the employee survey that organization pressurize to do more than eight hours with lower compensation, which could create stress among employees. Further, it could demotivate the employee towards their work as it would directly impact on their productivity.                

Organization practices effective leadership style for their employee to relation them for the long term. Bureaucratic leadership is used by Craig Credence Hotel as it enables the subordinates to follow the instruction of the top management without any argument (Xie, Zhang, and Zhang, 2014).  This leadership prevent to the use of creativity and motivation level, which could negatively impact on employee’s performance. It is also observed that this leadership style could create conflict among the employees, which would influence the overall productivity of the firm. It is analysed that there is lack of coordination among the different department that could negatively impact on the customer’s satisfaction level by decline quality of goods and services.   

Recommendations for Modified and New Service Management Strategies

Craig Credence Hotel has used the services design strategy for attracting a large number of consumers towards the products and services of the firm. It is used to provide the positive experience to their consumers (Assaf, Josiassen, Cvelbar, and Woo, 2015). But, it is analysed that employees of Craig Credence Hotel are failed to deliver the quality and timely services to their consumers caused by lack of teamwork and coordination skills. It could negatively impact on the productivity of the organization. 

The result of the study suggests that Craig Credence Hotel should focus on effective service management strategies and needs to modify in their existing strategies.  

It should also make modification in style, design as well as technology in order to repeat their guest for staying and persuading them to write a positive review. It should also modify in the front office and make it attractive because the first impression may catch the attention of customers for staying long period (Arenoe, van der Rest, and Kattuman, 2015).   

In Craig Credence Hotel, Manager should make direct communication with their employees to lead them in delivering the quality services. In this way, talking of employees should entail the specific words and terms to communicate with their guests as it would satisfy them to a higher extent. Since, lack of communication may negatively influence the employee to handle the customer’s complaints and deal with them (Tseng, Lin, Lim, and Teehankee, 2015).  

The manager should clarify the role of each service providers in Craig Credence Hotel as it may be beneficial to decline the conflicts among staff member. It would be also beneficial to perform all activities in less time. As a result, it would satisfy the customers toward services of Craig Credence Hotel. Craig Credence Hotel should make medication in recruiting procedure such as it should hire the workforces who are passionate regarding their services. As a result, it would be beneficial to effectively deal with the guest in the hotel and attract them for taking services (Buil, Martínez, and, Matute, 2016). Craig Credence Hotel should use inspirational leadership approach. In this way, it can use transformational or transactional leadership. Transformational leadership is used to develop and expect a vision for upcoming period and encourages other to lead their direction. In addition, transaction leadership shows the competency to deal with the day to day management of operations. In this way, the transformational leadership approach would be beneficial for Craig Credence Hotel to lead their employees (Deery and Jago, 2015). Effective training and development method should be implemented by Craig Credence Hotel to train their employees in order to deal with the customers. Effective training can encourage the employees to perform their job and offer better customer services. Craig Credence Hotel should also build the morale among employees as it would prone to attract the customers. Since high morale employees may build effective rapport with the customers. Hence, it would lead to influence the customer’s perception and satisfy them.

Conclusion

Craig Credence Hotel should use Customer handling approach in order to handle the grievance of customers. In this way, it can prompt respond on the company’s website towards the customer grievance and tackle their problem rapidly (Patiar and Wang, 2016). Craig Credence Hotel should modify in their service quality. For example, if a customer late to reach at their hotel then, it should understand their issues rather than cancelling the reservation. It can also provide the opportunity to the customer to reserve the rooms in advance and also offers an appropriate discount. It would be effective to pull the attention of new customers and retain the existing customers in the longer period (Min, Lim, and Magnini, 2015).  

Conclusion

With respect to the above discussion, it can be concluded that there are many key dimension that could be used by Craig Credence Hotel to determine the services quality of firms like reliability, tangibility, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. From the utilization of such factors organization would be capable to understand the actual services situation of the firm. Moreover, it can also be summarized that there are many services management strategies that are used by the Craig Credence Hotel to operate their business like customer-centric approach, tangible approach, appearance, and action of employee’s strategy, motivational approach, effective leadership style, and service design. It can also be illustrated that organization should use new service management strategies for operating their business and get competitive benefits like transformation leadership style, service design, customer handling approach, effective communication, and appropriate motivational technique. 

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