Importance Of Customer Service Policies In The Hotel Business Essay.

You are on a College placement working in a large hotel in a city centre location. The Hotel is used by both domestic and incoming tourists and business people. Some of the facilities, which are available at this hotel, include a pub that serves drinks and food, conference facilities and a spa. The Hotel has limited pre-booked car parking in a small multi-story car park. There is access to night clubs, theatres, shops and good public transport links to nearby sporting venues.

You are working with the customer services team, as you wish to develop your customer service skills. The Customer Services Manager wishes to utilise your theoretical and research skills in order to evaluate the current levels of customer service and develop a new customer service policy for the hotel.

Part 1

You must produce a report, which discusses the reasons for using customer service policies. You should link this to your organisation and the hotel industry in general including all hospitality industries listed in the help sheet reminder. What are customer service policies used for? Give reasons why they are needed? What could happen if we did not have these policies?

Part 2

Your report must also include a discussion of the purpose of evaluating a customer service policy, indicating how this can assist future staff training and development. Explain why, as a company, we need to evaluate the policies. What could happen if we did not?

Significance of Customer Service Policies

It is a matter of fact that in today’s world customer service has an important role in determining the profitability and the reputation of a business organization that operates in travel and tourism industry. It can surely be said that it is one of the major factors that provides a competitive advantage to a business organization whose management effectively implement various customer service policies in the workplace. The business leaders of the organizations like hotels, restaurants and membership clubs thus should stress on introducing various customer service policies in their organizations (Pan, 2015). in this regard it should be mentioned that not only business organizations operating under travel and tourism industry, but the managements of all types of business organizations should think about introducing effective customer service policies in the organizations so that their enterprises can experience better productivity along with increased reputation and profitability due to higher customer satisfaction level. In todays world it is rare to see that any business organization does not have proper customer service policies. Actually these customer service policies are prepared in order to help the customers to get satisfaction to ensure that the transaction of products and goods are done in a transparent way. It can be said that the customer service policies set by the management is a tool that the clients of the organization can utilize for their interests.

It is a matter of fact that the policies related to customer service are generally designed in such a way so that the clients of that organization can get to know the perspective o the management of the company and it effectively improves the relation of the customers with the company that significantly help the business organizations to increase their reputation and that effects positively the chart of profitability.

Reasons for using customer service policies

In the hotel business, the presence of effective customer service policies significantly helps the customers of the business organization to ensure the satisfaction level of the customers. In this regard, it can be said that the policies set by the management of the hotel businesses can help the customers to know what they can expect from the hotel and the policies makes it clear what cooperation the management of the hotel expects from their customers (Tuntirattanasoontorn, 2018). Thus it can be said that presence of effective customer service policies makes doing business more transparent which benefits the management of the organization to maintain transparency and the customers also gets benefited. For hotel businesses, understanding and satisfying the demands of the customers is vital and for doing so, the set policies by the management regarding the customer service plays a significant role. It is seen that in hotel business, the satisfaction of the clients can be looked at an ultimate way to determine the success and the profitability of the organization. it can be said that in order to attain more satisfaction of the customers, it is vital to understand that the quality of the services provided to the customers of the hotel business is aligned with the expectation of the customers as they will be needing service that could value the worth of money they are spending (Ren et al., 2016). The more the management of the organization will be able to understand the requirements of the customers, the more they will be able to sustain and develop their reputation in their market of operation and eventually will get a competitive advantage against the rival companies operating in the same market. It can be said that the reputation and profitability of a hotel business immensely depends on the quality of the service provided to the customers and their approval of how effectively the management of the organization served them (Subramanian, Gunasekaran & Gao, 2016). Thus, it can be said that the management of the hotel should effectively introduce some customer service policies in order to achieve more profitability and gain more reputation.

Importance in Hotel Business

Customer service polices are generally used to negate all the complications and confusions that can take place between the customers and the management of the hotel business. It is a matter of fact that the management of the hotel should ensure introducing various effective customer service policies so that they can maintain a basic transparency in their operation and the customers can utilize those policies in order to get to the point of view of the management of the hotel and that can help them to have a valid expectation regarding the quality of the services they can expect from the organization (Pan, 2015). In today’s market, the competition among the rival hotels has become fierce and ensuring a competitive advantage has become must for the business leaders in order to secure the reputation along with the profitability of the company. As in today’s world the biggest challenge that the management of the business organizations expect is maintaining the satisfaction level of the customers of the company and that is vital for sustaining the profitability of the business organization (Navarro, Garzón & Roig-Tierno, 2015).

It is a matter of fact that of the management of the hotel organization did not have effective policies regarding the customer services; it can effectively harm the management’s will to gain more reputation and achieve more profitability in the market of operation (Power, Sharda & Burstein, 2015). The customer service policies ensure that the management of the organization and the customer’s point of view is aligned. Not only that if the customers of the hotel goes through the customer service policies they can have a rough idea regarding the types and the quality of the services they can expect from the managerial board of the hotel organization. It is a matter of fact that the management of the hotel should ensure that there is no gap between the requirement of the customers and the services provided by the management of the concern (Murali, Pugazhendhi & Muralidharan, 2016). Effective customer service policies can help the management of the hotel business to experience greater profitability and reputation. 

It is seen that whenever in a hotel business the policies related to the customer service are modified and implemented newly, it would be vital to assess the effectiveness of those policies set by the management of the organization. For the management of the hotel, it would be necessary to know that whether the implemented polices are serving the purposes or not. There are numerous ways to evaluate the effectiveness of the set policies in the hotel businesses regarding the customer service and those are providing feedback forms to the clients of the business organization, checking the flow of visitors after implementing the policies and many more (Mohsin & Lengler, 2015).   By evaluating the customer service polices the management of the hotel would be able to judge the strengths and weaknesses of the company which is vital to experience better productivity along with the profitability.

Satisfaction of Customers

It is worthwhile to mention that the success of the policies related to the customer service immensely depends on the effectiveness of the general workforce of the company and their level of motivation and loyalty towards the company (Dabestani et al., 2016). When the management of the organization learns about the weaknesses of the organization’s customer service policies by evaluating the set policies, they should ensure that same patterns of mistakes should not be repeated in the organization if they want to improve the situation of the business organization. after going through the evaluation process the management of the hotel should introduce some training and developmental program for the betterment of the effectiveness of the employees of the company. It can be said that after evaluating the process, the management will be able to have a clear idea regarding which type of employees they will be needing in order to strengthen the workforce of the company. Not only that, after recruiting new employees, following the existing policies the management will be able to introduce training and developmental; programs for securing the best interests of the business organization (Albayrak & Caber, 2015).

Thus it can be said that the management should give immense importance to the customer service policies of the organization in order to ensure the profitability and productivity of the hotel and it can effectively improve the situation of the hotel as in the market full of competition ensuring the profitability of the organization along with getting a competitive advantage is vital.

References

Albayrak, T., & Caber, M. (2015). Prioritisation of the hotel attributes according to their influence on satisfaction: A comparison of two techniques. Tourism Management, 46, 43-50.

Dabestani, R., Shahin, A., Saljoughian, M., & Shirouyehzad, H. (2016). Importance-performance analysis of service quality dimensions for the customer groups segmented by DEA: The case of four star hotels. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 33(2), 160-177.

Mohsin, A., & Lengler, J. (2015). Service experience through the eyes of budget hotel guests: do factors of importance influence performance dimensions?. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 23, 23-34.

Murali, S., Pugazhendhi, S., & Muralidharan, C. (2016). Modelling and investigating the relationship of after sales service quality with customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty–a case study of home appliances business. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 30, 67-83.

Navarro, S., Garzón, D., & Roig-Tierno, N. (2015). Co-creation in hotel–disable customer interactions. Journal of Business Research, 68(7), 1630-1634.

Pan, F. C. (2015). Practical application of importance-performance analysis in determining critical job satisfaction factors of a tourist hotel. Tourism Management, 46, 84-91.

Power, D. J., Sharda, R., & Burstein, F. (2015). Decision support systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ren, L., Qiu, H., Wang, P., & Lin, P. M. (2016). Exploring customer experience with budget hotels: Dimensionality and satisfaction. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, 13-23. 

Subramanian, N., Gunasekaran, A., & Gao, Y. (2016). Innovative service satisfaction and customer promotion behaviour in the Chinese budget hotel: an empirical study. International Journal of Production Economics, 171, 201-210.

Tuntirattanasoontorn, N. (2018). Service quality improvement in the Thai hotel industry. AU Journal of Management, 6(1), 24-37.