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Provision of Customer Service and its Benefits - Activity

Travel and tourism organisations need to appreciate that services offered to consumers are:

Intangible or hard-to-define

This means that the services offered, such as holidays, flights and so on, are only 'real' to the customer when they are bought and consumed. Flights can be seen taking off, pictures can be looked at of other people enjoying their holiday, but this cannot replace the individual experience of the customer. Services offered, therefore, must be accompanied by information provided by the travel and tourism organisation so that the customer can be confident about using the service.


A match between staff and customers

This means that staff working with customers are part of the service offered. Also, customers are part of the service. Both staff and customers need to know how the service is going to be delivered: when, where, by whom, at what cost and so on.


Variable in their demand

This means that there are often large variations in the level of demand for travel and tourism services. It becomes more difficult to keep customer service at consistently high levels in periods of peak demand: the 'high season'. Customers become disappointed quickly if service lacks consistency, asking questions such as, 'Can I be guaranteed that I'm going to get the same high level of customer service whenever I use this firm?'

Airport delays

Image: Delays in peak season can cause great inconvenience to waiting passengers. Copyright: Stijn van der Laan, from stock.xchng.


Perishable

This means that travel and tourism services cannot be stored. A seat on a flight is either sold or not; it cannot be carried over to the next time. So firms have to manage what they offer to customers and the level of demand from customers, or they will disappoint customers (if demand is too high) or lose revenue (if capacity is unsold, such as seats on a flight).

So what are the benefits of delivering consistently good customer service?

The Institute of Customer Service is a good place to visit to find out more about how real-world organisations view this question. The following quote is a simple indication of the main benefit:

"Good customer service costs less than bad customer service." Sally Gronow, Welsh Water.

Source: Institute of Customer Service Quotes (www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/detailsone.asp?ContentID=33&NavBar=Information+Centre&Level2=Quotes&ParentContentID=32)

Now work on the following tasks:

Task 1

In the Information Centre section of the Institute of Customer Service Web site(http://www.instituteofcustomerservice.com), find the feature called 'Case Studies' and follow the link to 'The Butler Did IT.' Answer the following questions:

  1. Why does this hotel feel the need to employ 'e-Butlers'?
  2. Think about the skills that the butlers would need to deliver an effective service; comment on the cost of providing this level of service.
  3. Why might the benefits of delivering this high level of service outweigh its costs?
  4. The level of technical gadgetry used by people today has increased rapidly in recent years. Make a list of the sort of gadgets that the 'e-Butlers' would need to help guests with.

When customer service goes wrong

Organisations should plan for what to do when customer service breakdowns occur - so-called 'complaint handling encounters'.

Research has been carried out into how complaints are handled. Travel and tourism organisations can learn from the findings of this research.

According to a study by Schoefer and Ennew at the University of Nottingham, customers value highly the degree of justice in how their complaints are dealt with. Was the way they were handled 'right'? These judgements are very important to customers.

Justice in complaint handling is seen as occurring at three levels: interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice. In simple words these relate to the following:

  • Interactional - the way a complaint is seen as being important to the organisation; recognising the problem
  • Procedural - the way the complaint is dealt with
  • Distributive - making up for the error or failure, perhaps through compensation

Source: Emotional responses to service complaint experiences: The role of perceived justice, Schoefer and Ennew, Nottingham University Business School (2002) [PDF, 48 KB] (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ttri/pdf/2002_4.pdf)

The lessons of this study are that travel and tourism firms should ensure that:

  • they recognise the complaint when it is made or within a stated short period of time
  • they have systems and procedures in place to deal with complaints effectively
  • they set up effective complaint-handling training for their staff
  • they make up for errors or failures that have led to the complaint

Task 2

The National Maritime Museum's Web site contains some very useful resources in a section on customer service. (http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/nav.00500300l000006001)

Under 'Handling Complaints' investigate the museum's procedures for handling customer complaints. There are three example situations given in this section. Choose one of these and analyse it, making sure you:

  • identify the problem causing the complaint
  • how the complaint is dealt with
  • how the museum responded to the complaint

Evaluate the museum's procedures according to the customer views of justice (interactional, procedural and distributive). To do this you should use the following form:


The problem
The customer complained that:




Dealing with the complaint
The museum recognised the complaint by:




Responding to the complaint
The museum responded to the customer by:




Customers' Views:

View 1:
Interactional: How did the museum perform?




View 2:
Procedural: How did the museum perform?




View 3:
Distributive: How did the museum perform?