Service Encounters in Tourism, Events and Hospitality

Staff Perspectives

Miriam Firth

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781845417291
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Hostelería, viajes y turismo

This book offers insights into the demands made on staff in service encounters in tourism, events and hospitality roles. Using data from research completed in these industries, it hinges upon storied incidents offered by workers about which the reader can reflect and apply theoretical knowledge. A key feature of this volume is that it focuses on staff perspectives and perceptions of service encounters and delivery rather than on customer or management perspectives. This will provide students, lecturers, management and customers with fresh and clear understandings of the demands made on staff, but also the perspectives from which the demands are seen. The chapters clarify to students how to apply academic knowledge within customer service contexts and include learning objectives, questions and summaries.

1 What are Customer Service Encounters?

Chapter Learning Objectives

(1) To identify definitions of customer service encounters and intercultural service encounters.

(2) To understand customer perceptions of customer/intercultural service encounters.

(3) To evaluate how staff use their skills to perform and create personalised service.

(4) To critically assess positions taken on culture, the individual and ‘other’ in customer service encounters.

Introduction

As noted in the guidance for using this book, this chapter will present analysis of secondary published literature on customer service encounters without critical incidents. This is because service encounters are the focus of the book and the following chapters present incidents alongside key theory supporting delivery of these. This chapter will identify definitions of customer service encounters and intercultural service encounters, each followed with an evaluation and critical assessment of the positions taken on culture, the individual and ‘other’ within service encounters.

Customer Service Encounters

Customer service encounters is the founding term from which service encounters is taken. This section will briefly outline definitions, fields of associated study and issues seen in research published on this term. This book presents staff perspectives on service encounters, which are multidimensional for staff, but in the current literature they are often termed customer service encounters.

Solomon et al. (1985) are seen as the seminal authors in customer service encounters and they saw customer service encounters as being important due to:

the increased recognition of the importance of the person-to-person encounter between buyer and seller – client and provider – to the overall success of the marketing effort. (Solomon et al., 1985: 99)

This quotation identifies that the term ‘customer service encounters’ was instituted by recognising face-to-face interactions between a buyer and a seller. The term derives from business scholars who saw problems in service encounters in a range of industries such as banking, dentistry, tourism, events and hospitality, and retail. The focal relationship in customer service encounters is the binary aspect of people selling services and other people buying services. There was a perceived difficulty seen in the service encounter context, wherein the service is intangible and based upon behaviour and action, rather than products. The difficulty regarding intangible services is that the customer perceives the service as a subjective experience rather than a quantifiable product. For example, if you purchase a washing machine and it does not clean your clothes, you can inform the manufacturer, who can get you a new one. Services use intangible skills such as communication, which is interpreted and offered differently. If a customer perceives that communication with a member of staff is not working, they still have to try to communicate with that person and define the nature of the issue until their query is resolved. Furthermore, the perceived satisfaction of this service is determined by one person and thus with a single set of subjective associations with the service.

Solomon et al. (1985) also accepted that these encounters rely on intangible services, and noted that service industry management prioritise this owing to their services being between customers and staff:

it is primarily in the service sector that the dyadic encounter has generated a great deal of managerial concern. (Solomon et al., 1985: 100)

Tourism, events and hospitality businesses operate entirely in the service sector, as they offer experiences and provide accommodation and consumable goods to customers. Therefore, Solomon et al.’s (1985) research, although not based in tourism, events and hospitality contexts, is a beneficial definition to start with when considering service encounters within these businesses. It is accepted that tourism, events and hospitality businesses serve food and beverages, which are physical products, but these are consumed rather than taken away and used repeatedly. The following review of customer service encounter literature will identify how this term is perceived in different locales. This broad scope is important because it enables an overview of the term and elicits key issues present as a result of the research and within the research itself.

From these early definitions of customer service encounters the term maintained pace within services marketing fields of study. Fisk et al. (1993) identified that satisfied customers are created through the management of internal and external marketing. Internal marketing (upselling) is created by staff who are ‘satisfied employees’ (Fisk et al., 1993: 82) and external marketing is managed via customer relations and marketing of core business services. Within the services marketing literature, the satisfaction of staff is linked to training, retention and the satisfaction of employees as a human resources function. This book considers employee satisfaction as their ability to manage effectively service encounters, a position relatively under-represented in this field.

The majority of texts on service encounters use a service quality (Parasuraman et al., 1991) paradigm to assess the success from a customer position:

managing service delivery to satisfy customers. (Walker, 1995: 5)

Walker (1995) acknowledges that the encounters are to deliver a service, but that the key focus of evaluation on this is from customers receiving the products or experiences. He clarifies three supporting elements for successful service encounters:

(1) The atmosphere within the business (décor and lighting).

(2) Interactions with customers before and after the encounter (services marketing).

(3) Adequate service does not lead to satisfaction (customers need to perceive improved or superior service).

None of these elements outline the work that the management or staff complete when creating and producing the service. Coye (2004) later confirmed that management requires acknowledgement of customer satisfaction via meeting the expectations and perceptions of the service from the customers in the encounter.

There are only a handful of academic articles that consider staff perspectives of service encounters and these tend to inform management on how to train, educate and ensure staff perform to the correct service quality standards. Lin and Fu (2017) most recently address the performance elements required in creating the front and back of house stages for service encounters in restaurants. Even though they acknowledge back of house contexts, such as kitchens, they still omit consideration of staff perspectives. Mattila and Enzʼs (2002: 273) article (discussed further in Chapter 4) outlines how staff need to ‘accurately predict customers’ service quality expectations’ via interpretation of facial expression and emotions presented within a service encounter. These two articles are interesting, as the first one confirms the presence of performed roles in a service encounter, and yet the latter suggests staff should interpret emotions in a service encounter to predict service satisfaction (which, if performed, would not be real nor true).

Customer service encounters are presented as dyadic situations whereby customer satisfaction is required and service failure is avoided. Originating from services marketing, the term was originally produced for any retail or service context. The term is consistently considered from customer positions and recommendations are made to the management of businesses creating these.

Intangibility, Individualism and Ignorance in Customer Service Encounters

Perceived issues within customer service encounter literature will now be discussed. These issues include, but are not limited to, the intangibility of the service, individualism and ignorance. The literature on customer service encounters is discussed from all foci and locale to enable a thorough discussion of current knowledge.

In terms of issues identified in customer service encounter research, it is evident that intangible services and consumable products present a problematic context. However, I would also suggest that the focus and lens through which research has been completed are also problematic. Papers from Bitner et al. (1990), Nickson et al. (2007), Reimann et al. (2008), Ryoo (2005), Solomon et al. (1985), Sparks and Callan (1992), Surprenant et al. (1987) and Weiermair (2000) focus on the customers’ perception of these encounters, and not the staff’s. As the definition offered by Solomon et al. (1985) suggests that the priority is in maintaining customer satisfaction, the primary focus on customers’ perceptions in the encounter is valid. However, their definition also states that the encounter involves a ‘person-to-person’ interaction. By acknowledging two people within a customer service encounter and then only focusing research on customer perspectives in the encounter, it can be suggested that the origin and following research are deficient through not fully analysing both parties involved in the context. This book will rectify this in part by only focusing on the staff present. Similar to previous research that only considered customer positions, it is also accepted that this book is limited in only offering the staff perspectives in the encounters without customer, colleague or management positions being explored in the contexts.

As noted, the research on customer service encounters fails to explore the staff perceptions in these situations. This does not mean that the staff are ignored entirely, but they are seen as the agents of change who are malleable within the encounter. The majority of current research investigates encounters from a customer’s perspective and then offers recommendations to tourism, events and hospitality management as to how they can improve the services offered. There are only two papers found which refer specifically to staff in the customer service encounter literature (Bowen, 2016; Yang et al., 2015). Within these there are persistent recommendations as to how staff should act. These are seen as recommendations stipulating that staff have to give a good service:

the capacity to use his or her (staff) skills and resources to perform customer service to a satisfactory level. (Yang et al., 2015: 829)

Yang et al.’s (2015) paper sought to understand the variability in both customers and staff within the customer service encounter, but again failed to analyse fully the perspective of the staff when they needed to ‘perform’ for customers. A literature review offered by Bowen (2016) confirmed that service research still focuses on customer satisfaction and that staff are seen as innovators of service quality, differentiators of service quality and enablers of service quality for customers. What is interesting about these two papers is that the recommendations identify the importance of staff in encounters, but then state that they should offer excellent service and perform to a high standard without acknowledgement or investigation of staff opinions or defining clearly what is ‘excellent’ or ‘high’. This finding of the lack of research in this area encouraged me to develop this text and offer clarification on a staff perspective regarding customer service encounters.

It is also clear from the published literature that personalised service is needed in a customer service encounter. A personalised service will satisfy and delight guests and is seen as a superior service. To offer examples of a personalised service, we can consider an encounter in which a customer in a Starbucks café orders a latte. Staff can personalise this service by asking if the customer wants additional ingredients or products to be added to the order, by acknowledging them as a regular customer or by developing a successful customer relationship with an informal conversation about appropriate topics. These examples are all possible service standards that can be achieved through training of scripted service to staff. However, Surprenant et al. (1987) identified a further problem in this:

There appears to be consensus among service providers that personal service is something their customers want, but little consensus about just what personal service means. In many cases it seems to mean a smile, eye contact, and a friendly greeting. In other cases it means offering to customize the basic service to suit the customer’s needs or tastes. It may mean spending time with the customer, or it may mean offering advice, making small talk, or taking a personal interest in the customer. (Surprenant et al., 1987: 86)

The quotation above confirms that a personalised service is difficult to manage and create. For example, going back to the Starbucks situation noted above, the customer could equally be annoyed by any attempt at small talk with staff or at having to decide options for their coffee if they wanted to order a simple hot beverage. Owing to a limited number of new publications and definitions on service encounters, there is an issue here in applying an old definition of customer service encounters to a new hospitality experience and process: it is not directly comparable.

Surprenant et al. (1987) identified that facial expression, and non-verbal and verbal communication are all required in these encounters. These skills are difficult to regulate or control within the context, as customers in tourism events and hospitality do not simply want a product but want to be ‘served’ by ‘personal’ and ‘friendly’ staff (Surprenant et al., 1987). (The need for facial expression and appearance of staff in the encounter is explored in Chapters 4 and 5 on emotional and aesthetic labour theory.) It is evident that early research on customer service encounters identified that personalisation is important to customers, but that this was seen as problematic owing to each customer’s perception of what they wanted or expected as personalised service. For example, if you have a customer who is rushing to get to work, they may not have time for a conversation with staff. In this example, staff conversation may not be perceived as personalised service, but as potentially dissatisfactory service.

In summary of the definition and issues identified in customer service encounter theory, it is evident from the theory discussed and analysed in the chapter that it originates from marketing research completed in the USA in the 1980s. Solomon et al.’s (1985) definition of customer service encounters and research into this context have been because of management interest in how they can fully satisfy their customers. Publications on this term stem from academic awareness of problems associated with offering an intangible service. Since then, research into customer service encounters has fragmented into a range of other theoretical areas, including communication theory (Sparks & Callan, 1992), non-verbal communication in the encounter (Sundaram & Webster, 2000), staff human resource management [see emotional labour (Hochschild, 2012) and aesthetic labour (Witz et al., 2003) for examples] and service marketing (Wu & Liang, 2009). Although the body of literature on customer service encounters has fragmented, it is evident that it is still seen by other academics as an important research context in which customer satisfaction is achieved and maintained.

This book does not question the premise that all tourism, events and hospitality businesses need to succeed via satisfied customers. It acknowledges this construct in customer service encounters and identifies why more analysis and understanding of staff perspectives on these are imperative to fully understand the issues present. Current literature on customer service encounters could be viewed as ignorant as it fails to acknowledge the opinions or feelings of the staff and it only seeks to ensure that the staff are given the right skills and knowledge for dealing with customers. None of the papers analysed whether the staff possess these skills and knowledge or whether they are happy or able to offer them in the customer service encounter. Therefore, this book is based on an agreed construct and definition of customer service encounters but seeks to discuss the concept and issues from a service provider’s perspective. This means that the definition is altered within this book due to the emerging knowledge gained from staff stories and incidents from tourism, events and hospitality contexts.

Customer-to-Customer Perspectives

Although the majority of literature published on customer service encounters considers customer perspectives regarding the service from staff and management, there is a body of knowledge considering the customer-to-customer positions also. This is interesting, as it is often seen in tourism, events and hospitality contexts as being a barrier to successful customer satisfaction. For example, customers on a tour will naturally talk to other tourists or diners during the experience. If these customers upset other customers, the service encounter will be negatively affected. This positi...