The Practical Guide to Achieving Customer Satisfaction in Events and Hotels

Philip Berners, Adrian Martin

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000617733
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Negocios y empresa
• Categoria: Hostelería, viajes y turismo

The Practical Guide to Achieving Customer Satisfaction in Events and Hotels is the fourth title in the Routledge Series The Practical Guide to Events and Hotel Management and presents expert-led insight of customer service best practice within events and hotels.

Typical to the other titles in the series, this latest book is written in a logical format and contains practical tips drawn from real-life industry examples, case studies, industry leaders, and the authors' extensive backgrounds working in events and hotel management. Topics include definitions of customer service, an answer to that question 'Is the customer always right?', how to deal with complaints, how to empower staff to recover customer service, and how to turn new customers into loyal customers.

This book is ideal for students of the management of events, hotels, hospitality, or tourism, to be used as a practical resource alongside existing theoretical textbooks. It is also an essential tool for anybody working in the customer-facing industries.

Chapter 1 What Is Customer Satisfaction?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154600-2

1.0 Defining Customer Satisfaction

This chapter sets out to define customer service and customer satisfaction by identifying events and hotels as providing a service to customers. We identify the difference between a product and providing a service and why a service is difficult to recover if it goes wrong.

Section 1.1 looks at meeting customer expectations and the dangers of overselling or underselling and being dishonest about what the customer can expect to receive.

In Section 1.2, we track the ‘customer journey’ where we look at how customers use ‘touch points’ when utilising event and hotel services. We explore varied sources of customer expectations and discuss stakeholders and stakeholder groups.

Section 1.3 explains the merits of providing Total Quality Management (TQM) drawing upon various hotel and event examples including planned maintenance versus repairs to equipment which has already failed.

Section 1.4 introduces the SERVQUAL service quality management model using the gap analysis technique.

Section 1.5 shows the Balanced Scorecard model to measure performance beyond profit only.

Events and hotels provide a service because the product for customers is both provided and consumed simultaneously.

When an attendee to an event arrives at the venue, the service is delivered at that point. The event begins with the arrival of guests. Entering through the doors, the guest is greeted or received through security, guest lists, lanyards, or wristbands. Once inside the event, the customer goes to the cloakroom, the bar, the restaurant or buffet, or the dancefloor – each service they receive is delivered at the point of being consumed until they leave the venue.

When a hotel guest checks-in, the services are delivered at that point, beginning at reception, the check-in, entering their bedroom, ordering room service, visiting the restaurant, and the bar – right through the customer journey until they check out.

What the customer perceives of the services you provide is customer service.

Customer service does not end when the customer leaves the venue or checks-out of their hotel. It can continue after the customer has departed. Good customer service tracks the customer after they leave by engaging with them on social media platforms or direct contacts through emails or letter in the form of promotions for future offers and customer survey feedback questionnaires.

The issue with providing a service – that is, where the service is delivered and consumed at the same point – is that it cannot be easily recovered if something goes wrong. If a customer is dissatisfied with any part of the service they receive, they are already consuming it. This is why live events and hotel bedrooms are considered as ‘perishable’ because once a live event ends or the night has been spent in a hotel, it cannot rehappen. It has been consumed. An event which happens tonight cannot be consumed tomorrow night, and a hotel room available on the 12th June cannot again be sold on that date, that is, the 12th June.

This means that if customer service is not right at the event or in the hotel, it cannot be put right afterwards.

The emphasis, then, must be to ensure that customer service is right in the first place and that each customer receives the service they expected to receive from the perception given to them by the event or the hotel.

The emphasis here is in getting it right. If a customer purchases a product in a store and is dissatisfied with that product, they can return it, exchange it, or receive a refund for it. These actions cause little inconvenience for the customer. The customer may experience mild disappointment and a modicum of inconvenience but it is unlikely to ruin their day, their enjoyment, their experience, their trip, or their holiday.

It is different when purchasing a service to be received. When a customer travels to an event or hotel, any failure in customer service will cause a higher level of disappointment and a great deal of inconvenience. They have decided to make a purchase based on an anticipated expectation of what they will receive at a future point. The customer has planned and prepared in readiness for the event or trip. They will spend time by travelling to get to the event or hotel and spend further time at that event or hotel consuming the service.

It can be seen that any failure in their enjoyment of their purchase will have psychological impacts on top of financial and social impacts.

One of the problems is consumer behaviour in decision-making. Once a customer has evaluated the decision and decided to make a purchase (to attend an event or stay in a hotel), then there is a time lag between the point of purchase and the date of the event or their stay in the hotel. This lag between purchase and visit causes post-purchase behaviour.

During the lag, the customer builds their anticipation leading up to the event or their stay in a hotel. They will plan for it and build their excitement towards it. They might tell their friends and family about where they are going and bring other people into the expectation and anticipation, all the whilst upwardly constructing their expectations of the experience they will receive. The customer will perhaps make advanced preparations to be at the event or hotel such as arranging child-minding, dog-sitting, house-sitting, plus their own preparations of packing to travel and selecting what to wear.

Then comes the experience itself – the day of the event or their stay in the hotel. By this time they have heightened their expectation of their enjoyment of the experience. The customer certainly expects at least to receive what was promised when they made the decision to purchase.

After receiving the experience, the customer adopts post-experience behaviour. If their experience at the point of consumption of the service they receive falls below their heightened expectations, they will then adopt a negative post-experience attitude. In this attitude, customers will abandon the event or hotel by never returning and will spread negative word of mouth. All the people who were involved in the expectation and anticipation will now be informed of the failures and disappointments, and it will likely be exaggerated to justify how the customer feels.

Unless the customer complains to the event or hotel, The Manager will not be aware of the customer’s abandonment or that they are spreading negative word of mouth. The Manager will also not know what the customer is saying and why (so The Manager cannot learn from this), and The Manager cannot correct or control the customer’s negative attitude and post-experience behaviour.

If the customer receives good customer service at the event or hotel and they enjoy the experience because it meets or exceeds their expectations, the customer adopts a positive post-experience attitude and will exhibit behaviours such as repeat attendance, positive word of mouth, and the purchase of associated products such as merchandise.

When measuring and defining ‘customer satisfaction’, there is tendency to focus only on the quality of the service being received by the consumer.

However, satisfaction is a comparison of the quality of the service received versus the quality the consumer was expecting.

For instance, an exclusive event in the ballroom of a five-star hotel immediately raises expectations which would not be satisfied by an average event experience. Alternatively, a customer being sold a ticket to a budget event in a venue which from the outside looks low quality, may be pleasantly surprised and satisfied with even just an average event experience.

Customer Perception + Customer Expectation = Customer Satisfaction (CP + CE = CS)

Industry Voice

“Employees are far less likely to be customer focused if their employer is not employee focused.

As an operator, by putting your people first and creating a quality employee experience and strong culture, team members will exhibit higher levels of motivation to deliver the best possible customer experience, but also to drive other key factors such as profitability.

An employee-centric business that recruits the right people and creates the right environment in which they can succeed is key to motivating employees to be customer focused”.

Adam Rowledge, Managing Director, Rowledge Associates

Customer satisfaction can therefore be defined as the measure of the difference between the customer’s expectations and the perception of the experience they received. The question is, does their perception of the service quality they received meet with what they expected to receive?

If the measure is positive, customers will be satisfied, maybe even delighted. If the measure is negative, the customer will be dissatisfied and may complain or spread negative feedback about the business.

There are two distinct aspects to achieving customer satisfaction:

One is about communicating the right message about your event or hotel, sharing what it will genuinely look like to the attendee or guest, and avoiding over-promising to the customer so that realistic expectations are set.

The other is about ensuring what was promised is delivered in a consistent manner to every customer.

Both aspects need to come together to achieve 100% customer satisfaction.

There are several variables discussed throughout this book that can work against events and hotels, which will prevent the achievement of 100% customer satisfaction.

1.1 The Dangers of Overselling and Underselling

It is natural for an event manager or hotel manager – from hereon we refer to both as ‘The Manager’ – to aspire to deliver the best possible experience to event attendees and hotel guests. This is why some managers make promises which cannot always be delivered. The best intent may be there, but the service that was promised cannot always be delivered – this is overselling. The problem with this is that it raises the expectations of the customer who believes they are going to receive what was promised, but in actuality they will not.

Overselling occurs naturally and often because The Manager genuinely does want to deliver what they promise to their customers and intends to deliver it. They might also genuinely believe that they are delivering that promise. Also, customers want to believe that they are going to receive the best and will not question that the promise might fall short (until it does).

This is where the relationship between the marketing department and The Manager can be interesting. The Manager sets the financial sales targets and relies heavily on the marketing department to bring in the right amount of business to meet those statistics.

The Manager also relies on the marketing department to bring in the right type of business. This requires honesty. Honesty from The Manager in knowing what type of business suits the event or hotel; honesty with targeting the right markets; honesty with the level of service they provide; and honesty with the customers so that their expectations match the experience they will receive.

Let us be clear on this point. Dishonesty does not win customers for the long term. It wins people who attend an event or visit a hotel but will leave disappointed. This does not make them customers – it makes them fools for believing the lie.

Customers do know what they expect from the event or hotel and if it does not match – if there was dishonesty somewhere in the chain of perception – they will feel cheated. They might complain, demand refunds or discounts, or they might say nothing but never provide return business. They might even tell everyone they know, not to attend that event or visit that hotel. We do that, don’t we?

That question – ‘we do that, don’t we’ – is for you to think about for a moment. You have been a customer, haven’t you? You are a customer today. You will be a customer tomorrow. So, as The Manager who is in control of what customers are receiving, you must think about how you would feel and react if a service you had paid for does not live up to your expectations. And if your perception of that expectation was provided to you by that very event or hotel, you will be upset or angry. You will feel cheated as a customer, just like your customers will feel. You might complain...