Mr. Rajagopal

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

Closing the Gap Between Guest Expectation and Management Perception

By Venkat Rajagopal, Professor, Pacific International Hotel Management School

One of the characteristics of the service industry is tangibility. While the product is tangible, service is intangible. Unlike tangible products many services are not measured easily nor can be tested for quality. While it is easy to improve the quality of a product any time it is difficult to improve the quality of services because service is always of a temporary nature. As a hospitality manager the first rule of any good quality service is you should know your customer very well. Gaps model is a conceptual model developed to qualitatively measure service quality. One of the most important gaps is “Expectation of a guest and the perception of management”.

Customer satisfaction is most important for any corporate to survive and to continue, more so related to service industry. Researchers have established that to get a new customer it costs five times more. Every satisfied and loyal guest in turn can get an organisation five new guests, saving huge costs to any marketing department. Satisfaction installs a positive attitude towards that brand and the chances of the customer returning to the same brand in future are high. When the guests or customers are happy and satisfied with the quality of a product and service, there is a possibility they will come back again to purchase and use it and also tell their friends and family members their experience. On the other hand if they are neither happy nor satisfied with the product and service they are most likely not to return, at the same time to keep complaining to the brand owners and other customers about their level of dissatisfaction.

Unlike tangible products many services are not measured easily nor can they be tested for quality. In case of hotel products like rooms, food is measurable in terms of quality whereas service provided is not measurable. Often one cannot even assess the quality of service until after experiencing them. However some leading hotels and airlines consider service increases productivity and they use it to earn their customer’s loyalty.

While it is easy to improve the quality of a product any time it is difficult to improve the quality of services because service is always of a temporary nature. A defective product can be replaced or repaired. However delivery of an unsatisfactory service cannot be undone. Hence it is imperative that when a service is performed either first time or last time, better it be done to the satisfaction of the customer. To illustrate this statement, a room that was not clean at the time of check in at a hotel, can be always cleaned. However an important message that was not delivered to an in-house guest, on time is failure of service and the damage caused to the guest by non performance of this service could have far more repercussions than an uncleaned room.

As a hospitality manager the first rule of any good quality service is you should know your customer very well. Companies like The Walt Disney, Ritz-Carlton, Leelas and some of the well known airlines practice this philosophy. These companies pride itself on exceeding customer expectations and work hard to create and maintain a culture of service quality. These companies have each developed an extensive data base of customer information so they can analyze how successful their service has been, what it lacks, where it could be improved, and how to predict what these customers may expect in the future. These companies have processes in place to obtain feedback from employees and guests alike on how their service is working and where it could be improved. These companies are never satisfied with their current level of service and have processes in place for continual improvement. One of the important functions of an operation manager is to keep looking for continued improvement.

Different companies use a variety of different measures by which to judge how successful they are in creating customer satisfaction and service quality. There are many awards for manufacturing and selling quality product by a company but seldom any for service quality.

In a service oriented industry evaluating the level of quality is much more difficult. Fixing a standard for quality service comes from various sources including the service provider and the customers. The company on one hand thinks of specifications as standard operating procedures whereas customers present or expect specifications based on their personal expectations for what they think their service experience will be.

In the early 1980’s Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) recognized the idea that service quality is a function of the expectations – performance gap and conducted a broad based exploratory study and developed SERVQUAL, which quantifies customer’s assessment of a company’s service quality. Their model is also known as the Gaps model.

Gaps model is a conceptual model especially developed to qualitatively measure service quality. The gap model identifies five gaps within the process of any service design and delivery, which causes a dent in poor service in turn leading to dissatisfaction of guests. While Parasuraman et all talks about five (5) gaps, one of them is most important gap which is “Expectation of a guest and the perception of the management”.

One of the characteristics of the service industry is tangibility. While the product is tangible, service is intangible. According to Parasuraman et al a guest satisfaction or dissatisfaction is a result of not only tangibility but also other dimensions like reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. Any service oriented organisation when identifies these five dimensions can easily measure the guest satisfaction or dissatisfaction, however intangible it is. Brand owners should be aware of customer expectation and their requirements, so that the perception of the management is in line with the guest expectation and satisfaction.

The Service Quality Model developed by Parasuraman, Zeithami, and Berry (1985) was applied by this author to a well known ethnic restaurant in Mombasa, Kenya (E.Africa), known for its Mughlai and Tandoor dishes. The restaurant has been established for more than fifteen years and is popular among locals which are multi cultural. Most of the customers of the restaurants were repeats. Since Mombasa is a small coastal town with limited population, but a good number of international tourists, the restaurant mostly targeted the local population. The restaurant served 95 covers and the ambiance was traditionally Indian, staging authentic Indian classical instrumental music and classical dances live during dinner.

The objective of the study was to identify instances of a service gap between management perception of guest satisfaction and actual expectations of the guest. A group of German tourists were interviewed after their dinner and the feedback obtained from them by way of Walk through audit was: the tourists were quite happy about the ambience and ethnicity of the restaurant. However they were not so happy with the service. What they meant service here was some of their queries while having dinner was not answered satisfactorily either by the waiter or by the manager of the restaurant.

Some of their queries were:

• What is the meaning of Mughlai and Tandoor?
• What are other well known and popular dishes of Mughlai and Tandoor?
• How healthy are such dishes for daily consumption?
• How much time does it take to prepare and serve such dishes?
• What is the recipe and does it have any dietary conditions pertaining to allergies?
• What is the significance of various poses of the dancer during the performance?
• What is the significance or purpose of serving betel leaves and supari when the bill was presented for settlement?

Neither the waiter in charge of the table nor the restaurant manager could reasonably answer the questions of the guests. It was not the intention of the international tourists diners to find out how knowledgeable the staff were, it was mere curiosity to know how these foreign cuisines were prepared and served. They were quite disappointed at not being briefed properly. Their contention was that they would have enjoyed these dishes more had they been briefed about their origin and recipe. The waiter or the restaurant manager could only inform them that these are popular dishes from different parts of India and takes anywhere between 10-15 minutes to prepare and serve. The restaurant which boasts of live performance of Indian classical instrumental music and live classical dances during dinner, could not satisfactorily reply to some of the diners basic questions. Based on the analysis the following conclusion was drawn:

Service gap between “Management perceptions of guest satisfaction AND actual expectations of the guest:

1. Dishes were not properly explained.
2. The guests could not understand and appreciate the cultural performance, since they had no clue where it originated and what it means.
3. The purpose of betel leaves and supari, with the final bill was not explained.

How to close these gaps? While it is not possible to close these gaps 100% at least they could be reduced or narrowed by the following:

1. The management should know its target market by customer survey, analysis of segment and focus groups and their expectations, especially when some of the guests are inbound international tourists.
2. The staff should be trained properly and educated on food and beverage areas such as:
   
   • The names of the dishes, origin, recipe and any allergy it could cause.
     
   • The significance of serving betel leaves and supari at the end of a meal, among Indian culture.
3. The musician and the dance artistes at the beginning of the performance should have given a brief synopsis of the cultural programme of the evening such as the name of the musical instrument and the origin, the significance of various postures of the dances that would be performed.
4. Get feedback from the customers regulary, analyse the feedback, and take proper action.

Venkatraman Rajagopal known as Venkat is currently a lecturer teaching hospitality and tourism management subjects at Pacific International Hotel Management School in New Plymouth, New Zealand. Mr. Rajagopal holds a degree in Commerce, a Masters in Business Administration and a Masters in International Hospitality Management. With more than 20 years experience in the hospitality industry, Mr. Rajagopal has worked his way up in all departments of the industry, holding senior management positions such as Director of Finance, Director of Food and Beverage and General Manager. Mr. Rajagopal can be contacted at 64 9 8350535 or venkatr@pihms.ac.nz Extended Bio...

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