Service Delivery And Service Recovery Strategy Tourism Essay
Expectation is one of the most important thing related directly to the guest that the hotel has to know in order to be able to provide the service that fulfill the needs and desire of the guest. It’s the key to know what’s the hotel has to provide in order to make the guest feel satisfy. Before experiencing the service, each guest must have their own expectation. As what Pizam and Ellis had discussed in their research, the meaning of expectation can be describe as “a mutable internal standard which is based on a multitude of factors including needs, objectives, past personal or vicarious experiences with the same establishment restaurant, with similar establishments, and the availability of alternatives.
Besides on past personal experience and other factors have been mentioned, the expectation of the guest can also be based on what’s the hotel had been promised to the guest. Not only that, another factor such as advertisement which is based on external communication can affect the expectation of the guest. For example, the guest who is looking for five star hotels for the accommodation during their holiday will search some particular hotels through the website, brochure, etc. If the advertisement of that particular hotel is very attractive and the physical of the hotel looks luxury and interested, most probably it will build higher expectation to the guest. Halstead (1994) also stated that the guest who, didn’t have any experience before they go to one particular hotel, will rely on external source of information.
H1: Good advertising could probably affect and increase the expectation made by the guest.
Moreover, through the research made by Getty and Thomson in 1994, it is known that “the expectation should be elicited prior to the service being provided; otherwise it will be influenced by perceptions of the actual service being provided.”For instance, the guest may change her expectations during the service encounter and use those changes (perhaps more realistic) expectations as the standard of comparison. Many researchers support that statement because some think that the information that the guest receive during the current service will affect the expectation they have made before the service experience.
Halstead (1993) found that “expectations that are measured after service experience was higher for dissatisfy customers than for satisfy customers.” On the other side, the guest, who has little or no experience of product and service before, will generate little information that leads to lower expectation made on the first time they experience the service. For instance, the guest who has never been stayed in five star hotel will have lower expectation about the five star hotel they are about to stay. This happened because the guest doesn’t know whatare the products and service offered by the five star hotel, the guest just has little information that might be gotten from the advertisement they have seen before.
Though there are differentiations for both the factors influence expectation and the times the guest makes their expectation, but normally the expectation of the guest can be grouped as several parts. As written in the research made by Lewis and McCann (2004), they classifying the expectations that based on what the guest expect from three or four star hotels. Below are the results of the ranking both business and leisure guests expect through their staying in three or four star hotels:
Clean, comfortable bedrooms with all items in working order.
Good quality food and beverages.
Friendly, helpful, polite and efficient staff.
High level of room security.
Speedy, efficient check-in and out.
The data above was made in the research made by Dolnicar (2002) to show that most of people expect to have clean room (including bathroom). Meaning to say that the guestwho are staying in three or four star hotel are more concern to the cleanliness of the hotel. Even the data was obtained through the questionnaire; it can change according to how many star of the hotel. Besides, she had completed her data with the expectation from the business traveler’s hotel expectation by hotel star category. The data is shown below.
*/**
***
****
*****
Good food
8.0%
10.0%
5.6%
3.7%
TV
5.3%
6.0%
2.1%
0.0%
Good service
1.3%
4.0%
2.6%
4.9%
Good location
2.7%
3.0%
2.1%
4.9%
Staff
2.7%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%
Good value for money
5.3%
1.5%
3.1%
0.0%
Pleasant atmosphere
0.0%
1.5%
3.6%
3.7%
Large room
0.0%
1.5%
3.1%
3.7%
Toilet
1.3%
1.5%
0.0%
0.0%
Cheap
1.3%
1.0%
0.0%
0.0%
Shower
9.3%
1.0%
1.5%
1.2%
Internet
0.0%
1.0%
1.5%
2.5%
High quality
0.0%
0.5%
1.5%
2.5%
Food
6.7%
0.0%
0.0%
2.5%
Comfortable bed
2.7%
0.0%
1.0%
1.2%
Comfort
0.0%
0.0%
0.5%
3.7%
It is shown in the data above that the expectation from business traveler’s hotel expectation is different according to the star of the hotel they’ve been staying at. Both of the data above broaden the factors influence expectation of the guest; star of the hotel and type of the guest are also influence the expectation made by guest. Jonathan D. Barsky also stated that the perception of product or service performance will influence the response made by guest if it combines with the expectation or pre-experience standard. When the guest has no pre-experience standards or expectation, the response of the guest will directly reveal their perception of the product or service experience without being affected by their expectation.
Satisfaction
In hospitality industry, the guest will evaluate more on its service than its product. Quality of service becomes the most important things that the guest will experience and give their valuation through. Since every guest wish to perceive the best service or in the other word; excellent service, hotel has to make efforts in giving them what they wish. The meaning of the excellent service is given in the research made by Berry, Parasuraman, and Zeithami which is a profit strategy because it results in more new customers, more business with existing customers, fewer lost customers, more insulation from price competition, and fewer mistakes requiring the re-performance of services” (1994, pg. 32 Vol 8. No. 2). It is clearly said that through the excellent service, hotel will increase their customer and decrease the lost of the customer. In other words, if hotel gives excellent service to the guest, it will result in having more profit for the hotel itself.However, excellent service will lead to satisfaction of the guest which will cause in the increasing of guest’s loyalty.
When it comes to satisfaction, every guest who feels satisfy with the service given will disposed to be loyal to the hotel. So, it can be said that the satisfaction the hotel wants to obtain from the guest is to gain the loyalty from them.It was said by Jones and Sasser (1995) that “increased customer loyalty is a critical driver of a firm’s long-term financial performance.” Besides, the guests who feel dissatisfied with the hotel will reduce loyalty and the reputation of the hotel through the action they may do after experienced service failure. Therefore, satisfaction is the goal that the hotel wants to achieve. The meaning of customer satisfaction had been written in the article as “a psychological concept that involves the feeling of well-being and pleasure that results from obtaining what one hopes for and expects from an appealing product and/or service” (WTO, 1985). Through this definition, it is known that satisfaction can be obtained by fulfilling guest’s hopes and expectation.
Furthermore, satisfaction is not a definite thing that will go constantly the same; each person will perceive different level of satisfaction even when they are in the same hospitality experience. The reason behind it is that each guest has their own needs, objectives, and past experience that will affect their expectations. Based on this statement, it’s very important for the hotel to know how to measure customer satisfaction.
Of course, the reason for measuring customer satisfaction has to be clear in order to get the right information from the guest. According to Naumann (1995), five objectives that are the reasons the hotel measures customer satisfaction are:
To get close to the customer
It was well explained that the hotel has not only just know but also understand the most important attributes to customer, why those attributes affects customer’s decision making, the importance of those attributes, and get a feedback of how well the hotel perform to deliver each attribute.
Measure continuous improvement
The attributes that are necessary for the customer are linked directly to value added processes in the firm and are put into a form consistent with the internal measurements used to evaluate the process.
To achieve customer driven improvement
Not all customers are from the same source of valuable innovation. This will need creation of a comprehensive database that not only tracks sales, but sources of innovations.
To measure competitive strengths and weaknesses
Perceptions of the customer will be determined by the competitive choices. This is achieved through the possible survey and future customers as well as current and past customers.
To link customer satisfaction measurement data to internal systems (Naumann, 1995, pp.22-7).
Knowing that satisfaction is very important to be learned in the industry especially service industry such as hospitality industry, there have been research discussed about this topic. There have been nine distinct that researchers developed about the theories of customer satisfaction. The nine theories include: expectancy disconfirmation, assimilation or cognitive dissonance, contrast, assimilation-contrast, equity, attribution, comparison-level, generalized negativity, and value-precept (Oh and Parks, 1997). Based on expectancy disconfirmation theory, “satisfaction is caused by confirmation or positive disconfirmation of consumer expectations, and dissatisfaction is caused by negative disconfirmation of consumer expectations.” (Pizam and Ellis, 1999). When the outcomes received by the guest are different from what the guest have been expected, negative disconfirmation occurs.
According to the research made by Yuksel (2001), there is positive disconfirmation when the service performance is better than what the guest had been expected before which lead to the satisfaction of the guest. When service performance is the same as the guest’s expectation, there is a confirmation which still leads to the satisfaction of the guest. Moreover, the guest will feel dissatisfy when the service performance is not good as what the guest had been expected which there will be a negative disconfirmation occurs. At the time the guest feel dissatisfy, it means that the need and wants of the guest can’t be fulfilled by the hotel.
Even though the satisfaction of the guest depends on the service performance and the expectation, minimum tolerable level also give impact to the satisfaction of the guest. Minimum tolerable level is the situation where the guest still can accept the failure that the hotel made. According to Yuksel (2011), “depending on the situation, some of the guests will still feel satisfy when the service performance falls short of their predictive expectation but above the minimum tolerable level.” Each person has different minimum tolerable level as they have different expectation. Basically, this minimum tolerable level can’t be predicted and measured, so the hotel can’t provide the service based on this minimum tolerable level just to prevent the guest feel dissatisfied.
H2: When the hotel can’t meet the high expectation made by guest, they will still feel satisfy if the service meets their minimum tolerable level.
According to Pizam (1999), “Dissatisfiers were more likely to earn a complaint for low performance or absence of a desired feature than anything else. But an operation that exceeds the threshold performance standard apparently will not receive compliments on the attributes.” Meaning to say, the guest can be easily feel dissatisfy of the failures or the small things that not happened smoothly but will be very hard to appreciate the higher performance level achieved by the hotel. For example, the guest will easily feel dissatisfy when they expect the bathroom was clean but they found a rubbish near the basin. However, the guest will not be easily impressed when they expect the room was clean and the hotel provide more than that with decorating the room with a flower.
Service Recovery
Service Recovery was made because it’s impossible to give a maintain service that will never change nor have a mistake. In order to compete with other industries, each has to improve their performance all the time. Not only creating new stuff, products, or refurbished the building but also improving the service. Unfortunately, even there is a significant improvement, mistakes and failures will always be made since there’s no so called perfect service.Through this realized condition, hotel creates recovery service to obtain positive response from the guest.
“Service recovery involves those actions designed to resolve problems, alter negative attitudes of dissatisfied customers and to ultimately retain these customers” (Miller et al., 2000, p.38), and “it includes situations in which a service failure occurs but no complaint is lodged by the customers” (Smith et al., 1999, p. 359). There are always the strategies made before doing the recovery of the service. According to Lewis and McCann (2004), service recovery strategies are the “actions that services providers take, in response to defects or failures, comprise a combination of psychological recoveries and tangible efforts.”
In addition, service recovery strategy is made to avoid bad response showed by the guest after they’ve experienced service failure. When the guest experienced service failure, they may switch their option and move to the competitors, make a complaint that will give bad impact for the hotel if they speak out in public media, and the worst thing; they may use negative words to share about the bad experienced they’ve had. As word of mouth is one of the media that works fast among people, negative words shared by the guest can influence hotel’s profit and reputation.There have been many researches stated that dissatisfied customers might tell ten to twenty people about their bad experience with their colleagues (Zemke, 1999). In order to decrease dissatisfactionthat lead to the negative consequences for hotel, some strategies have to be performed to the guest that experienced service failure as the recovery.
H3: Service recovery strategy will prevent the hotel from the negativeopinion shared by the guest who had experienced service failures.
At the first time the guest chose the place to stay, they have made their expectation and when the guest don’t get what they have been expected or the quality that they evaluate is very poor, the guest will feel dissatisfy. After feel dissatisfy, the guest will either make a complaint or give their feedback to the hotel. From those situations, then only the hotel know that there’s some failures occur.Sundaram, Jurowski, and Webster (1997) had mentioned in their research that “Dissatisfied customers expect that service failures will be recovered when they complain.”
Moreover, there are five broad service dimensions that the guests use to evaluate or judge the service quality. The five dimensions are:
RELIABILITY : The ability to perform the promised service dependably
(32%) and accurately.
RESPONSIVENESS : The willingness to help customers and provide prompt
(22%) service.
ASSURANCE : The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their
(19%) ability to convey trust and confidence.
EMPHATY : The caring, individualized attention provided to
(16%) customers.
TANGIBLES : The appearance of physical facilities, equipment,
(11%)personnel, and communication materials.
Those five broad service dimensions will affect to the evaluation made by the guest. Once one of the dimensions can’t be fulfilled by the hotel, the evaluation from the guest through the hotel will decrease and vice versa. As human being, we will absolutely make a mistake. That’s why the service which is done by the staff will never be constantly perfect. It’s a common thing for a hotel to do some failures to the guest.
However, when some failure occurs, the hotel will definitely do the recovery to enhance customer satisfaction, build customer relationship, and keep the loyalty of their guest. Service recovery strategy is described by Gronroos (1988) in their research as the actions that hotels take in response to defects or failures. The action of recovery strategy is done with the range of doing nothing to do some efforts to fix the problems or the failures occur.
A lot of researchers have made the research connecting with service recovery strategies theme. The summary of the research, about the strategies the hotel do after the failures occur, made by Bitner et al. (1990), Kelley et al. (1993), Johnston (1994), Hoffman et al., (1995), Tax et al. (1998), Miller et al. (2000) and Lewis and Spyrakopoulos (2001), generate the result that the strategies may be classified as :
Apology;
Corrections;
Empathy;
Compensation;
Follow-up;
Acknowledgement;
Explanation;
Exceptional Treatment; and
Managerial Intervention.
Apology is a basic strategy the hotel does after some failures occur. The moment the hotel does some failures, the first action to be taken is to apologize to the guest. When apologize is compulsory to be implemented as a service recovery strategy, the other action needs to be done according to the failures made by the hotel. Berry, Parasuraman, and Zeithaml (1994) stated that even though the guests appreciate an apology, the apology will not make the guest forget the memory about the service failure happened. That makes the other recovery strategy was made to be fit in the type of failures. Even though some strategies may need to be done at the same time, some may not need to be done at all. For example; compensation will not necessary be donewhen the failure occurs is just the small failure such as mention the name of the guest wrongly.
Effectiveness
After service failure occurred, hotel will give the prompt service recovery strategy that match the failure and the guest will react according to what they’ve received. The response of the guest will determine whether the service recovery strategy is effective. Meaning to say, the effectiveness of service recovery strategy can be measured with seeing guest’s response. When the guest feel satisfy with the service recovery strategy given by the hotel, it means the service recovery given was effective. Dissatisfaction of the service recovery given by the hotel is evidence that the service recovery was not effective.
The guest who feel satisfy with the service recovery strategy offered will forget about the failure and may increase their satisfaction level after dissatisfaction occurred. In contrast, when the service recovery offered didn’t match what the guest’s expected, they will feel dissatisfy and may not be loyal to that particular hotel.Other than that, Tax et al. (1998) had mentioned in his research that “even though a customer may be satisfied with the type of service recovery strategies offered, the recovery evaluation might be poor because of the process endured to obtain the recovery outcome.” So, the process how the hotel delivers the service recovery will affect the overall satisfaction of the guest.
However, the service recovery strategies given by the hotel will be affected by some factors. Each strategy may give different result for different people. A man who has been travelling for 2 years will have different expectation and will have different result in receiving service recovery strategy than a man who has never been for travelling. Many researches about the effectiveness of recovery strategy were built upon this kind of situation. Further, factors that influence the type and effectiveness of service recovery strategies are :
The service (e.g. Mattila, 2001);
Purpose of purchase (e.g. McDougall and Levesque, 1999);
The failure (e.g. Smith et.al, 1999);
The magnitude of the failure (Kelley et al., 1993; Smith et al., 1999; Michel, 2001; Mattila, 2001);
Previous experience with an organization (e.g. Tax et al., 1998); and
Service recovery expectations (e.g. Miller et al., 2000).
When the hotel offered one of service recovery strategies, they have to choose the right strategy that can possibly increase guest’s satisfaction. Magnitude of the failure will definitely affect the type and effectiveness of service recovery strategy. For example; hotel has made the failure throughthe bad temperature of the food given to the guest. Since it was a small failure, the recovery strategy given will be different from the time the hotel did big failure such as; the room where the guest stayed wasn’t clean. According to Zemke (1999), only the guest themselves who can describe and tell how annoying is a particular service failure has been. Miller et al., (2000) stated that if the failures made by hotel are very serious, it will later require more drastic reparation. That will make service organization need to train more of their front-line employees so they can be able to handle the guest’s complaint and asses their situation correctly.
Moreover, service recovery expectation also gives big impact on the effectiveness of recovery strategy. Kelley and Davis (1994) found that the guest who rated highly for the service quality will mainly have higher expectation on service recovery strategy. It can be understood by the guest to have a better service recovery on five star hotel that to have service recovery by four star hotel. In other way, it can be said that the quality of the hotel will surely affect the expectation of the recovery strategy.
It is stated by Hart, Heskett, and Sasser (1990) that the main reason of the guest dissatisfaction is the problem resolution which can’t satisfy the guest and up to 50% of the guest who experience service failure not feel satisfy with the recovery strategy (Best and Andreasen, 1976; Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman, 1990). Based on this situation, hotel has to follow up the guest to make sure that the service recovery they have made was successfully increasing the satisfaction of the guest. After the hotel has given the recovery strategy to the guest, they will not know the response of the guest until they follow up their guest and receive their evaluations.
Giving the service recovery to the guest for the first time when the hotel made some failures will not always give the same result on the guest for the second time. When the first time the hotel made mistakes, some guests can be offered the minimum service recovery strategies or another service recovery strategy depends on the failures made by the hotel. That can reduce dissatisfaction of the guest, but it will give different result on the second, third, and on the next arrival. On the second arrival, the guest may not be able to accept the same way of service recovery strategy they’ve ever offered. With the same recovery strategy given by the hotel on the second time with the same service failures experienced, the guest may not feel satisfy.That’s why, the evaluation and feedback is needed to know the guest’s response.
Of course there will be more advantages on hotel when they can successfully give service recovery strategy that match the failure they’ve made. First, they can get loyalty from the guest. “Loyal customers are those who continue to stick with an unsatisfying product/seller with the hope that things will soon improve (Boshoff, 1997; Hirschman, 1970).” When the guest feel satisfy with the service perceived, they will be loyal to the hotel and willing to come for another time. Loyalty of the guest will directly impact the profit of the hotel. It will lead to the increasing of the profit of hotel.
Besides the loyalty and profitability, the effective recovery strategy can prevent the spread of negative word of mouth that is believed to be the most important post-purchase behavior. “Service entities could increase their profits up to 85% by reducing the customer defection rate by 5% (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).It has been proved that word of mouth has an effective power in spreading their opinion as a free advertisement tools. So, if hotel make the guest satisfy, the advertisement via word of mouth will be very useful to be used for spreading good advertisement. In the other way, if the hotel make the guest dissatisfy, the advertisement via word of mouth will not be useful anymore. It will even give bad impact to the hotel and may decrease the profit of the hotel.
The last thing, when the hotel can handle the complaint of the guest and give the best service strategy match with the failure was made, they can build the trust from the guest. Moorman, Deshpande, and Zaltman (1993) defined trust as the “willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence” (p. 315). The moment the guest trusts the hotel, the guest will willing to come again to the same hotel. The trust built by making the guest satisfy can also make the guest increase their minimum tolerable level.
Both loyalty and trust will give long term benefit for the hotel. Basically, when the hotel had successfully build trust in the guest, loyalty will directly follow. As the guest has trust the hotel, they will be loyal to that particular hotel. They will feel safe and comfortable with the hotel because they have trusted that the hotel will do their best to provide and deliver the best service.
It is proved by Gilly (1987) that the guests who experience the service failure and did complainthen feel satisfy with the service recovery given, have higher repurchase intention than the guest who already satisfied with the service and did not complain.
H4 : “Guest expectation will be higher after he experienced service failure and offered recovery strategy.”
