Quality Service in Hospitality

• Quality Service Management involves a participative approach in the hospitality and tourism sector where employees collaborate to meet or exceed guest service standards.

Concept of Quality

• Quality consistently provides goods and services to guests, that meet or exceed expectations, particularly in the tourism and hospitality sector.
• Product quality refers to how well a product meets customer needs, fulfills its purpose, and aligns with industry standards.
• Businesses evaluate product quality based on problem-solving ability, efficiency, and suitability for customers.
• A product's quality depends on performance, intended function, durability, lifespan, reliability, serviceability, specifications, physical features, and customer perception.
• Service quality measures how well an organization delivers its service relative to customer expectations.
• Customers expect a certain level of service before entering a hospitality establishment.
• Customers buy services to fulfill specific needs, and companies exceeding these needs provide a superior service and therefore higher quality.
• Customers have preconceived standards for service delivery.
• Receiving quality service from a hotel or tourism business leads to feeling respected and heard.
• Intangible factors influence a customer's choice of tourism or hospitality operator.
• Successful businesses in hospitality exceed customer expectations from booking to post-stay with excellent services.
• High-quality services for existing customers and attracting new demographics are critical for future business.
• Physical facilities, personnel, and materials all contribute to service quality.
• Service quality contains functional quality, environmental impact, and technical quality.
• Service quality is measured on assurance, dependability, empathy, tangibility, and responsiveness.

SERVQUAL Model

• The SERVQUAL Model, or gap model, identifies the primary dimensions of service quality.
• The SERVQUAL model was developed by A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Len Berry.
• The tangibles dimension encompasses cleanliness, space, atmosphere, appearance of server and location.
• Empathy provides caring, individualized customer attention.
• The elements of empathy are the same as assurance.
• Responsiveness shows a willingness to help customers with prompt service.
• Elements of responsiveness include reliability.

Importance of Quality Service & Customer Satisfaction

• Customer satisfaction reflects how content a customer is with a company's services, measured against their initial expectations.

Expectation Disconfirmation Theory

• The Expectation Disconfirmation Theory indicates satisfaction or dissatisfaction relies on a referent and perceived performance.
• Positive disconfirmation leads to satisfaction.
• Negative disconfirmation leads to dissatisfaction.
• The more value in disconfirmation, the bigger the difference between performance and expectation.
• Expectations set customer anticipations for products and services.
• Perceived performance assesses the customer's service experience, being better or worse than expected.
• Disconfirmation measures the variation between initial expectation and observed performance.
• Positive disconfirmation occurs when perceived performance exceeds expectations.
• Confirmation happens when perceived performance meets expectations.
• Negative disconfirmation happens when perceived performance is less than expectations.

Hospitality Dynamics

• Customer satisfaction is key for organizational performance in business.
• Optimizing customer satisfaction is a strategic imperative because inadequate service quality can have negative outcomes.
• In the global economy, quality is key for organizational survival.
• Delivering exceptional service provides competitive advantage.
• Service quality is often established during customer-service interactions.
• Understanding customer expectations is key to superior service since customers assess service quality by comparing perceptions to expectations.
• Service qualities of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability.
• Services are performances, not consumable objects.
• Customer loyalty is cultivated through customer service.
• Service quality involves comparing perceived expectations with perceived performance (SQ-P-E).
• This supports businesses meeting or surpassing customer expectations while cost-effectively.
• Improving service quality involves streamlining operations, prompt issue identification, and tracking satisfaction.
• Elevating service quality leads to increased customer satisfaction.

Service Quality Recommendations

• All staff should be well-trained to provide prompt service.
• Service assurance stimulates patron behavior.

Importance of Quality Service

• Customer loyalty increases with satisfaction.
• Creating a more positive physical environment leads to customer happiness.
• Customers should feel safe from harm when paying for service.
• Customers should feel their money was well-spent at an establishment.

Service Products: Goods and Services

• A product is anything offered to a market to satisfy a need or want.
• Products include tangible goods, for example, menu items from a restaurant, but also intangible options.
• Goods are physical objects whose physical attributes are preserved and ownership can be established, existing separately from the owner.
• Services are intangible and exist because of other things.
• Example: A warm smile from a waiter can be felt, but only after ordering.

Features of Services

• Services are intangible and can be felt.
• Services are heterogeneous because they depend on the workforce, so service recovery is a concept.
• Separating production (delivery) from the consumption (guest encounter) is inseperable.
• Services are perishable and cannot be brought back once sold to a specific day.

Service Recovery

• When businesses take action to resolve customer issues.
• Service Recovery aims to restore customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.

Garvin’s Dimensions of Quality

• Performance defines service product's operating characteristics, often meaning prompt service in hospitality.
• Measurability is hard as it covers benefits that consumers need.
• Features supplement the basic function of the service product.
• Reliability defines performing the promised service dependably and accurately.
• Being able to provide service as promised is an important consideration in assessing this dimension.
• Handling service problems is key.
• Conformance assesses a product’s design and operating characteristics.
• Durability is detectable in goods rather than in services.
• Serviceability means the speed, courtesy, competence and ease of repair.
• Aesthetics is the subjective dimension.
• Perceived Quality showcases the impression of a service.

Principles of Quality Management

• Commitment is required if a specific service management culture is created.
• Top management sets standards for high quality.
• To change the culture of quality, training is necessary.
• Must address negative attitudes.
• Improvement is neverending.
• There needs to be increases in customer value via new services.
• Cooperation is key to improvement.
• Involves total employee involvement.
• There needs to be employee recognition by managers.
• Prioritizing customer service is key.
• Everything needs to be controlled.
• There needs to be cross functional quality service management.
• There needs to be cause analysis for things that can be improved.
• Change and education is very important.
• Improving can be done by team synergy.

People of Service Quality

• Walter A. Shewhart was known as the Father of Statistical Quality Control.
• William Edwards Deming championed Shewhart.
• Joseph M. Juran revolutionized management.
• Philip B. Crosby created management theory and quality management practices.
• Armand V. Feigenbaum inspired Total Quality Management (TQM).
• Kaoru Ishikawa rejuvenated the norm in the workplace.
• Genichi Taguchi is known for developing a methodology to improve quality.