Customer Service Policy

Question: Discuss about the Customer Service Policy. Answer: Introduction Customer service is an important element for any business. For a business to be successful, it has to identify and develop mechanisms to satisfy customer needs. In todays competitive business environment, customers are the decision makers and dictates the terms of product and service quality. Since, most of the business organizations present more or less similar products with little product differentiation, therefore, in the end, the degree of customer service provided by the business to its customers determines businesss success (Soteriou and Stavrinides 2013). The purpose of this report is to analyse current practice of customer service being followed in the Brads Holiday Retreat and provide recommendations for changing the customer service process and culture. The report has discussed about the customers of Brads Holiday Retreat and aims at developing a customer service policy for the firm. The report has also discussed a standard for handling customer complaints and a work instru ction for handling a complaint. The report further discusses the elements of customer service that needs to be changed in response to customers complaint about the quality of the meals. Further, the report has also discussed ways to bring desired change in the work culture in the kitchen. In addition, the report discusses the mechanisms that would help in evaluating the customer service that the Brads Holiday Retreat will provide to its customers. Lastly, the report presents a survey questionnaire and survey process that would help in increasing Brads understanding of his and Rosemarys customers needs and wants in relation to meals. Brads Holiday Retreat customers The customer base of Brads Holiday Retreat comprises of 60% domestic tourists and 40% international customers. Domestic customers rely equally on travel agent booking and online/ telephone bookings whereas international customers exclusively uses online/telephone bookings. Although, the return from international customers is better, these customs are more demanding and hard to satisfy. Customer service policy for Brads Holiday Retreat Brads Holiday Retreat is a backpacker hotel that is essentially a service oriented business organization. In order to be successful, the company needs to develop and implement customer service policy to enhance the quality of service it provides to its customers and increase customer satisfaction levels. The customer service policy for Brads Holiday Retreat should include following elements Business mission: the businesss mission is to become a preferred holiday hotel for backpacker community by providing them with best customer service delivery. Customer Service Philosophy: Customer Service Guaranteed. Organization commitment: the hotel is committed to provide customers with optimum levels of service delivery and the organization prides itself on ensuring customer satisfaction every time (Fan et al. 2013). Communication: The Company has devised various means to communicate with its customers with its customers in order to understand their preferences and other needs. 4.1 Telephone the company provides 24/7 customer care services in order to enable customers get their query and other problem resolved in a best possible way. The employees are well trained and are committed to provide optimum services to resolve customers issues. 4.2 E-mail: customers are also having the option to get their queries resolved through e-mails and the companys representative are fully competent to provide customers with best solutions (Fan et al. 2013). Booking, refunds and cancellations: the hotel provides its customers many options to book rooms as per convenience. Customers have the option to book through telephone, e-mails, hotels website, by walking into the hotel and via partner travelling agencies. In addition, the hotel provides customers an option to cancel their bookings by any of the above means. The company provides full refunds in case the customers are rescheduling their trip or when the cancelation request is received one week prior to their arrival. In addition, the company provides partial refund of 40% to 80% depending on customer cancellation request time and management discretion. Further, as the company is committed to provide best customer service delivery, the company provides discounts and other benefits if the customers expectations are not adequately met due to incompetency of the staff or management (Davidow 2014). Training: In order to deliver best service delivery, Brads Holiday Retreat provides its employees with best training in the industry. For this, the company has incorporate various training programs to enable the staff understand customers expectations and provide customers with best service experience from the time of their engagement with the business, at the time of their stay in the hotel and beyond as the company aims at maintaining long term relation with customers. In the training program, more emphasis has been given on the promptness of the service delivery, politeness, professionalism and personalized or customized service delivery to the customers. In addition, employees are given adequate training to be more patient and attentive to customers demands. Therefore, training in the area of developing communication and soft skills are provided (Brock et al. 2013). Feedback: feedback is one of the best ways to understand customers need and expectations; therefore, the company encourages its customers to provide feedback (positive as well as negative) in order to improve customer service delivery and overall experience with the hotel. Customer complaint handling standard Hotel business is a service-oriented business and Brads Holiday Retreat employees have to deal with all types of guests on the daily basis. It is also expected that some customers may not find the service prompt enough, while other may believe that the quality of service or food discouraging. While some complaints are trivial and can be easily mitigated at the point of service delivery, others may require serious consideration and intervention supervisors or managers (Cheng and Loi 2014). Therefore, it is important to implement customer compliant handling standard in the Brads Holiday Retreat to enhance customer satisfaction levels. Customer complaint handling standard can be presented as Acknowledgement: front line employees are trained to acknowledge customers immediately and provide appropriate solution to resolve customer complaints at local level, and if, the complaint cannot be resolved at their level then the customers are assisted and directed to the person who will be responsible to resolve their complaints (Chen 2014). Assessment: the responsible person would access the nature of complaint and provide means to resolve the issue in the best possible manner. Investigation: in some cases due to the complexity of complaint received from the customers, it may be required to investigate the matter in detail to avoid such circumstances. For this the responsible person may require to complete and relevant information that may be collected by interviewing the staff involved and getting customers feedback to clear any misunderstandings. Response: Once the necessary information is gathered and intensity of complaint is analysed, the responsible person will provide appropriate solution to resolve customer complaints (Wilson et al. 2012). Improvements and follow-ups: After a customer complaint is received and resolved, it is important to analyse the cause of such complaint and develop means to avoid such instances in future. If the complaints are due to internal factors such as incompetency of staffs then appropriate solution can be providing training to the employees. Work instruction for handling complaints Applies to: Front end employees and executives who handle customer complaints. Objective: To provide an efficient and systematic tool for handling and resolving customer complaints. Policy handbook reference Refer to organizational policy on customer satisfaction. Pre-requisites Refer to customer complaint handling standard. Customer complaint solving process Step Instruction Remarks 1 Listen and emphasize Let the customer know that you care about their issues. 2 Recording and classifying complaints Any complaint raised by the customer must be recorded in the CRM software. The next step is to classify them in order of priority and high priority complaints should be escalated immediately for initiating further action. 3. Acknowledge Customers should be informed about when they will receive response regarding their complaint and person dealing with it. 4. Investigate (if required) All aspects of customer complaint must be investigated to ensure all relevant facts are identified and clarified. 5. Resolve and confirm Appropriate resolution to the customer complaint must be devised in consultation with senior manager and organizational objectives. The solution must base on corporate and customers viewpoint to ensure fairness and clarity. 6. Responding to customer The proposed solution must be communicated to the customers within the timescale promised. 7. Follow up It is important to get customers feedback on the solution provided by the management to ensure customer satisfaction. 8. Evaluate and close The last step is to evaluate the causes of such complaints and devise strategies to stop such incidents in future. Changing customer service system in response to customer complaint about the quality of meals In response to the increasing complaints regarding the quality of food provided at the Brads Holiday retreat, it is important to bring few changes in the customer service delivery system. The major complaints are received regarding the meals is it arrived late, was overcooked or was not warm enough when served. In order to fix this it is important to train employees to effectively manage timing of their service delivery. The waiter would greet the newly seated customers and take initial order within five minutes, if the customers orders entrees with some drinks, it should always be served together, for the main course, the waiter would provide them an option of whether they want it served when ready or wait for the customers request. This new standard would solve all the problems regarding the quality of food. However, for this to achieve a greater coordination between the kitchen staff and waiters would be required (Kaufman et al. 2013). Work culture in the kitchen The hotel needs to change its work culture in the kitchen to provide better quality meals and to improve the quality of services. Waiters need to be given training to handle customers complaints and provide better solutions of customer demands and complaints. How kitchen employees interact with customers has be changed. Further, the task division and work flow needs to be streamlined so that customers receive their meals in prompt and appropriate manner (Cronin et al. 2015). Guidelines for evaluating customer service In order to evaluate the quality of service provided to the customers in future, Brads Holiday Retreat can adopt the following method The best method is to get customer feedback and determining the level of satisfaction they receive from using the hotel services. Further, the less the number of customer complaints, more is the customer satisfaction. Another method can be undertaking an analysis of competitors strategy and comparing it with the firms own strategy of customer strategy (Batt 2014). Customer survey questionnaire and survey process In order to evaluate the effectiveness of customer service, it is important to develop a survey process and survey questionnaires. Sample group: for the survey, the company can randomly select 50 customers that would be interviewed over a period of one month. Survey questionnaires: the following questions would be asked S. no Question Agree Uncertain Disagree 1 I am satisfied with the quality of meals provided by the hotel 2 I am satisfied with the level of services provided by the hotel 3 The staff are competent and well mannered 4 Customer executives are well trained to handle customer complaints 5 Complaints are handled in timely and fair manner 6 Overall experience is excellent Distribution method: this survey questionnaire would be distributed to the customers at the time of their checkout, via emails and telephonic interview to get the customer responses. Use of data collected: the data collected will be used to evaluate the customer satisfaction levels and enable the hotel to implement better customer service practices (Dasu and Chase 2013). References Aryee, S., Seidu, E.Y., Sacramento, C.A. and Martinaityte, I., 2015, January. Proactive Customer Service Performance: Test of a Team-Level Model. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2015, No. 1, p. 11002). Academy of Management. Aziz, Y.A. and Ennew, C., 2013. Assessing the Effects of Empowerment and Emotions on Job Satisfaction in Hotel Service Environments. Pertanika Journal of Social Science Humanities, 21, pp.65-84. Batt, R., 2014. of Human Resource Practices, Turnover, and Customer Service in the Restaurant Industry (Journal of School of International Public Affairs, Columbia University).