The need for London Experience to develop the talents of its human resource, for future advantage - Essay Example

?Developing talent for the future Issue Financial performance of the company and including feedbacks are interrelated making them very important in business to be taken into account. However, they could be substantially addressed through effective human resource management. In this paper, the proponent discusses in particular the need for London Experience to develop the talents of its human resource, for future advantage. Background London Experience owns and runs three visitor attractions in Central London which include the City Heritage Museum, the London Underworld Experience, and London Tour Buses. Millions of visitors come to these museums every year and the goal of London Experience is to provide their visitors with the best experience. Recently, the London Experience employs only 200 regular employees and additional 300 people will be employed on contractual basis during peak seasons. This means that in times like this, the company needs to employ at least 600 personnel. As a company handling visitor attractions in Central London, London Experience usually tries to conduct half-day classroom-based introduction and followed by on-the-job training with its newly hired personnel. The hiring process within London Experience is not that complex because the General Manager just conducts informal interviews at each of the attractions. Not only that, short-term contracted people are recruited through word of mouth. These all lead to some important problems or issues facing London Experience at the very moment that need to be elaborately considered. Current status Recently, among the problems facing London Experience are complaints about communication difficulties, poor language skills, poor customer service and lack of knowledge of the attractions. All of these hinder the main objective of London Experience to substantially bestow the best experience they could provide with their visitors. As a result, having these specific problems, London Experience is eventually providing only a less value for the satisfaction of their visitors. In other words, based on the point of view of customer satisfaction, London Experience substantially is giving poor value for its customers. This should give them proper guidance on the assessment of their service quality. From the point of view of Parasuraman, Ziethmal and Berry in measuring service quality, London Experience at the very moment is at the level in which there is a need to realise the service quality gap that exists between expected service and perceived service of their visitors (University of Florence, 2008). In other words, prior to understanding the expected service of the visitors, the management of London Experience should primarily consider its external communication to visitors and the word of mouth, their personal needs and past experience. These are all determinants of perceived service quality (Ryan, 2002). The value of communication The increase of level in business determines the increasing importance of communication (Singla, 2009). In other words, communication remains an integral part of every business as it continues to be advantageous in it. In line with this, business requires people with good communication skills (Lesikar and Flatley, 2002). External communication to its visitors is important in the case of London Experience because it determines what the visitors expect to be the kind of service they would receive. As a result, London Experience needs to develop personnel with substantially good communication skills. This particularly applies to personal communication in which the primary function is to ensure direct flow of information or message from one person to another. There are different types of interpersonal communication and these include interpersonal, group and mass communication (Smith, 2004). Recently, it is most familiar to come up with mass communication as it is capable of addressing important desires and needs of an individual or the masses and businesses (Smith, 2004). This may apply to both London Experience and its visitors and the goal is to obtain massive dissemination of information. Media and the people nowadays are interconnected in great detail. This is because people are bombarded with different ads daily which are trying to obtain specific goals about keeping everyone informed about specific ideas or information on certain product or service offerings. In the age of highly sophisticated business, London Experience should not only rely on its capability to go for personal communication, but it is important to go for mass communication through the media. Based on the case of magic bullet theory in mass communication, the basic assumption is that the media are capable of influencing the people who in the first place are passive (Sparks, 2009). This means they are unconscious about how they are influenced by the media and being on the process of consciously transformed to be aware about their unconscious needs or desires. This is one of the basic point of Parasuraman et al.’s theory of assessing service quality through external communication process. The goal is to actually find out the actual expected service of the customers. This expectation could be much unraveled by creating a very effective communication process. For how many decades, ads continued to become one of the most effective methods to convey information to the public. It is a specific communication method that aims to provide effective influence on customer behavior. In the same way, through the use of media and effective communication process, London Express could minimise its problem with communication difficulties. For instance, a person having no intention of using a specific service may be influenced to go try it as its unconscious desires or needs are being influenced by specific commercial advertisement through the media. Furthermore, through the media, London Experience could substantially and effectively inform the public about some major innovation about its business and how it works in great detail. This is to ensure that many people will be able to understand its prevailing business activities and this could also potentially help visitors seeking for good advices through words of mouth, personal experience and others. On the part of London Experience, it may not be feasible for it to train more manpower to communicate its services through personal communication as it only gives half-day classroom-based introduction with its personnel. This may not be enough time to have in order to train the skills of its manpower for effective communication, unless it gives additional time for this matter. Thus, it requires tapping potential outside skills for effective communication, which may be attainable through the media. The media have greater influence on the masses based on the magic bullet theory, which emphasises that they are potentially capable of keeping the wider masses of people to be informed. Regarding this, London Experience should envision to create specific department in-charge of ensuring effective communication process within its business. Language skills There are various people coming over to London and they all from different walks of life, having different cultures and above all, different languages. However, the only language that could connect people universally is the English language. Therefore, English as an international language is very important in business especially in the case of London Experience’s nature of business in which from time to time, different people around the globe would try to avail of its services just to obtain the best experience as possible. This means language skills of the chosen personnel of London Experience is necessary. Effective communication process is made possible through language skills especially on verbal communication. In fact, international businesses nowadays invest in training their personnel in order to achieve proficiency in their language skills (Mellors et al., 1993). This is very practical in situations in which international companies try to outsource human resource in countries having English language as only secondary. However, this also applies in the case of London Experience. This company should ensure that its personnel develops more than the basic about English language so as they could only use words that are enough, concise and easy to be understood by their visitors travelling from other parts of the world. The significance of language skills is evident in international business (Cateora and Graham, 2002). In fact, second language like English is very important in international business career. This significantly applies to London Experience in which their ultimate goal is to provide the best experience for their visitors. Language skills should be tantamount to having effective communication process. It is hard on the part of London Experience to convey information to its visitors without improving or enhancing the personal communication through language skills enhancement of its personnel. For instance, a visitor that may find it hard to speak a second language needs to be carefully attended by London Experience’s personnel in great significant detail just to be able to address his or her actual needs. Furthermore, some cultural barriers may be encountered in the process as well. In line with this, language skills improvement of the chosen personnel should be necessary as it would continue to provide meaningful and effective communication process between London Experience and its visitors. Customer service Retaining customer is very important and this is the primary essence of customer service theory and satisfaction. Especially in the midst of increasing competition, customers benefit a lot because many companies would want to extend a powerful customer service experience as possible. In most cases, customer service department involves help desk, customer service and support, and complaint management (Deshmukh, 2006). All of them would ensure that a high value of customer service is provided by the company including giving high value for customer care. In line with this, the company should always ensure that its services are reliably delivered in great essence. There is also a great detail on higher response on customers’ needs. Companies like London Experience therefore should be flexible enough in dealing with their customers especially that they usually come from different places with various cultural orientations and other related differences. Thus, firms like London Experience should also constantly reaffirm its visitors that it is providing consistent hand in meeting their needs. It is in line with this that the staff should be able to show high level of empathy to their clients so as to keep them for future business transactions. This therefore would mean a good business environment for their visitors which could help London Experience provide more meaningful experience for them. Furthermore, aside from it could substantially retain customer when an organisation employs it, excellent customer service also ensures a great accomplishment from a provider’s point of view (Gee and Gee, 2000). There is significant satisfaction in doing customer service especially if it is executed properly and effectively. Based on the above information, the idea about customer service significantly relied on the management on how it should train its personnel to handle issues concerning customer service and support and other relevant services such as complaint management. Although effective customer service does not end up with them, the rationale behind them is to create a good business atmosphere for the customers in order to retain them in the future. However, this could hardly be done without proper training and effective skills enhancement for the chosen personnel. For instance, personnel without proper training and skills on complaint management will eventually not that effective in providing excellent customer service and support. In the same way, a staff without proper skills on help desk may not provide the right and appropriate information needed by the customers. Applying this in the context of London Experience is just the same. Therefore, the management should ensure that its staffs or chosen personnel are highly equipped in dealing with the technicalities of customer service. Improving knowledge A person with less knowledge about its products could hardly close a sale. Technical training and product knowledge are the most important factors that are said to influence a salesman’s performance (Parkinson, 1984). Although service and product offerings may vary in their form, it does not mean that they also differ on how they should be presented to the customers. It is true that London Experience is providing service offering, but like how the product offerings are sold, it also sells its services using appropriate knowledge about them. Visitors would not just have to book with them without prior knowledge about the services they are offering. This gives enough reason to consider improving the knowledge of London Experience’s staffs on their service offerings. These staffs are the primary assets of the company in order to close a deal with their visitors. In line with this, the technicality in closing a deal in business should be properly enhanced within each concerned personnel. Improving knowledge of the staffs about their service offerings is very critical on the nature of business of London Experience. However, this does not only mean everything should be focused in directly dealing with the customers. London Experience should be able to include in its business activity the general knowledge about its entire business. In particular, this would mean combining the opportunity to learn new things dynamically through research and marketing studies. These activities are proven effective in improving business quality and providing high value for customers through excellent customer service experience (Kotler et al., 1999; Boone and Kurtz, 2006). Conclusion/Recommendations From its recent problems regarding complaints about communication difficulties, poor language skills, poor customer service and lack of knowledge of the attractions, London Experience substantially has to consider how to develop talents of its human resource for its future success. The following are recommendations relevant to the discussions made in the previous sections. Improving communication It may require more time for London Experience to deal with this, but one of the best options is to consider coming up with mass media communication. It does not only ensure acquiring great talent in communication, but it develops the company’s skills in the future on how to handle effective communication through the mass media. The company must assign personnel in this area to take control over marketing activities and communication strategy of London Experience. Thus, a new department should be instituted regarding this concern. Language skills proficiency Language proficiency development should be required by London Experience to each of its personnel especially those who are directly communicating or initiating personal communication with their visitors. Not only that, these personnel must be able to understand the idea behind cultural differences among individuals. This would help ensure providing the best value for the customers and their needs in the long run. Thus, a regular weekly activity for language proficiency enhancement based on cultural differences should be initiated. Customer service Regarding customer service, London Experience should provide weekly training with its personnel like role plays. This would definitely improve the skills and confidence of its personnel especially those who are expose to their visitors on a daily basis. Service/product knowledge Service knowledge should be integrated with customer service training. Thus, role plays should be an integration of customer service and London Experience service’s knowledge. Alternative: motivating factor In order to be able to achieve the above recommendations especially when they are implemented, personnel should receive monetary or other related motivating factors to ensure their effective performance with the company and their visitors. Evaluation Evaluation is necessary in order to monitor progress or further development and enhancement in the future. References Boone, L. E., and Kurtz, D. L. (2006) Contemporary Marketing. 12th ed. Mason, Ohio: Thomson: South-Western. Cateora, P. R., and Graham, J. L. (2002) International marketing. Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill. Deshmukh, A. (2006). Digital accounting: the effect of the Internet and ERP on accounting. London: Idea Group Inc (IGI). Gee, V., and Gee, J. (2000) The customer service training tool kit: 60 activities for delivering super service to customers. New York, NY: McNeil & Johnson. Kotler, P., Saunders, J., Armstrong, G., and Wong, V. (1999) Principles of Marketing. 2nd European ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lesikar, R. V., and Flatley, M. E. (2002) Basic business communication: skills for empowering the internet generation. Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Mellors, C., Pollitt, D., and Radtke, A. (1993) Directory of language training and services for business: a guide to resources in further and higher education. Oxon: Routledge. Parkinson, S. T. (1984) New product development in engineering: a comparison of the British and West German machine tool industries. Melbourne: CUP Archive. Ryan, C. (2002) The tourist experience. London: Cengage Learning EMEA. Singla, R. K. (2009) Business Studies. New Delhi: FK Publications. Smith, R. D. (2004) Strategic planning for public relations. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge. Sparks, G. G. (2009) Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. University of Florence (2008) Proceedings of the 11th Toulon-Verona International Conference on Quality in Services. Firenze: Firenze University Press. Read More