Service Operations Management in Daniel Restaurant - Case Study Example

Service Operations Management in Daniel Restaurant Daniel Restaurant, New York Daniel Boulud is a renowned chef forhaving established one of the greatest restaurants in America that focuses on providing customers with the delight senses of services (Daniel, 2015). Being a service organisation, the company focuses its service provision on elegant ambience, delectable menus, and gracious service. It is situated at the Upper East Side, Manhattan. Besides, the company’ focus on quality has earned the organisation some of the awards like the Relias & Chateaux membership award. On the other hand, Daniel’s restaurant is the target for customers who prefer French cuisine where the product design and development matches seasonality of the service industry characterised by unique world class wines. Besides, the quality of service provision stems from the distinct setting and furnishing resulting in unique classical architecture (Daniel, 2015). Therefore, the restaurant’s business focus is on providing rooms for dining and the warm as well as welcoming bar lounge where guests have the opportunity to enjoy the creative cocktails, sumptuous night desserts, and a la carte dining. Moreover, the organisation’s success in meeting customer needs and providing quality services has made it earn the two-star Michelin rating. In this case, the organisation’s success is a perfect reference for evaluating how service organisations manage their service operations. a) customer expectations and satisfactions Any customer who visits a restaurant expects professional high-class services especially for the highly rated organisations like the Daniels restaurant. The focus of service operations management is to ensure that customers get the value for their money (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Therefore, customers believe that the high prices they pay for the restaurants must be reflected in the organisations service provision. In this regard, customers expect the organisation to be flexible in meeting their ever changing needs. In the modern business environment, the focus has shifted to quality of services where customers prefer organisations that put quality at the forefront of their operations since it is one of the expectations from the customers (Zaim, Bayyurt & Zaim, 2013). Nonetheless, the customers expect helpful and friendly service staff that can rely on for information and providing answers to some of their burning questions. The customers also expect that the organisation should respond promptly to inquiries, whether through online, by phone and in person. Most of all, customers expect a restaurant facility to maintain high level of cleanliness and safety. In this regard, the customers are more satisfied when the organisation respond to their orders promptly and have good experiences with the service delivery. There are numerous benefits of meeting customer expectations and also satisfying the needs. Firstly, Daniel Restaurant can benefit a great from customer expectations because it helps in identifying the service level that keeps them happy thus achieving higher satisfaction (Zaim, Bayyurt & Zaim, 2013). On the other hand, emphasis on customer expectations and satisfactions is the basis for encouraging the employees to focus on fulfilling the expectations of the customers. A perfect way of fulfilling such needs is by ensuring that the employees or the staffs have developed a good relationship with the customers. Nonetheless, focusing on fulfilling customer needs and expectations provides the organisation with the opportunity to exceed the particular expectations thus leading to a raving advocacy where the customers are more likely to recommend the organisation as the preferred supplier to friends, families, and other people (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Moreover, meeting the customer expectations of the customers and satisfying their needs has the advantage of providing an easy way of dealing with the customer complaints because they are indications that the customers are not satisfied thus the organisation can look for the quickest means of fixing the problems (Zaim, Bayyurt & Zaim, 2013). Most important benefit of meeting customer expectations is that loyalty can be achieved since they have the trust that the organisation is committed to serving their needs thus build strong connection with the brand (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Therefore, focusing on meeting customer expectations can earn Daniel’s restaurant some loyal customers and also provide the basis for identifying their unique needs and delivering services that meet such expectations. b) Criteria for developing and evaluating strategies for change in quality management The service operations management as a function depends on the extent to which an organisation is ready to adopt changes because customer needs and expectations are ever changing owing to the dynamism of the business environment (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). In this case, organisations should be first on track to adopt any possible development of quality management initiatives as one of the strategies for managing changes in service operations management. Therefore, there are various criteria that can be used to evaluate such strategies. The first criteria for developing quality management initiative is quality planning where the service operations management team develops a work plan for integrating quality into all business operations (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). In this regard, quality should be planned for at all stages including the production processes, service delivery, as well as responding to the customer feedbacks. Another criteria for developing a service operations management strategy is quality assurance where the entire life cycle of the product or the service as the case of the restaurant where quality is denoted in all the processes including analysing the progress as well as using data to improve continuously the quality of services(Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Nonetheless, development of change strategies must focus on quality control that entails making sure that the products are of the acceptable standards and also have high performance. In case of Daniel Restaurant, the company can incorporate quality control in the way guests are serviced, how employees interact with the customers, and how the organisation gets in touch with its customers to identify their concerns and offer prompt solutions. The final criterion to consider when developing the change strategy is if the initiative has the provisions for quality improvement (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). In this regard, the management of Daniel Restaurant, with the help of the service operations management team must make sure that the strategy is flexible and easily creates room for changes to occur. Overall, the developed the proposed initiative managing service operations should be customer focused (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The implication is that organisations depend on customers whose needs should be well understood so that the requirements can be met. On the other hand, the quality management initiative should focus on exceeding the customer expectations. Besides, the quality management initiative must be built on a good or effective leadership (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). In this case, the leadership should focus on ensuring that there is unity in the organisation such that the initiative is moved in a single direction. On the other hand, the leader has the obligation to develop and maintain a proper favourable internal as well as external environment for meeting the customer expectations and satisfactions. Besides, a rationale for developing a quality management initiative is the involvement of people and this entails the inclusion of all people in the important decision-making processes concerning service operations management (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Conversely, the quality management initiative must be based on a process approach where the focus is setting targets of the desired results that can be met with proper management of the resources and processes (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Finally, a quality management initiative must be focused on adapting a system approach to managing information. The implication is that the effective of an organisation in managing service operations stems from the fact that the objectives are best met when there is the identification, understanding, and management of all the related processes like a system. c) Essentials of quality management and techniques There are various essentials of quality management that Daniel Restaurant can borrow from. One of the most vital essentials is education and training (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). The implication is that there must be constant and frequent training of the staff to ensure that they understand the dynamics of quality management. On the other hand, training is important for the service industry because the industry services people with differences in terms of culture and personal values. Therefore, Daniel Restaurant must provide training as part of the quality management initiative. Besides, training helps the organisation in stressing the need to provide quality services so as to meet the needs as well as the customer expectations. Moreover, supportive leadership is a very important aspect of quality management implying that the executive management must show its commitment to helping the employees to meet the expectations and fulfil the satisfactions of the customers (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). In this case, supportive leadership must provide the necessary resources, train and educate employees on service quality and engage the staff in making decisions about customer satisfaction. The techniques for quality management are classified into two, namely the qualitative and quantitative tools. Qualitative tools consist of the subjective inputs where there is no measurement of numerical values while the quantitative tools involve the quantification and analysis of numerical data (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). In the case, the quantitative tools are the most preferred because they do not result in any bias as the analysis of the quality management progress is compared to the historical data. Some of the qualitative techniques that Daniel Restaurant can apply in its quality management initiative include flow charts, diagrams, cause-effect, multi-voting, teams, brainstorming, election grids, and task lists. On the other hand, the quantitative techniques include the control charts, PDCA, Pareto charts, sampling, histograms and run charts (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). All these tools are used to analyse data on quality management and they help the organisation to track the progress made so far or propose changes in case the process is not headed in the right direction. Some of the techniques may customer based like the customer need analysis and quality function development (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). The management based techniques include proper communication and good leadership. Employee-based techniques for quality management involve cross-training, quality teams, brainstorming and nominal group technique. Besides, the process-based techniques include quality improvement, lead time reduction and benchmarking while product-based techniques include the design of experiments, concurrent engineering and product flow analysis. Benchmark and knowledge management will depend on the technology infrastructure where the organisation can use information systems to identify areas that require standardisation (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). Besides, the two processes depend on the organisational infrastructure including the management and the employees. Knowledge is best managed by balancing flexibility and ensuring ease of access besides focusing on shared knowledge. Besides, benchmarking of the good results is best achieved if the employees are motivated to work towards achieving the set goals and targets in service operations management. d) The proposed quality management initiative The proposed quality management has the potential to improve the service operations management as one of the crucial parts of business operations in service organisations. The first success factor of the initiative is that it focuses on quality planning that entails integrating quality in all processes from the production to delivery of the services (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). In this case, Daniel Restaurant will not only have to focus providing quality to customers during the service delivery but also during the process of developing and designing products. The implication is that services organisations only focus on quality when interacting with their customers but they least consider that initiative should begin at the product development stage. Another important aspect of this initiative is that there is a strong emphasis on education and training of the staff. Underpinning the need for staff training is that the process will highlight to them some of the best ways of meeting customer expectations through unique and sumptuous service delivery (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Nonetheless, the initiative proposes that service operations management depends on the leadership. Therefore, Daniel Restaurant has a lot to learn about using supportive leadership to ensure that the organisation improves the way it manages quality. The implication is that the technique proposes that leaders have the obligation to offer support in terms resources as well as developing an internal environment that fosters effective quality management (Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). Therefore, the proposed initiative has the incentives for creating a supportive organisation culture where employees are committed to meeting the needs and expectations of the customers. On the other hand, if Daniel Restaurant adopts the strategy, the company will record high number of sales as more customers will flock in because their expectations and satisfactions are well taken care of. e) Recommendations From the above discussion, it is highly recommendable for Daniel Restaurant to use the most appropriate tools and techniques for managing service operations especially the quality of services. The first and foremost recommendation is the need to manage quality from the leadership perspective where the executive management does what it takes to build a good name for the organisation by providing training and education for the employees about how to meet the expectations of the customers and satisfy their unique needs(Zhang, Linderman & Schroeder, 2012). On the other hand, proper quality management is built on good communication. Therefore, the entire strategy should be well coordinated and the commands channelled in the right manner. It is also imperative for the organisation to use employee-based tools for quality management because they are always in direct contacts with the customers. In this case, tools like brainstorming, development of quality teams and creation of nominal groups can be quite useful in finding out the best way on how to meet the customer demands (Talib, Rahman & Qureshi, 2011). Most importantly, though the focus is to meet the customer demands, the management of Daniel Restaurant should aim higher and surpass the expectations of the customers. The implication is that service quality that is delivered beyond customer expectations is bound to make them believe that the organisation is committed to meeting consumer demands. References Daniel, 2015. Retrieved from http://danielnyc.com/ Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Pearson. Talib, F., Rahman, Z., & Qureshi, M. N. (2011). Prioritising the practices of total quality management: An analytic hierarchy process analysis for the service industries. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 22(12), 1331-1351. Zaim, H., Bayyurt, N., & Zaim, S. (2013). Service quality and determinants of customer satisfaction in hospitals: Turkish experience. International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER), 9(5). Zhang, D., Linderman, K., & Schroeder, R. G. (2012). The moderating role of contextual factors on quality management practices. Journal of Operations Management, 30(1), 12-23. Read More