The Aspects of Having Good Quality Services - Essay Example

?Service quality Table of content ………………………………………………………………………………2 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..2 Chapter ……………….3 Literature review………………………………………………………………………..3 Importance of customer satisfaction……………………………………………3 Service marketing mix………………………………………………………….4 5 Gap Model of service quality…………………………………………………4 Satisfaction, Loyalty and Retention……………………………………………..5 Staff Recruitment, Training and Service Strategy………………………………6 TQM (total quality management)……………………………………………….6 Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………….7 Methodology…………………………………………………………………………….7 Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………….7 Primary findings…………………………………………………………………………7 Chapter 4……………………………………………………………………….13 Recommendations……………………………………………………………………….13 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….13 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………14 References………………………………………………………………………………..17 Abstract: The hospitality industry is surviving on high quality of services on a reasonable price. The customers are the revenue generators for the business houses and that is the reason they must be provided with the great quality service so they become the loyal customers. For any business empire whether it is small or big, the primary focus is how to retain their existing customers and how to acquire new customers. To retain the existing customers the in-depth understanding of the customer needs is very important. The service quality has become the primary focus of most of the organizations. Mainly for the fast food centers the service qualities are the baseline for the improvement of their performances. The service oriented factors are deeply associated with the loyalty programs (Brooks, 2010). The Service quality gap model gives the perfect picture of the gaps between the service given and service expected. This paper will focus on all the aspects of having good quality services and it will take an attempt to find out the customers perception about the best quality service. Introduction: In the hospitality industry the quality speaks the ultimate word. The hospitality industry is based on the service qualities of the people in the shops or in the restaurants. For many times it has been seen that even after providing the best survives the customers are not satisfied. In these cases the reason behind the dissatisfaction is very important to understand for the fast food centers. The service gap models help the managers to understand the gaps between the service provided and the services wanted by the customers. However, in the recent time it is better to know the reaction from the mouth of the real time customers. And that is the reason, the primary data collection is very important. in. The primary and secondary data are important to support the outcome of the services related to the customer satisfaction. In regards to this research, the secondary data are collected from many secondary resources like online websites, articles, books and journals related to the customer satisfaction and service quality. And the primary data are collected from the survey made from the sample size of 50 people selected randomly. McDonald’s has been taken as the target brand in this case. The whole paper is stratified into five chapters and each chapter has its own relevance to prove the importance of the customer satisfaction to win the customers. Chapter 1. Literature review: Importance of customer satisfaction: In the present time the customers are the kings. They decide whether to buy or not. The sellers can only try to sell their products to them. However, it is a great virtue of the sellers to convince the customer wisely to buy the products. The service has great implications over the products. In the present time most of the products are related with particular services. Service oriented products are basically associated with the intangible products which can be felt after they are bought, and that is the reason the importance of the customer satisfaction at the time of buying is very significant. The customer satisfaction measurement is one of the major concerns of the companies (Grigoroudis, and Siskos, 2009). In this case the service is basically a fast food center which caters food to the customers. The satisfaction relies on the quality of the food, service of the people involved in the process, and also the ambiance of the restaurants. However, service quality has a great importance over the customers to make them the regular and loyal customers for the future business. Service marketing mix: The traditional marketing mix was the basic composition of the 4 Ps and they were product, price, place and promotion. However, as the time passed by the marketers realized that the marketing of the tangible and intangible products need to be taken differently so, the three more Ps were added with the traditional 4 Ps to define the marketing mix for the service based products, and they were, physical evidence, process and people. For the intangible products like hospitality products are strictly associated with physical and evidence and people. The 7 p s of service marketing mix was majorly suited for the service oriented products and many times for the knowledge intensive environments (Lancaster, and Reynolds, 2005). 5 Gap Model of service quality: The 5 gap model of the service quality is used to identify the flaws within the organizations. Mainly for the service oriented business like restaurant business and fast food centers are highly concentrated on the service quality of the branches. It has been seen many times that different branches of same branded restaurants have different problems. However, the gap model helps to find out the basic problems which might create great problems at the time of delivering the services (Lamb, 2009). The five major gaps within the service gap models are listed below. For this instance the McDonald’s brand must analyze these gaps and must find out the remedies to bridge these gaps to provide ultimate services to satisfy their customers. Gap 1: Management perception versus consumer expectations: Gap 2: Service quality specification versus management perception: Gap 3: service quality specification versus service delivery: Gap 4: Service delivery versus external communication: Gap 5: Expected service versus perceived service: Satisfaction, Loyalty and Retention: It is very much easy to understand that the repeating customers generate more profit than the normal customers because it is been proved that loyal customers buy more each year than the normal customers (Van Bennekom, 2002). It is a very vital point to be discussed that what the customer thinks towards the loyalty programs. From the business prospective it is beneficial for the company as it provides a long term relation with the customer which provides long tern profit for the organization. It has been seen that consumer’s status also plays a very vital part in case of the perceptions towards the loyalty programs from the customer’s point of view. It has been seen that these loyalty programs does not affect the customers who are having a high status. The status matters as the need to compare one’s self with others is very much pervasive and mostly occurs whether or not individuals intend to do so. (Gilbert, Giesler and Morris 1995). The main aim of the loyalty programs are to retain and win back the customers. There are many methods and many ways to execute a successful loyalty program. These loyalty programs are majorly focused on price discount method. In USA ninety percent of all programs are based on price discount, (Butscher Stephan A. 2002). However, the loyalty programs which are related to the price discount don’t have a great value as it does not treat special customer at special way and, these kinds of loyalty programs can be replicated by the competitors. (Butscher Stephan A. 2002). However, for a fast food chain like McDonald’s the loyalty programs are based on free food items and price discounts and sometimes with some gift vouchers. Staff Recruitment, Training and Service Strategy: The hospitality industry is all about keeping the customers happy all the time. In most of the time the customers basically buy the relaxation or a good time from the hospitality industry. In most of the time the customers are treated as the guest in this specific industry. And that is the reason that the people who are involved in providing the services must be selected properly so they can be trainable. However, in this case it is a fast food restaurant and for that, the people who are providing services in the restaurant are the vital entities. The training and the proper culture is very important to be practiced within the organization. Recruitment is an important process to be done. The selection of the proper employees is very important. It is very easy to train the employees but, it must be remembered that the employees must be trainable. TQM (total quality management): The TQM that is total quality management is very vital for the hospitality industry. The TQM can be treated as the aggregated management of the quality in the service. There are three words are attached with this TQM and they are total, quality and management. Total means everyone should take the valuable participation towards the improvement of the quality within the store. Quality means high level of satisfaction towards the customers and the management refers to the proper operations to prevail the high quality services within the store or the restaurant for the longer time with a specific level of quality. However, it has to be remembered that the TQM is the quality of management but not managing the quality (Williams, 1996). It means the management must be handled properly to have a sustainable position in the minds of the customers. Chapter 2. Methodology: Finding the customer perception about service quality is very important for the restaurant. This paper will focus on some fundamental approaches to retrieve the primary data from the customers. The research work in this paper is strictly based on the surveys, interviews and in-store feedbacks. The Restaurant (In this case McDonald’s) must do these data collection methods to get the proper customer feedbacks. Chapter 3. Primary findings: A good questionnaire powers up the survey process. However, there are no established ways or procedures to construct good questionnaire (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). Surveys are basically costume built and each survey has their own specifications. However, the degree of freedom in answering the questions for the respondents is very vital for a successful survey. There are many set of questions are used in the survey and some them are open-ended questions with no specifications, open-ended questions with specified answers to choose from, close ended questions etc (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). In this context there are 12 questioned framed for the sample group. And the sample is the random sample and the sample size is 50. In this case the open ended questions with options are chosen as it takes less time of the target group. There were 50 set of questionnaire were distributed among the people randomly and the answers of the questions are given in a Table below. (The example of the questionnaire is shown in the appendix). The answer table: Questions Answer 1 Answer 2 Answer 3 Answer 4 A 12 25 5 8 B 26 15 6 3 C 4 2 42 2 D 15 20 10 5 E 23 15 8 4 F 18 20 10 2 G 12 20 10 8 H 10 25 10 5 I 38 12 J 15 25 5 5 K 12 18 10 10 L 20 10 15 5 Analysis of the survey: The survey can be analyzed if the questionnaire is analyzed properly. From the above table the clear picture about the question asked is given bellow: Q. A. Analysis: (How did you get to know about us?) From the answers of the question as the conclusion can be drawn that the major portion of the sample that is; almost 50 % of the sample got to know about McDonald’s by word of mouth and only 24 % from advertising. This means most of the people do keep the faith on the brand name McDonald’s. Q. B. Analysis: (How was the service at the table reservation?) From the collected answers it can be observed that 52% feel the service on the table is excellent. And 30 % think it is good and 6% think it is poor. Well, the best compliments are the strength but McDonald’s must look into the reasons from the 6% poor feedback. As these customers can spread the negative word of mouth and that could be fetal for the brand as it has been seen that almost 50% of the people knew about the brand by word of mouth (from the question A). Q. C. Analysis: (Purpose of your visit) From the answers of the question C it is clear that almost 82% of the customers come in McDonald’s for relaxation and food so, the service must impress the customers so they can find this place relaxing and also a good place to eat. Q. D. Analysis: (How was the check in procedure?) According to the answers of the question D, it is clear that the check in procedure was excellent by 30% and good by 40% and the important part it poor according to 10% of the respondents. This 10 % people are the concern for the McDonald’s. They must know why the 10 % of the people feel they are not treated well at the time of check in. Q. E. Analysis: (How was the reception?) 46% thinks that the reception is excellent and 30 % think it is good and 16% think it is satisfactory and 8% think it is poor. There might be some personal perception of these 8% people who think the reception is poor. However, a great greeting is really important to make the new customers happy. Q. F. Analysis: (How was the food quality?) The food quality is excellent according to 36 % people and good by 40% of people and satisfactory by 20% of the respondents. From this feedback it is clear that most of the people think the food quality is good and satisfactory but may be it could be bit better. So, in this case McDonald’s must look into the freshness of the products. Q. G. Analysis: (How was the service delivery time?) The service delivery time is another factor to be taken very seriously. From the collected answer it is clear that only 24 % thinks that the service delivery time is excellent, 40% think it is good and the most important 16% of the people think it is poor!. This factor should be taken very seriously as customers hate to wait on the table for the longer time. McDonald’s must entertain the customers by some means so they would not be thinking that they are waiting for the food. For example a small gaming device can be provided to the customers so they can spend time if the delivery is late. Q. H. Analysis: (How do you rank the menu?) The menu is a very important factor. The menu must be done in such a way that the people would understand each and every item in the menu so they can order accordingly. However, from the collected answers 50% think the menu is good and 20% think it is excellent. 10 % think it is poor. From the feedbacks McDonald’s must check the menu again as many times it happens that some menu cards contain the old menus instead of the new menus. However, that would be simple mistake which can be rectified easily. Q. I. Analysis: (Would you recommend our branch to friends or family?) The most important factor is the recommendations and word of mouth promotions by the customers. From the question I it clear that major part of the customers are highly satisfied with the overall service quality of the McDonald’s, almost 76% people think they should recommend the brand to their friends and relatives. This is a great achievement. However 24% think they must never recommend the Brand to anyone. McDonalds must understand that these 24% people are not satisfied for some low quality services. The Aim should be to get 100% satisfaction from every customer. Q. J. Analysis: (How was the standard of the ambiences?) 50% of the customers think that the ambience in the McDonald’s is good and 30 % think it is excellent. Well, this must not be forgotten that McDonald’s is a fast food restaurant and the major part of the crowd is made of teenage crowd so this feedback it good enough for the McDonald’s. Q. K. Analysis: (Which is your best fast-food center?) Threats are the factors which come from the external market and that can pull the loyal customers away from the brand. Among different external threats one is the competition. In this case 36% of respondent thinks that KFC is the best, 24% think McDonald’s is best, and 20 % think Subway and Taco Bill is the best. From this answers it is clear that KFC is the main rival of the McDonald’s. And McDonald’s must check the new products of the KFC and also the services of the KFC to analyze the threat. Q. L. Analysis: (According to you which is important to meet your expectation?) The value added service can make some great change over the customer perceptions about the services. However, the general services and the food quality are the main factors which drive the brand. However, as a recommendation almost 40% respondents think that quick home delivery can make a huge difference in the service quality. 20% think the food quality must be good, 30% think improvement of the services in the stores can make a big difference and 10% think the menu must be changed. From these feedbacks it is clear that the home delivery and the in-store services can satisfy the customers From the above answers of the 50 people the perception about the McDonald’s has been clarified. In case of recommendation almost 38 people said that they would refer to their families of friend to come to the store but in other cases the public opinion is not showing the excellent service qualities in all the aspects. In case of competition the KFC is preferable than the McDonald’s as per the public pole where 18 have voted for KFC and 12 for McDonald’s. However, the overall result is good for the McDonald’s as far as the customer satisfaction is concern Chapter 4. Recommendations: After the survey there could be many recommendations. However, few recommendations are given below. 1. Treat the new customer with a great respect. 2. Commit what should be committed, specially the service delivery time. 3. Improve the home delivery service. 4. Maintain the customer database. 5. Maintain the hygiene within the store. 6. Help the new customer to find the best menu. Conclusion: From this descriptive paper is has been clear that the service quality and the customer satisfaction are the most important factors to be analyzed properly to run the successful business. In this particular case the help of the McDonald’s has been taken as the service provider. The survey method and the questionnaire were the basic tools for the assessments. After the vast discussion it can be concluded that, the customers are the real business generators for the organizations. And they want fast service, quality food and good ambiance with clean and proper hygiene within the store. The extra value added services are the additional service to be provided to the customers. However, the value addition services vary from customer to customer. The bottom line is while the customers are coming to the store they must feel they are the kings and the service people within the store must understand that and behave accordingly to serve the kings with the great pleasure. Appendix: The Questionnaire A. How did you get to know about us? 1. From advertising 2. Word of mouth 3. From a travel agency or catalog 4. From magazine B. How was the service at the table reservation? 1. Excellent. 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor C. Purpose of your visit: 1. Business 2. Meetings& events 3. Relaxation /wellness 4. Health & fitness D. How was the check in procedure? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor E. How was the reception? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor F. How was the food quality? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor G. How was the service delivery time? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor H. How do you rank the menu? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor I. Would you recommend our branch to friends or family? 1. Yes 2. No J. How was the standard of the ambiences? 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Satisfactory 4. Poor K. Which is your best fast-food center? 1. McDonald’s. 2. KFC. 3. Subway. 4. Taco Bill. L. According to you which is important to meet your expectations. 1. Enhancing in Home delivery 2. Improving quality of the food. 3. Improving the service in the store. 4. Improving the menu. References Aaker D A, Kumar V and Day G S, (2008). Marketing Research, 9Th Ed. New Jersey: Willy. Brooks Roger L. (2010). The Power of Loyalty: 10 Essential Steps to Build a Successful Customer Loyalty Strategy. New York: Entrepreneur Press. Butscher Stephan A. (2002). Customer loyalty programmes and clubs. ALDERSHOT: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Chaffey D and Smith Paul R. (2008). eMarketing eXcellence: planning and optimizing your digital marketing. Massachusetts: Butterworth-Heinemann. Cronin, Jr J J, Brady M K & Hult G T M (2000). Journal of Retailing, Volume 76(2) pp. 193– 218, ISSN: 0022-4359. Gilbert, Daniel T., R. Brian Giesler, and Kathryn A. Morris (1995), “When Comparisons Arise,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69 (2), 227-36. Grigoroudis, and Siskos, 2009. Customer Satisfaction Evaluation: Methods for Measuring and Implementing Service Quality. New York: Springer. Hollins B & Shinkins S. (2006). Managing service operations: design and implementation. London: SAGE. Lamb, 2009. MKTG. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Lancaster G & Reynolds F. (2005). Management of marketing. Massachusetts: Butterworth- Heinemann. Van Bennekom Frederick C. 2002 Customer surveying: a guidebook for service managers. Customer Service Press Williams, 1996. Preparing for project management: a guide for the new architectural or engineering project manager in private practice. Virginia: ASCE Publications Read More