The Role of Mystery Guests in Delivering Quality Service - Case Study Example

The role of mystery guests in delivering quality service for the tourism and hospitality industry of the of the Number Date Introduction The hospitality industry covers a large space within the service industry, which includes lodging, event and transportation management. To a great extent, it comprises various organizations that alone or collectively provide services like, quality food, accommodations, tours and travel planning. However, hospitality is not simply about amusement parks, hotels or restaurants; instead, it has a vast scope that involves airline, resort, entertainment shows, trade fairs and various other facilities. It is one such industry that earns revenue from leisure time and disposable income of consumers. Hence, its functioning is a lot more complicated than it appears to be (Mei, Dean and White 136-143). The following sections will involve in-depth explanation of ways to deliver; measure and manage service quality in the hospitality industry. Thereafter, existing practices within the hospitality industry will be explained. Following that, critical analysis of the role of mystery shoppers and their contribution to the international hospitality industry will be done. Delivering in the hospitality industry Three factors are very important for a successful hospitality organization: delivering quality service, measuring quality of the service and manage service delivery. In the modern business world, quality is a customer-driven concept, which is either to meet or exceed customer expectations (Powers and Barrows 16-25). It is no more about performance of the hospitality staff and associates. In the market place, ultimate evaluation of quality can be done only from a customer’s perspective. The quality factor and its delivery in the hospitality industry are of great importance. With presence of highly competitive marketplace, over time, quality of service has improved tremendously (Akbaba 170-192). There is nothing more challenging than achieving consistency and quality across all elements of consumer experience. Optimum service can only be provided when the organization recognizes its essential components. For this purpose, many organizations are undertaking steps such as, Total Quality Management. An important aspect of delivering quality service is the cost of quality. Cost of quality is not the price that an organization pays while providing service at a higher level; instead, it is a measure of how little it costs to the organization compared to that involved in neglecting quality (Jeong and Oh 375-391). Measuring service quality It is often quite difficult to measure quality of service while accounting for the consumer’s point of view. According to Lawrence and Reeves (324-326), determining and measuring customer expectations is a complex task because customers are often not aware of their expectations distinctly, particularly with infrequent purchased products/services. Hence, service quality can be measured by organizations by employing various tools such as, customer research like, feedback and surveys, customer complaint policy, market research, social media sites and tourism review sites. 1. Customer research: Customers are the reason that an organization exists. Hence, in order to bring ultimate satisfaction to them, it is necessary to study their needs and demands. Identifying consumer’s preferences allows an organization to tailor the marketing strategies accordingly (Jain and Singh 34-46). 2. Customer complaint policy: The customer complaint policy is helpful in improvising services with their valuable suggestions and feedbacks. It helps an organization to resolve drawbacks in an efficient and effective manner (Heung and Lam 283-289). 3. Market research: Market research plays a pivotal role in the process of measuring quality of the service. Several market research techniques are being implemented to gather information on quality, such as, mystery shopping, surveys, direct observations and so on and so forth (Malhotra 1208-1213). 4. Social media and tourism review sites: Internet, despite being a very informal source, provides reliable information about customer’s expectations and experiences to a great extent in form of online reviews. As these reviews obtain mass exposure and are read by several potential customers, they are regarded to be of utmost importance by the organization (Thevenot 287-289). Managing Service quality Serving guests and managing products are very different from each other and hence, require different management principles and styles. In order to manage service quality, it is quite crucial to understand experience of the consumer, which also includes analysis of customer’s demographic and psychological profile (Zeithaml 67-85). Various companies use different strategies for the purpose of improving and maintaining service quality. Successful companies realize the dynamic impact of customer satisfactory quality on its business. Thus, quality standards are of greatly necessary to them. Many organizations are also adopting TQM technique (Coyle and Dale 141-153). Total Quality Management is a continual improvement process where vertical and horizontal functional areas are integrated so as to fulfil consumer expectation and ways to achieve or exceed the same. The concept of quality management has existed for many years, but earlier it only meant to ensure that the product met specifications. Eventually, it became more statistical in nature. Over time as competition grew, quality management was implemented across every functional area in the entire organization, as opposed to only the production process; this led to evolution of Total Quality Management (Powell 15-37). This process resulted in overall satisfaction of customers as well as employees of the organization as without maintaining quality standards, it is very difficult for a business to survive. In order to motivate organizations into implementing as well as managing quality standards in its services, organization are often presented with awards and certificates related to quality of service (Hellsten and Klefsjö 238-244). Practices within hospitality industry The hospitality industry has been through a major transformation in last few years. It has been continuously directing its efforts towards reducing ecological footprint by meeting demand of consumers in an eco-friendly manner. Major conferences and meets of the hospitality industry stress on issues related to resource conservation and its sustainability. Apart from this, various changes have also been made so as to identify needs and expectations of the consumers, keeping their experiences, tastes and preferences in view, for providing them with ultimate satisfaction. Consumers are now treated as more than a mere walking money yielder. In the modern market environment, inadaptability of any service has been dissolved; products are customized in nature and tailor-made as per consumer’s taste and budget. A few years back, due to rigid nature of services, even employees had to greatly suffer, leading to high employee turnover, which in turn increased cost to the company (Minghetti 141-152). With growing fluidity in the service industry, organizations now impart their employees with best training so as to upgrade their skill and knowledge; long work hours has been converted into shifts so that employees do not suffer from excessive pressure; health and safety of employees are taken into consideration; refresher courses are provided to them; and several other practices have been included for the purpose of employee retention. Therefore, the industry is extremely focused on environment footprint, employee satisfaction and customized consumer solutions (Dazhong 18-32). Environment footprint Since the 1970s, demand for natural resources has been growing tremendously; and as per the current scenario, this is exceeding the limit of resources that can be extracted from the earth. This is high time to take actions towards conservation of resources, before they deplete to extinction. Environmental or ecological footprint is an accounting measure, which determines proportion of land and water that the human population is consuming to meet daily needs. This includes land for roads, buildings, water for transportation purpose, ecosystem absorbing various wastes exerted and so on and so forth (Global Footprint Network, “Footprint Basics – Overview”). The hospitality industry has taken into account a comprehensive list of various practices towards reducing ecological footprint, some of which are (Minghetti 141-152): Purchase of appliances that are fuel efficient and eco-friendly in nature. Implementation of commercial compost collection programs. Automatic energy saving equipments, repair and preventive measures are being implemented. Linen and towel reusability program Replacing plastic with paper made bags and implementing other recyclable programs. Use of non-toxic fluids for cleaning purpose like, white vinegar, baking soda, borax and alcohol. Employee satisfaction Employees are the greatest asset for an organization. They are the main reason for workplace productivity. It is impossible for a business enterprise to achieve its goals without right set of employees. Even if the business enterprise has the right set of people, failing to retain them might prove to be a costly affair. Employee satisfaction is a measure of satisfaction and content that employees derive from their work environment, co-workers, training facilities, organization policies along with other factors. Contemporary enterprises incorporate different types of employee engagement programs, compensation plans, training and refresher courses in order to motivate employees and enhance their skills (Wisegeek, “What is employee satisfaction?”). The main purpose of assigning considerable significance to employee satisfaction is to reduce employee turnover and cost of training incurred for the same. A set of satisfied employees enhance productivity of the enterprise and quality of the service provided, resulting in greater customer satisfaction. Some renowned methods like, face-to-face interaction and feedback mechanism, help in figuring out requirements of the employees as compared to that already offered to them by the organisation (Koys 101-114). Customised consumer solution In modern era, customer satisfaction plays a major role in the hospitality industry. It affects survival of an enterprise to a great extent. So, nature of products and services has shifted from rigid structures to customised forms. The organisations no more use push-selling techniques as they choose to provide solutions that comply with consumer specifications. Customer service is a system of activities that comprises customer support systems, complaint processing, speed of complaint processing, ease of reporting complaint and friendliness exhibited while reporting complaint. The friendly attitude and courteous behaviour of employees create a lasting impression on the customer. Since every consumer along with their need is unique, it is quite essential for the service provider to understand the specifications considering demographic profile, psychological factors and lifestyle factors of the consumer. For example, traditional hotels have been converted into resorts with spa and gym facilities or into heritage hotels in order to enable consumer experience rich culture of the location. In present competitive era, every organisation is trying to provide a little extra to the consumer so as to earn their long-term loyalty (Luo and Bhattacharya 1-18). Often customers fail to provide with proper feedback regarding changes or improvements required in service and quality offered; as a result, the organisation gathers an ambiguous response, which hardly contributes anything substantial. In such case, they take help of ‘Mystery shoppers’, a very prominent market research tool. Practice of mystery shopping Mystery shopping is an extensive marketing tool used by marketing research companies all over the world. This tool is very useful in cases where customer satisfaction surveys do not provide sufficient information regarding flaws in service providing methods. Mystery shoppers, also known as mystery guests, are researchers trying to experience every aspects of a value proposition as a typical guest. It is a participative observation method, where researchers act as general consumers so as to observe the process quality used to deliver services. Mystery guests perform specific tasks like, product purchasing, asking queries and filing complaints and subsequently providing a detailed feedback regarding their experiences. This provides a better insight of an ongoing process and facilitates a detailed and objective feedback (Wilson 721-734). Customer satisfaction surveys provide information only after the service has been availed; whereas, mystery shopping concerns experiencing the service as it unfolds, where the emphasis is on what is being done and what is not. It is a long-established research technique and is used extensively in many sectors such as, financial services, retail, transport, manufacturing, as well as in government organisations. Enterprises employ mystery shopping technique for the purpose of research on their competitors’ products, their own sales staff and often to ensure that customers are getting fair treatment (Mann, “Best Practices in Tourism & Hospitality Training”). Working method of mystery guest When an organisation decides to undertake mystery shopping, appropriate planning is required in order to execute the whole process. The organisation usually hires a mystery shopping company, who later on submit all details collected from the mystery shopper. The mystery shopper provides information about overall efficiency of a service delivery process, in terms of employee’s behaviour, service offering skills, environment and so on and so forth. All mystery shopping experiences do not involve purchasing activity (Kocevar-Weidinger 28-43). For example, a mystery guest paying visit to an entertainment park will observe employee efficiency at service counters, behaviour of employees in query handling, quality of food and beverages, cleanliness of the place and report the overall experience to the organisation. There are many methods of undertaking mystery shopping activity (Kocevar-Weidinger 28-43): 1. The role of an anonymous shopper, where the shopper purchases product, asks about after sale service, observes sales person’s behaviour and inform about it to his client. 2. The role of mystery caller or mystery e-mail methods for examining telephone or online customer service facilities. 3. Other ways involve enacting the role of mystery patient or mystery passenger. Benefits and uses of mystery guests An aptly tailored mystery shopping program results in serving immediate benefits, which can be accrued for long period. These benefits vary from business to business as they are utilized for a variety of different purposes. The greatest advantage of mystery shopping program is its flexible nature; the program can be designed in any format, irrespective of business needs (Jankal and Jankalová 45-49). Some of the other associated benefits that an enterprise enjoys are determination of customer satisfaction and improvement in service quality; customer’s perspective towards business helps in enhancing profit. Through mystery guests, a business can determine its strengths and weaknesses; gain awareness regarding employee integrity; and review quality control techniques of the company (Wilson 414-420). With a rise in demand of mystery shopping service, a number of companies are coming up as a provider. Organisations like, Coyle Hospitality Group, SGS and Financial Services Authority (FSA), deliver mystery shopping services in the international market. Coyle Hospitality Group is a market leader in designing and implementing programs for mystery shopping, quality benchmarking, brand compliance, and market research (Coyle Hospitality Group, “Experience + Trust + Relevance”). SGS perform tasks such as, retail and hotel mystery shopping, that includes making an enquiry and registering for membership, visiting to dine and experience entertainment and many more (SGS, “Mystery Shopping”). In case of FSA, the organization performs mystery shopping activities that involves financial services sector (Financial Service Authority, “A Guide to Mystery Shopping in Retail Financial Services”). Drawbacks of Mystery Shopping In the hospitality industry, companies enjoy ample benefits of mystery guest services; yet, the research technique suffers from certain drawbacks. They are: 1. The program is considered relatively expensive when too many locations are involved. 2. The program provides a very limited view because of being more objective in nature, thereby often missing out on the subjective feel (Charnwood, “Mystery Shopping”). 3. The mystery guests are usually professional researchers or interviewers, who can cover a number of locations in a very short time; then again, too many programs affect judgement of interviewers 4. Mystery shopper programs do not exactly represent the customer’s perception as it is more focused on the employee and his/her adherence to set policies (Ng Kwet Shing and Spence 343-353) Conclusion and recommendations In summary, hospitality industry constitutes a potpourri of cultures, places and food. It delivers services as well as experiences to customers directly. To enhance this experience, this industry has undergone immense amount of change over time. Presently, it is a billion dollar industry with an integrated approach towards delivering the best quality service that either meets or exceeds customers’ expectations. The industry has incorporated techniques such as, Total Quality Management and Mystery Shopper programs, for the purpose of understanding and delivering better services without compromising with its cost factor (Victorino 555-576). As far as recommendations are concerned, it can be suggested that even though mystery shopping technique is quite familiar, yet it is not a perfect solution to bridge the gap between customer perception and service quality. Alternatively, organisations can make use of two or more techniques together so as to understand needs and preferences of the consumers and subsequently convert it into a service. Works Cited Akbaba, Atilla. 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