3.2 Characteristics of Service
In this part, the characteristics of service will be illustrated. Schmenner (1995) mentions five characteristics of service: Intangibility, Inability to inventory, Service production and consumption often physically together, Easy entry, and Outside influences; and the author will illustrate the characteristics mentioned with the real examples. First, for the intangibility, Kotler and Armstrong (1994, p.92) define service as “Any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”. Although services may be associated with the other physical product, they are often intangible which means they cannot be touched physically. For example, when a customer contacts a travel agent, the actual product will be the tour information provided, knowledge offered for helping the customer to decide on a suitable package, and finishes the booking for the customer, while the service is within the delivery of information, knowledge, which can not be reached, is the entire experience; second, service is of the characteristic with the inability to inventory. In case of physical products, their owners can count the number of items remaining on their stores. However, service do not have such ability to inventory (Schmenner, 1995) because it is perishable, which means it can not be stored and the revenue for that time period will lost if it can not be sold at certain time period (Bowie and Buttle, 2004). For example, a waiter’s service is required only if a guest walks into the restaurant to consume. If the restaurant does not have any guests, the service from all the staff can not be stored and the wage of the staff and the corresponding revenue will be lost, while it implies that the management of demand is very important in case of offering service (Schemenner, 1995); third, service production and consumption are often carried out physically together, therefore, inseparability. Since a service will not start unless it has been demanded, the production and consumption of a service is usually at the same place and at the same time, hence, they are inseparable in nature (Bowie and Buttle, 2004). For example, a hotel receptionist provides check in, check out, and information services to customers when they approach the counter. Although some preparations are necessary beforehand - for instance, room reservations – most of the services are produced at the point when the customer is actually at the counter. Therefore, quality service such as efficiency, courtesy and professionalism will be provided by the receptionist at the same time with the customers doing the enquiry (Schmenner, 1995); after that, easy entry is another service characteristic. Most service operations require very little initial investments, as they do not need factories to be built or proprietary technology to be acquired (Schmenner, 1995). Some services, such as online travel booking websites, do not even require a physical office. Therefore, it is easy for new players to enter the industry easily, and competition is very intense. Existing online travel agents must respond quickly to new competition and offer suitable promotions to retain customers. Moreover, Kotler et al. (2006) mentions the special features of the service offering can be easily copied by the other competitors within the same industry; and then for the outside influences, there are many outside forces within the macro environment, Political, Economical, Social and Technological, such as the advance of technology, the change of governmental regulations, and fluctuation of energy price, which can directly and indirectly affect the services. For example, the airline industry had to increase their fuel surcharges earlier this year due to high energy prices. This reduced the number of customers and as a result, both airlines and travel agencies had to cut the cost, and the average number of service staff might be decreased, and the size, structure and the quality of service might be affected (Schmenner, 1995). Besides these service characteristics from Schmenner (2005) above mentioned, Bowie and Buttle (2004) state another important service characteristics, variability. The service outcomes can be largely different while the service is carried out to the same customers, by the same staff, same physical environment at different situation, that’s means it is highly variable and service is necessary to be controlled consistently from the operation and also the management.
3.3 Service Provider Evaluation
In this section, Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel will be selected for experiencing the customer service, a mystery shopping exercise is conducted in order to list the indicators of service quality from the customer perspective, elaborate the actually delivery of the service experiences, and finally evaluate the service from this selected sample.
Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel is an international hotel located in TST, and it only takes 40 minutes by taxi from the Hong Kong International Airport to the hotel. In addition to regular hotel room accommodations, they provide banquet and conference facilities for customers, for both leisure and business travelers to Hong Kong. Recently, one of my friends recommended the author to go to their restaurant, Café Rendezvous, for their buffet dinner. This restaurant serves lunch and dinner buffet daily, at a price of HK$398.00 plus 10% service charge per person.
The reason the author select this sample for this assessment is that a high quality of service is expected for the author before visiting the restaurant, since the Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel is a famous five-star hotel. However, the actual experience was contrary to my expectations.
From the customer perspective, there are certain expectations in the areas of communication, service level, competence and responsiveness. First, for the communication: when a customer approaches the counter and provides the reservation name, the staff is expected to greet the guest with the guest’s appropriate title and last name. The staff should behave with common courtesy: for example, he or she should maintain eye contact with the guest during the conversation and put on a smile when greeting the guest. Moreover, the staff should try to minimize the waiting time as much as possible, since the guests would feel that the staff is wasting their time and therefore not very professional; Second, for the service level: after the staff has led the guests to their table, he or she should serve the guest at once: for example, the staff can ask the customer what kind of drinks the guests would like to have, and whether they would prefer the buffet or order from the a-la-carte menu; after that, for the competence: the staff needs to be on constant alert to check if the customers have finished the food on their plates, and clear the table quickly. When they place the utensils on the table, they should make the least amount of noise, so that customers feel comfortable and not disturbed during the meal. The staff should also replenish the food at the buffet tables efficiently, in order to keep the containers filled all the time. Furthermore, they should constantly check to ensure that hot dishes are hot enough, and cold dishes are cold enough; And then, for the responsiveness: when customers ask for drinks or want to settle the bill, the staff should give prompt attention, instead of making the guests wait and as a result feel that no one is there to serve them. At some restaurants, when customers call for the staff to do something, he or she may be busy with other tasks during that time, and they may only respond to the guest but take no further action after that. This behaviour would give the impression that they have a poor service attitude. The service employees are necessary to have professional service. They should be courteous, and maintain a smile when answering the customers. They should project a clean and tidy image, and show that they are willing and eager to serve the guests. Everything they do should be related to serving restaurant customers. They should not simply stand around in the restaurant to daydream, chat with other colleagues, or play with them in the restaurant.
The service level of Café Rendezvous offering is expected as described above by the author. However, after the author finished consumption experience, there are none of the points were met. The following are all the problems with the restaurant: 1) when the author approached the reception desk at the restaurant, the last name and telephone number of author is provided clearly. But the staff took a long time to find the corresponding reservation. The author hence had to repeat my name several times before the staff finally managed to locate my booking. The staff did not smile or make eye contact with the author during our conversation, and actually behaved in a rude manner; 2) after the author and friends were seated at the table, the author has waited for an extremely long time and nobody came to serve. It took one of the waiters at least 10 minutes to come to the author table to serve, and a further 5 minutes before our glasses of water finally arrived; 3) when the staff put down the glasses, he kept hitting the other utensils on the table, which made loud noises. This happened more than once and is unacceptable service; 4) on the buffet tables, there were many empty containers which no one cared to refill, and the customers had to stand in front and wait for a long time for new food; Whenever the waiter is called, he always replied with “Please wait!” but didn’t show intention to come to the author’s table. The author had to call him several times before he would come to serve.
The following table summarizes the evaluation.
Parasuraman et al. (1985) state the gap-model with four main gaps on the service quality, which are 1) The gap between what customers expect from a service and managers perception of customer expectation; 2) The gap between management perception of customer expectation and service quality specifications; 3) The gap between service quality specifications and the actual service delivery; and 4) The gap between service delivery and external communications. In this case, the gap 3 and the gap 4 of the selected sample are quite large according to this mystery experience. For the gap 3, the selected sample – Café Rendezvous is of content service quality specifications, which is with high quality tangible equipment such as the decoration, cutlery, design, while the actual service delivery is not up to the standard they are supposed to have. And for the gap 4, as above mentioned, the service delivery is not up to the supposed standard, and the market image of the Café Rendezvous created by the external communication department is a grand restaurant from a five star hotel.
4.0 Conclusion
In conclusion, the service industry is very different from the manufacturing industry. Service operations can be classified into a matrix of four quadrants, depending on the level of labour intensity and customer interaction. In addition, services also have distinct characteristics which require different management and operational control. The service experience from the selected sample of this mystery visiting was not professional and the author did not feel welcomed as a customer. The service is lower than the expectation while the guests are paying high price for their experience. However, the service quality at Café Rendezvous is definitely not up to standard. Even though Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel has spent a lot of money in marketing and advertisements, such a poor service level severely damages the hotel image, and their reputation suffers as a result. From this case, it appears that that tourism and hospitality is a complex industry, and that businesses must provide a high level of service quality to meet customer expectations.
5.0 ReferencesBowie, D., Buttle, F., 2004. Hospitality Marketing – An introduction. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
Kotler, P., Bowen, J.T., Makens, J.C., 2006. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism. 4th eds. New Jersey: Pearson International Edition.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. AND Berry, L.L., 1985. A conceptual model of service quality and it’s implications for future research. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 253-68.
Schmenner, R.W., 1995. Service operations management. London: Pitman.
