Among the service encounters a hotel customer experiences are checking in, being taken to the room by a bell person, eating a restaurant meal etc as shown in the figure. It is in these encounters that the customer receives an overall view of the organizations service quality and encounter contributes to customer satisfaction and willingness to do business with the organization again. As for the company, each encounter represents an opportunity to prove its potential as a quality service provider and to increase customer loyalty.
Some services have few service encounters and others have many. Mistakes or problems that occur in the early levels of the service cascade can e critical because failure at one point results in greater risk of dissatisfaction in the long run. MARRIOT Hotels learned this through their extensive customer survey to determine what service element contributes to customer loyalty. They found that 4 out of 5 factors came into play in the first 10 minutes of the guest’s stay.
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