CHAPTER 9COMMUNICATING FOR SERVICE

REPORTED BY: ROGER B. ALAIR JR

HOSPITALITY PRINCIPLE: GLUE EXPERIENCE ELEMENTS TOGETHER WITH

INFORMATION

“Like a human being a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a “nervous system”, to

coordinate its actions.”

-Bill Gates

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customer

unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. “

- Jeff Bezos

“Communicate everything you can to your associates. The more they know, the more they care.”

-Sam Walton

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

Communication is the art of transmitting • information, • ideas and • attitudes from one person to another.

Communication is the process of meaningful interaction among human beings

INFORMING THE GUEST

Since service is by definition intangible, the information that the hospitality organizations provides to help the guest makes the intangible tangible is a critical concern of the information system.

CUES COMMUNICATE

Regardless of the hospitality experience being offered, all informational cues in the service setting should be carefully thought out to communicate what the organization wants to communicate to the guest about the quality and value of the experience.

WHAT IS EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION?

Effective Communication . . . It is two way. It involves active listening. It reflects the accountability of the speaker

and listener. It utilizes feedback. It is clear. It achieves one or more of the goals of

communication

COMMUNICATION GOALS

WHY IS EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT?

Because we rely on Communication for everythingHave you ever

Received appreciation from your client? Given information to a customer or colleague? Received a pat at the back for excellent

performance? Smiled back at someone in response to a smile? Answered a telephone call? Written a report or letter to your customer?

All these can only be achieved through COMMUNICATION

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION

• Language • Values and beliefs • Sex/gender and age• Economic status• Educational level• Physical barriers• Attitude • Timing • Understanding of message• Trust

FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION

Most customers prefer face to face communication because it is the most effective.

These three basic factors in face-to-face communication carry the following percentages of impact in terms of effectiveness:

words                     7% of impact

tone of voice         38% of impact

body language      55% of impact

BENEFITS OF FACE-TO-FACE

Opens two-way communication Allows for immediate response to

questions, misinterpretations, feedback, etc.

Takes advantage of voice and body language to deepen understanding of what is being communicated.

WHEN TO USE FACE-TO-FACE

Face to face is used:when you have to share or give

information that will affect the customer

when the information being communicated needs immediate attention

when you have to answer questions directly and immediately

THE DO’S OF FACE-TO-FACE

DO give your customer your undivided

attention listen,

really listen, give full attention

give your customer honest, direct and comprehensive information

treat your customer’s ideas and concerns as critical and serious Don’t belittle their concerns

THE DON'TS OF FACE-TO-FACE

DON’T tell your customer “what”,

tell them “why, how, and the larger picture”

make the conversation one-way. Invite responses -- discuss and debate

answer the phone or take a call when a customer is in your office or when talking to a customer. If you really have to take the call apologize to the customer first before you do.

MEETING “KILLERS” -- WHY THEY FAIL

Poor Preparation Ignored agenda Poor time

management Lack of participation Strong personalities Lack of humor and

fun No/poor closing

ANSWERING THE CALL

Ensure that you don’t bang the receiver into anything when picking up the call. Your customer will hear if that happens and may

read meaning into it Answer the call within as few rings as

possible. Speak clearly, identify your company and

yourself. Don’t start speaking before you put the receiver

to your mouth.

ANSWERING THE CALL

Mind Your Manners!Don’t grab a ringing phone because it shows

impatience and lack of interest in the customer.And other customers may be watching you…

Don’t bang down the receiverDon’t stop in the middle of a conversation to

ask a colleague a questionTry and stop ‘multi-tasking’ whilst talking on

the telephone. This encourages you to find answers quickly and ensure that you give the caller 100% attention

ANSWERING THE CALL

Mind Your Manners!Try not to make comments about your

callers to other staff - sooner or later another customer will hear you!

Never, ever, talk about customers in a derogatory manner

ANSWERING THE CALL

• When you don’t know the answer…• Never say you don’t know• Be Honest and say ‘I don’t know but I’ll try and find out”• Ask if you may put the caller on hold or take his number

and promise to call him back

• When an absent colleague will know the answer... Always keep the customer informed as regards what you

are doing Explain how you are going to find out the information - if

necessary, tell the customer when you will call him back Never use negative language ie ‘um, er, I haven’t a clue’,

‘that’s not my job People are usually patient about waiting for an answer if

they know it will be the RIGHT answer

ANSWERING THE CALL Answering Two Calls

If you are on a long call and another line/two lines are ringing...

If another line rings persistently See if another colleague can answer the call Ask the person you are speaking to if they mind if you answer

the other telephone Politely explain to the second caller that you are busy with

another customer - take their details and promise to call them back as soon as possible

Go straight back to first caller Apologise for the interruption Thank him/her for their patience Continue with the enquiry REMEMBER to call back the second customer and apologise for

the delay

VOICE TIPS

Vary your tone – it makes it more pleasant to listen to you and you don’t sound monotonous.

Emphasize important words Use the ‘dramatic’ pause – ie. pause after

important points. This will stimulate attention and the customer

will pay closer attention.

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Reports Letters Newsletters Handwritten notes

BENEFITS OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Creates a permanent record Allows you to store information for future

reference Easily distributed All recipients receive the same information Necessary for legal and binding

documentation

DO’S AND DON’TS (WRITTEN)

DO -- realize it is not read as soon as it is received

DO -- make sure that there is enough time to prepare and send, and for the recipient to receive and digest

DO -- assess writing skills, if poor -- get help

DO’S AND DON’TS…

DO -- outline key points before producing a draft

DO -- always draft a written piece and then reduce all unnecessary language -- be brief

DO -- proof-read very carefully before any document is distributed

HOW CAN I CHECK IF MY CUSTOMER UNDERSTANDS?

Ask questions Use pauses Spell out difficult words Don’t speak too quickly or use idioms Summarise the information given at the end

of the conversation

IS YOUR COMMUNICATION CLEAR? HAVE YOU HIT YOUR TARGET?

In most forms of communication, confusion & frustration are caused by failing to be specific …..

Make it clear, brief and concise…..

HOW DO YOU ENSURE YOU UNDERSTAND?

Concentrate and avoid listening to other conversations at the desk

Acknowledge other waiting customers Hold your tongue - don’t ASSUME you know

what the customer wants or jump to conclusions

Don’t interrupt. Ask questions and use conversation cues - ‘Yes’, ‘I see’, ‘I understand’.

ADDING QUALITY & VALUE THROUGH INFORMATION

Organizations can use information in many ways to add quality and value to the service experience. Occasionally, information technology becomes so important that it can even transform the organization itself. Information can help employees personalize the service to make each customer, client, or guest feel especial

NEW INFORMATION FROM VIRTUAL WORDS.

Even more dramatic has been the technology that enhances information quality through the creation of virtual words, where customers can have an experience without leaving their homes. Rather than look at a two-dimensional picture, guest can take virtual tours on Web sites like in the travel agencies.

GETTING INFORMATION WHERE IT NEED TO GO

The challenge for hospitality managers, then, is to gather data that can inform, organize the data into information, and distribute that information to the people- both customers and employees-who need just, when they need it. Hospitality organizations that are effective in getting information to where it needs to be recognized that providing information is in itself a service to guests. Often as important as the primary service itself, and a necessity for employees.

INFORMATION AND SERVICE PRODUCT

Information about services offered is usually found within the environment rather than as part of the service product itself. Chapter 3 showed the many ways in which the hospitality organizations can plant cues or information in the service setting. Such “tangibilizing” leads guests to favorable judgments about the quality and value of the guest experience.

INFORMATION AS PRODUCT: FRESH POINT

A good illustration of a sophisticated information and decission system properly used is that developed by Orland’s Freshpoints.

GIVING EMPLOYEES THE INFORMATION THEY NEED

Employees also need relevant, timely, and accurate information's to do their jobs. Effectively. When you consider information to be service product, the employee is an internal customers for that product. For this internal customers, the services provide is the delivery of the information that the employees needs for making decisions about how to satisfy external customers. This information-as-product is provided to the internal customers by an employee or information-gathering unit acting s internal “service organization.”

INFORMATION AND THE SERVICE SETTING

The service setting and its features and aspects can provide several kinds of useful information for guest.

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE SERVICE

First the service setting can be a source of information related to the service itself, and that information must be efficiently and effectively provided. If the tangle products in the guest experience is a quick-service meal, the patron needs to know how to get quick service, which quick service meals available, and when the meal is ready.

THE ENVIRONMENT AS INFORMATION SYSTEM

In a larger sense, the service environment itself can be thought of as an information system of sorts by the way it is themed and laid out. Not only does the environment provide information on the location of various points of interest, but the environment itself becomes part of the service and therefore influences the costumers perceptions of the service.

CUSTOMER-PROVIDED INFORMATION

Guests do not need to wait for companies to provide information to them. There are now many sources of information's available to costumers to help evaluate a hospitality experience before they decide to have it.

INFORMATION AND THE DELIVERY SYSTEM

Finally, and perhaps most obvious, information is required to make the service and any accompanying tangible product are delivered to the costumer. Here again, the nature of the service product and the delivery system unique to that product and guest will determine what the information system ideally should be.

REALLY KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS

Many hotels seek to provide more than just simple clean room, and their information systems are designed to provide this extra level of guest service.

DELIVERING FRESHNESS

In restaurant, the information system can improve service delivery by including in database information about the freshness of the food products used to prepare the meals. Labels and date of production or purchase on food products “day dots” on fresh-food items, and online inventory system are all examples of how an information system can be designed to ensure that the chefs have the information they need to make right decisions about using or not using the available ingredients to produce the fresh meal they arte responsible for preparing.

INFORMATION ON SERVICE QUALITY

Perhaps on service quality uses of service delivery information system is in the systematic gathering of information on service quality. Acquiring the information, organization, organizing it into a usable form, and disseminating it to managers and service provides is critical to ensuring that the service delivery and other problems are defined and resolved.

INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE

The information system can be used to ensure that all the people involved in delivering the service have the information they need to do their jobs in the best possible way.

HIGH TECH BECOMES HIGH TOUCH

In many other situations, information system make it possible for the organization and its employees to provide service to customers quickly and efficiently.

TECHNOLOGIES OF EXPERTISE

In many ways information technology now allows the hospitality organization to provide expert skills without paying experts try to provide them. A concierge who knows every good restaurants in the town or how to get last-minute tickets to sold-out play is a valuable hotel asset and is generally paid accordingly. Acquiring this level of expertise takes time and experience, and the organization and the guest pay for that experience.

CROSS-SELLING

Even better from an organizational perspective, is that having the information system set up in this manner allows the organization to cross-sell its other products and services.

THE FRONT AND THE BACK OF THE HOUSE

the hospitality service delivery information system ties together the front of the house with the back of the house. Coordination between those people and operations serving the guest and those people and operations serving those who serves the guest is critical in providing a seamless experience for the guest.

POINT-OF-SALES SYSTEM

Point-of-Sales(POS) systems have been developed to help managers, servers, and cooks, do their jobs better. The server enters the order on a touch screen or handheld wireless touch screens device, and its transmitted back to the cook station for preparation.

DAILY COUNT

Another illustration of how an information system can improve experienced for customers and performance results for the company daily count system, like the one used at Disney.

THE INFORMATION FLOW BETWEEN LEVELS

The last major requirement of the information system, as it relates to the service delivery system, is providing for information flows across organizational levels. This level-to-level flow can be as simple as an employees newsletter or a routing slip, or as complicated as an online, real-time, data-retrieval and decision system.

DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM (DSS)

System that go beyond getting information to the right person at the right time, and actually help improve business decisions. With computers collecting so much information across so many aspects of the hospitality business many companies are finding that they now have vats database with information on customers and their behaviors.

USING DATA TO DRIVE DECISIONS

In general, DSS collect the present information. It is up to the user to ask the right questions. Capturing the power of information system and DSS to improve an organizations Decisions making capabilities requires gathering the right data, finding the right experts, and using the right model.

MODELING DECISIONS

Some decisions can be modeled because the environment in which they occur is generally predictable. Since situations that call for such decisions recur frequently, it is worth the organizations time and trouble to develop a mathematical model describing the situations and to discover the appropriate decision rule.

SATISFYING ANALYSIS

Another way to use available data is to statistically analyze it to detect relationships. Statistically data analysis can either to test certain expectations or be exploratory in nature.

DATA MINING

When companies have massive datasets, completely analyzing the data is simply not feasible. Often, companies do not have or expertise to conduct sophisticated statistical analysis to take advantage of the true potential their huge data stores provide. The process of data mining has emerged to help resolve these issues.

MARKET SEGMENTATION

By finding out more about individual customers, companies have found that they can customize their products to serve customers more personally. Rather than treating all costumers the same, there is an increases emphasis on relationship making. Or market-segment-of-one concept, which has been made possible through the increasing power of computers to store, analyze, and interpret large quantities of information.

IDENTIFYING AND TARGETING YOUR BEST AND WORST CUSTOMERS

Just as market segmentation help identify the different preferences and purchasing behaviors of costumers, gathering customers information can be used to identify how profitable each customer is. The fact is that not all customers are equally profitable.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERS

Internet-based program allow costumers to make information about themselves available to companies and each other through collaborative filtering and social networking sites. Collaborative filters can be found on many Web sites, like Amazon, eBay, and iTunes, where customer patterns are gathered and organized.

PROBLEMS WITH INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Although no hospitality organization is going to give up its information system, these systems have potential and actual problems associated with them. One is Information Overload the tendency of the system to produced and transmit too much data.

FOCUSING ON THE NUMBERS

A second with the information system is the tendency to get tied up in numbers. Since computers excel in transmitting organizing and analyzing numbers, much information is provided in numeric form.

BAD INFORMATION

Related to the problem of falling inlove with numbers is thee third problem with information system: that of assuming that the numbers are accurate when they may not be.

MAINTAINING SECURITY

A fourth problem with information system is security, or maintaining the integrity of the data base. An organizations information system must be protected so that another organizations cannot access its confidential or proprietary data, or worse yet, crash the system or destroy the data.

VALUE VS COST

Another problem is determining the true value and true cost of the information. Even though it often seem like it in this era of instant access to endless amounts of information on the Web, information is not really free

LEARNING THE SYSTEM

The final problem with information system involves the cost of learning how to use the new system and evolving tool that becomes available. People with decision making responsibilities are the very group who need to learn how to use the organizations information system.

ORGANIZATION AS AN INFORMATION SYSTEM

Must consider how all these network participants are linked together along with what information each participants needs provide to other and what information each participant needs to have provided by others.

INTEGRATED SYSTEM

Retail stores illustrate how organizations can design their entire physical and record-keeping setup around an integrated systems. This system has structure and, to gain the full benefit of the information system and data base, the organization designs its other functions to accommodate the requirements of that structure.

THE PRIMACY OF INFORMATION

The logic of organizing around the availability and flow of information changes the way in which jobs are organized and task are performed. It may even drive changes in the sequence of operations and the organization of department units.

INCREASING CAPACITY

When the organization must increase its information-handling capacity, its system designers must consider the ways in which information is transmitted across the organization. The system will need to be designed in a way to filter and analyze data so that unnecessary readily usable format.

REDUCING NEED

An alternative to building additional information-processing capacity into the organization is reducing the need to handle information. One major way to do this is to Create self-contained decision making units with employees ho are empowered and enable to make decision about their areas of responsibilities.

EVERYBODY ONLINE

The most effective strategy for increasing the information flown is to give all employees access to a company internet with immediate and easy access to the corporate database. Increasingly, rather than sending masses of hard copy information through the traditional communication channels, organizations are putting information online so that any employees with a computer connection can ask for it.

IMPLICATIONS OF SERVICE

The impact that these communication system have on empowering frontline employees to do their job better, faster, and cheaper is astonishing and will grow even more so in the future. These changes have important implication for middle managers and supervisors in the hospitality organization, who historically were responsible for transmitting information from senior managers to frontline employees.