瑞士留学生酒店管理本科预科毕业论文：An Analysis of Service Recovery in the Man

瑞士留学生酒店管理本科预科毕业论文：An Analysis of Service Recovery in the Management of Shangri-la Hotel in Shanghai

 

 

Abstract: Service recovery is one of important ways to obtain customer loyalty and enhance competitiveness. At present, it’s more and more competitive in China's hotel industry market. It’s extremely necessary for the high-class hotels to carry out the service recovery in order to narrow the gap with the international hotel and earn its own place in the fierce competition. In this paper, by taking the example of Shangri-la Hotel in Shanghai, the current conditions of service recovery and its existing problems are thoroughly analyzed. To solve these problems, a series of feasible strategies on service recovery are put forward from two perspectives including the external and internal service recovery which are supposed to be valuable for the promotion 摘要：服务补救是获取客户的忠诚度和提高竞争力的重要途径。目前，它在中国的酒店业市场竞争越来越激烈。为贯彻以服务补救拉近与万国酒店在激烈的竞争中赢得自己的位置的酒店是非常必要的。在本文中，以香格里拉大酒店在上海的例子，服务补救的现状及其存在的问题进行了深入分析。为了解决这些问题，一系列对服务补救的可行策略是把从外部和内部服务补救这应该是有价值的提升两个角度提出了

 

 

1. Introduction

 

Since joining the WTO, China has pledged that the foreign capitals can own a majority of shares in the joint venture hotels after the hotel industry enters the market, the access of which is no longer restricted in 4 years and the hotel can be exclusively owned by foreign capitals. This commitment has speeded up the pace of the international high-class hotels to grab the Chinese market. At the same time the hotel industry in China is developing rapidly. Therefore, the domestic hotel industry falls in intense competition. As the product in hotels which has the characteristics of differentiation, the synchronicity of production and consumption and perishability, service proves to be the most frequent aspect that mistakes are taken and customers have complaints. So it becomes urgent to know how to avoid the mistakes as much as possible and improve the satisfaction of customers so that the hotel can gain a foothold in the tough business environment. In this paper, the service recovery in Shangri-la Hotels of Shanghai is thoroughly studied on to make a complete analysis. This study aims to investigate the application of service recovery in the management of Shangri-la Hotel in Shanghai. To achieve this, first, Tax and Brown’s definition of service recovery is examined and our working definition in our study is illustrated. And the necessity of service recovery in Shangri-la Hotel in Shanghai is considerably described. And then the service recovery in first-class hotels in China and its problems are carefully analyzed. At last, some feasible suggestions are put forward to promote the level of service in first-class hotels, their profitability and competitive ability and narrow down the gap between the domestic hotels and international hotels in terms of service quality.加入WTO以来，中国已承诺，外资拥有多数股权的合资宾馆酒店业进入市场后，它的访问不再局限于4年，酒店可以通过外资独家所有。这一承诺加快了国际高档酒店的步伐，抓住中国市场。同时在中国的酒店业发展迅速。因此，国内酒店业在激烈竞争的瀑布。在酒店的分化特点的产品，生产和消费的同步性和易逝性，服务被证明是最常见的方面，错误是采取和客户投诉。因此迫切需要知道如何避免错误尽可能地提高客户满意度，酒店可以在激烈的竞争环境中立足。在本文中，在上海香格里拉酒店的服务补救是彻底的研究做一个完整的分析。本研究旨在探讨在上海香格里拉酒店管理服务回收中的应用。要做到这一点，首先，税收和服务补救的棕色的定义是研究和我们的研究工作定义说明。并在上海香格里拉饭店服务补救的必要性，详细介绍。然后在中国及其问题的一流饭店服务补救是仔细分析。最后，提出了提升一流的酒店服务水平的一些切实可行的建议，他们的盈利能力和竞争能力，缩小国内酒店在服务质量方面的国际酒店的差距。

 

 

2. Literature Review

 

The service recovery is studied from different perspectives. The term of service recovery was first put forward by Hart et al. (1990). According to them, service recovery starts with identifying the problem and then service companies must act fast to solve these problems. And they also put forward some effective ways of service recovery. For companies, for instance, they can use role playing to practice how to deal with the customers’ complaints. For employees, they have the responsibilities “to act on their beliefs-to make phone calls, credit accounts, or send flowers”. According to Cronroos (1982), the service recovery is equal to complaints handling which is the action or reflection taken by the service offers due to the mistakes or errors they have made. When the service failure happens, it will lead to the customers’ dissatisfaction directly or indirectly and then the enterprises will handle their complaints. However, in the real life the majority of dissatisfied customers won’t make any complaints initiatively. It is statistically reported that there are only 4% of customers who are dissatisfied with products or service will make complaints. According to Bitner et.al. (1994), there are five reasons for this: (1) the customers think that the company is irresponsible which results in their lost of trust in it; (2) customers don’t want to wait or face with the certain irresponsible service offer; (3) customers don’t know exactly their own rights and the duties of the company; (4) customers don’t want to spend their time on complaints; (5) customers are worried that they will get worse service after complaints. Therefore, Bitneretal insists that the complaints handling is just part of service recovery which also includes the continuity and improvement for customers’ complaints handling. Tax & Brown (1998) defined the service recovery as the sum of a series of activities jointly taken part in by all the staff in an organization to compensate for customers due to their mistakes in the service system so as to maintain long-term relationships with customers and continuously improve this system. For them, effective service recovery is playing an important role in maintaining customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty which are key points of a company’s profitability. Else, Hoffman et al. (1990) did an empirical study to identify 11 unique failure types and eight different recovery strategies by the use of the critical incident technique (CIT) based on 373 critical incidents collected from restaurant customers. And customer’s satisfaction is also studied after the service recovery. Satisfaction with service recovery leads to a higher level of trust and the level of loyalty.(Ah-Keng & Elizabeth, 2006) 

 

 

Although service recovery has been studied on its application, related strategies and customers’ emotions and satisfaction, the emotions of the employees in the process of recovering their service failure are almost neglected. In this paper, the service recovery is divided into the internal and external service recovery. The external service recovery mainly refers to the recovery for the dissatisfaction of customers in hotels. And the internal service recovery, put forward first by Brown, means the recovery of some negative emotions of employees produced in the process of their service such as dissatisfaction, upset and lack of confidence. The recovery of internal service can effectively improve their satisfaction and enthusiasm with work. Theoretically, the internal service recovery is an important part in the personnel management which is usually ignored in the real management. For hotels, what they have focused on is the satisfaction of customers while they often neglect the satisfaction of employees which is significant for the service industry. Effective internal service recovery has positive influence on the external service recovery and vice versa. 

 

 

3. Methodology

 

In this paper, to better know about the service recovery in Shangri-la Hotel of Shanghai, several interviews are arranged. There are three kinds of interviews in our study. First, ten frequent customers were interviewed to know about the external service recovery in this hotel. Second, to get the information of the internal service recovery, ten random service offers in the hotel were also interviewed. At last, the personnel manager is interviewed for a better understanding of what has been done in terms of service recovery. These interviews were arranged on the phone. In the process of interviews, recorder is used to record what they have said for our convenience under the allowance of these interviewees. After these interviews, the materials of three groups are settled and analyzed respectively. Due to the limits of time, our interviewees are not enough which may lead to a little error in our conclusion.

The qualitative approach is employed in this study. The qualitative method could be constructed as a strategy that aims to measure the people’s attitudes, emotions and behaviors of their way of thinking. (Bryman & Bell, 2007) Considering our research objective is to explore the service recovery in the hotel and how the customers and service offers think of it rather than some number of collecting data, the qualitative method is supposed to be the most appropriate method for this study.#p#分页标题#e#

 

 

4. Findings and Analysis

The findings showed that it is necessary for Shangri-la Hotel to carry on the service recovery taking into the consideration of the hotel itself and its employees. According to Mr. Wang, the personnel manager, the hotel industry is becoming more and more competitive with the entry of a number of international high-class hotels. The international hotels have advantages over the domestic ones in their management, brand and marketing. Effective service recovery can help maintain customers and improve customer loyalty so that the hotel can adjust to the competitive market. Here is cited from Mr.Wang:

  

 

“Service recovery can also improve the customer satisfaction. Mistakes are inevitable in the service. According to a survey, when a customer is dissatisfied with the service failure, he or she will talk about it to 9 to 16 people. And these people will spread it to others which will do harm to our hotel. With the economic development in Shanghai, people here are more and more particular about our service. So it becomes more and more necessary to carry on service recovery to satisfy our customers.”

And Mr. Wang also said that Shangri-la did very well in service recovery. Facing with the customer complaints, instead of asking who is wrong, Shangri-la would do its best to solve the problem. So Shangri-la is famous for its Asian service which makes all its customers satisfied.

 

 

Else, most of the customers said that they won’t make complaints for service failure because in many cases they will make it right timely. Only one customer interviewee said she couldn’t bear anything wrong. And she had made complaints for three times. But she felt satisfied when she saw their improvements.

As for employees, they all felt satisfied with the internal service recovery carried on by their hotel. According to Maggie, one of the employees, “I have another friend work at another hotel. She often changed jobs for various reasons. Sometimes it is because the low pay and welfare or there is little promotion space. Maybe I’m no better than her in these aspects. But I love here because I can feel cared about here. Now more and more customers will make complaints in our service. Sometimes they are angry and even insult me. Our manager will communicate with us and care about our feelings. And he often encourages us. I feel respected here.”

 

 

On the other hand, Shangri-la Hotel of Shanghai did very well in recovering their service failure before the customer began to complain. The hotel can make the service failure into an opportunity to get profits because they will make it right timely and improve their service continuously. Many hotels misunderstand the service recovery as customer complaints handling. So they don’t recover anything until customers make complaints. However, according to Mr. Wang, Shangri-la Hotel of Shanghai has built up a complete complaint system which encourages the customers to make complaints. And they have designed a customer complaint procedure for the customer’s convenience. Else, they set the service standard for every employees according to which the customers can make judgments about the service. And the customers also said that they could see a pamphlet named as Service Guide in many places of the hotel in which they can read everything they need to know about complaints and they also can call at any time if they aren’t satisfied with the service.

 

 

However, according to the employees, many of them are not good at dealing with emergent service failure. So in many cases they can’t take immediate actions which make the customers more dissatisfied. Mr Wang confessed that they need provide more trainings of service recovery for employees like role playing. 

 

 

5. Conclusion

 

This paper is aimed to explore the service recovery in the management of Shangri-la Hotel in Shanghai. To achieve this, interviews with its customers, employees and personnel manager are arranged from which we can see what they have achieved through a complete service recovery system. Although the internal service recovery is often neglected, Shangri-la Hotel is good at improving it by training the first-line service offers and encouraging them. But there are also problems that they need do to improve the service recovery. Due to the limits of time, there are only twenty interviewees in our interview which may cause a little error for our study. 本文旨在探讨在上海香格里拉酒店的服务补救管理。为了实现这一目标，与客户面谈，员工和人事经理排列，从中我们可以看到他们在一个完整的服务补救系统的实现。虽然内部服务补救往往被忽视，香格里拉酒店有利于提高它的训练提供第一线的服务，鼓励他们。但也有，他们需要提高服务恢复的问题。由于时间的限制，我们有可能对我们造成的采访研究误差较小，仅有二十的人。

 

 

References

1. Ah-Keng Kau, Elizabeth Wan-Yiun Loh, (2006) "The effects of service recovery on consumer satisfaction: a comparison between complainants and non-complainants", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 20 Iss: 2, pp.101 – 111

2. Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Mohr, L. A. (1994). Critical service encounters: The employee’s viewpoint. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 95-106.

3. Bryman,A and Bell, E.(2007), Business Research Methods, 2nd edition, New York: Oxford University Press.

4. Cronroos, C. (1982), “An Applied Service Marketing Theory,” Journal of Marketing, Vol. 16, pp. 30-41.

5. Hart C. W., Heskett J. L. & Sasser W. E. Jr. (1990). The Profitable art of service recovery. Harvard http://www.ukassignment.org/ Business Review. Jul-Aug; 68(4): 148-56

6. Hoffman, K. D., S. W. Kelley & H. M. Rotalsky (1995)Tracking Service Failures and Employee Recovery Efforts, Journal of Service Marketing, 9(2), pp.49-61.

7. Tax S. S. & Brown S. (1998). Recovering and Learning from Service Failure. Sloan management review, Vol. 40, pp.75-88.