1st Edition
The Practical Guide to Achieving Customer Satisfaction in Events and Hotels
The Practical Guide to Achieving Customer Satisfaction in Events and Hotels is the fourth title in the Routledge Series The Practical Guide to Events and Hotel Management and presents expert-led insight of customer service best practice within events and hotels.
Typical to the other titles in the series, this latest book is written in a logical format and contains practical tips drawn from real-life industry examples, case studies, industry leaders, and the authors’ extensive backgrounds working in events and hotel management. Topics include definitions of customer service, an answer to that question ‘Is the customer always right?’, how to deal with complaints, how to empower staff to recover customer service, and how to turn new customers into loyal customers.
This book is ideal for students of the management of events, hotels, hospitality, or tourism, to be used as a practical resource alongside existing theoretical textbooks. It is also an essential tool for anybody working in the customer-facing industries.
1. What is Customer Satisfaction?
1.0 Defining Customer Satisfaction
1.1 The Dangers of Overselling and Underselling
1.2 The Customer Journey
1.3. Total Quality Management (TQM)
1.4 Service Quality Management (SERVQUAL)
1.5 Customer Balanced Scorecard
2. Why is Customer Satisfaction Important?
2.1 The Value of Reputation
2.2 The Cost of Not Achieving Customer Satisfaction
3. Know Your Customers
3.1 Knowing Your Competition
3,2 Knowing Your Target Market
3.3 Personalising Your Offer
3.4 Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
3.5 Customer Loyalty
3.6 Customer Referrals
4. Know Your Promise to the Customer
4.0 Is the Customer Always Right?
4.1 What Can you Deliver
4.2 Setting Customer Expectations
4.3 Customer Perception of Hotels
4.3.1 Hotel Brands
4.3.2 Hotel Marketing Consortia
4.3.3 Star Rating
4.3.4 Online Review Sites / OTAs / Online Booking Sites
4.3.5 Hotel Accreditation
4.4 Events
4.4.1 Setting Event Objectives
5. Contracts
5.0 Confirming the Promise with Contracts
6. Improving Customer Loyalty
6.0 Repeat Customers
6.1 At Leadership Level
6.2 At Management Level
6.3 At Operational Level
6.3.1 Underperforming Staff
6.4 The Communication Process
6.4.1 Effective Communication
6.4.2 Hotel Interdepartmental Communication
6.4.3 Hotel Interdepartmental Consistency of Performance
6.4.4 Event Interdepartmental Communication
6.4.5 Project or Production Meetings
6.4.6 Pre-event Briefings
6.4.7 Onsite Staff Briefings
6.4.8 Departmental Communication
7. Dealing with Complaints
7.0 Why Customers Complain
7.1 Legislation of Complaints
7.2 Types of Complainers
7.3 Transactional Analysis – a Psychological Technique to Deal with Difficult Customers
7.4 Handling Legitimate Complaints
7.5 The 8-step Method to Dealing with Complaints
7.6 Complaints at Events
7.7 Negotiating a Resolution
7.8 Possible Complaint Outcomes
7.9 Case Study Examples of Actual Complaints from the Event Industry
7.9.1 Case Study 1 – Uncooked Chicken Served at a Wedding
7.9.2 Case Study 2 – Steak Preferences at a Conference
8. Empowering Staff to Resolve Customer Service
8.0 The Benefits
8.1 The Benefits for Staff
8.2 The Benefits for Management
8.3 The Benefits for Customers
8.4 The Benefits for the Business
8.5 Servant Leadership to Increase Employee and Customer Satisfaction
8.5.1 Servant Leadership - Employee Satisfaction
8.5.2 Servant Leadership - Customer Satisfaction
8.5.3 The Service-Profit Chain (SPC)
9. The Importance of Reflection
9.0 The Benefit of Reflection
9.1 Reflecting in the Customer Perspective
9.2 Well, would you complain?
Biography
Philip Berners leads the BA Honours Events Management programmes at the Edge Hotel School, University of Essex, UK. Philip has organised every genre of event in the UK, Italy, Portugal, and Poland; he has been the head of events at Thorpe Park, the London Hippodrome, and Camden Palace; and he has been the inhouse event manager for corporations including the Daily Mail Group. Philip’s doctorate is in how an events industry takes shape – a study of the UK and Poland. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a founding Trustee of the Colchester Museums Development Foundation.
Adrian Martin graduated with a Degree and Masters in Hotel and Catering Management from Manchester University before working for Thistle Hotels in London, Bath, Bristol, and Bedford. He has won two national teaching awards and is currently Vice Principal of the Edge Hotel School at the University of Essex, which he has led to achieve 100% student satisfaction in the National Student Survey. Adrian is researching customer behaviour in restaurants for his PhD.
