Travel and Tourism (9395) | Ways of assessing customer service quality

✈️ Chapter 4.3: Ways of Assessing Customer Service Quality 📊

Hello future Travel and Tourism expert! This chapter is crucial because delivering great customer service isn't just about smiling—it's about measuring and proving that your smiles (and services) are actually making customers happy. If you don't measure it, how do you know if you are succeeding?

Assessing service quality allows organisations to identify weaknesses, motivate staff, and ultimately achieve the benefits of quality service like repeat business and an enhanced reputation. Let’s dive into the four main methods the industry uses!

1. Setting Standards (Including Benchmarking)

Before you can assess quality, you must first define what "quality" means for your specific service. This is done by setting standards.

What is Standard Setting?

This involves establishing clear, measurable targets for employee performance and service delivery. These standards must be specific so staff know exactly what is expected of them, and management knows exactly how to measure success.

• Example Standard (Hotel Check-in): “All guests must be greeted with eye contact and a smile within 10 seconds of approaching the front desk.”
• Example Standard (Airline): “95% of all calls to the booking hotline must be answered within 60 seconds.”

Understanding Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing an organisation's performance (or specific processes) against the best practices used by competitors or other leading businesses.

Analogy: If you are studying for an exam, you might benchmark yourself against the highest scorer in the class to see what study methods they use that you could adopt.

Organisations use two main types of benchmarking:

• Internal Benchmarking: Comparing performance between different departments or branches within the same company. (E.g., comparing the complaint resolution time of the London call centre versus the New York call centre.)
• External Benchmarking: Comparing performance against direct competitors or industry leaders outside the organisation. This helps identify best practice and drives innovation. (E.g., a small regional airline might benchmark its baggage handling speed against a major international carrier like Emirates.)

Key Takeaway: Standards define 'good'; benchmarking shows you 'how good the best is' and helps you aim higher.

2. Performance Management and Appraisal

This assessment method focuses on the Internal Customers (staff) to ensure they are consistently meeting the service standards set by the organisation.

Performance Management (Ongoing)

This is a continuous process that involves planning, monitoring, reviewing, and rewarding employee performance. It ensures that staff behaviours align with the overall customer service goals.

• Monitoring: Supervisors observe staff (e.g., listening to call recordings, watching interactions).
• Coaching/Training: Providing targeted training to fix specific issues identified during monitoring.

Appraisal (Formal Review)

Appraisal is a formal meeting, usually held annually, between an employee and their manager to review their job performance over a set period.

During an appraisal, customer service quality assessment data is used:

• If a standard was set (e.g., “maintain a customer satisfaction rating above 4.5/5”), the appraisal will check if this target was met.
• It helps determine training needs, promotions, or salary increases.

Did you know? Good performance management directly contributes to the internal customer's needs for increased job satisfaction and professional development (syllabus point 4.2b(ii)). Happy, well-trained staff deliver better external customer service!

Common Mistake to Avoid: Confusing Performance Management (the daily/weekly coaching process) with Appraisal (the formal, usually annual, review).

3. Customer Feedback

The most direct and essential way to assess quality is by asking the External Customer what they thought! This feedback comes in many forms, ranging from direct conversations to public internet comments.

Types of Customer Feedback:

Face-to-Face Interactions

This is immediate feedback gathered during the service delivery.

• Comments and Suggestions Boxes: Physically placed near reception or departure lounges. Provides immediate (though not always detailed) input.
• Post-Service Interaction: A flight attendant asking, "Was everything to your satisfaction today?"
• Problem and Complaint Resolution: Logging every issue raised. Tracking how quickly and effectively complaints are resolved is a key measure of service quality.

Online and Social Media Comments and Ratings

The digital world provides instant, transparent, and often brutally honest feedback.

• Review Sites (e.g., TripAdvisor, Google Reviews): Customers rate the service (e.g., 1 to 5 stars) and write detailed comments. T&T companies must actively monitor these.
• Social Media (e.g., X/Twitter, Facebook): Customers may publicly praise or complain about an organisation. This feedback is highly visible and can quickly impact reputation (enhanced or damaged).
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): A simple rating system asking: "How likely are you to recommend this company/product/service to a friend or colleague?" Scores are used to classify customers as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors.

Key Takeaway: Feedback is fast and essential, but organisations must manage both positive and negative input efficiently, especially online.

4. Market Research Techniques

While customer feedback often happens naturally (like a complaint or an online review), market research is a planned, structured approach used to specifically investigate service quality.

Surveys and Questionnaires

These are perhaps the most common formal assessment tools.

• Method: Customers are given a structured set of questions (often multiple-choice or scale ratings).
• Data Type: Primarily quantitative data (numbers, statistics) which is easy to analyse and compare over time.
• Examples: A post-holiday email survey asking customers to rate airport experience, hotel comfort, and tour guide knowledge on a scale of 1 to 5.

Mystery Shoppers

A powerful and specific technique in the service industry!

• Method: An individual is hired to pose as a typical customer. They secretly use the service (e.g., stay at a hotel, book a flight, or call a travel agent) and assess the quality based on pre-determined standards and criteria.
• Benefit: Provides an objective assessment of whether staff are following procedures and standards in real time. It tests the actual service delivery, not just the customer's subjective perception.
• Relevance to T&T: Hotels use mystery diners; airlines use mystery passengers to check crew professionalism, cleanliness, and efficiency.

Focus Groups

For deeper, qualitative understanding of customer feelings.

• Method: A small, diverse group of customers (e.g., 6–10 people) is brought together for a moderated discussion about their experiences.
• Data Type: Qualitative data (feelings, motivations, opinions). This provides the "why" behind survey ratings.
• Benefit: Excellent for testing new products or identifying unexpected problems or benefits in the service experience.

Observed Interactions

Similar to mystery shopping, but often carried out openly or covertly by managers or dedicated quality control staff.

• Method: Directly watching the interaction between staff and customers (e.g., a manager observing a travel agent's sales pitch or how front desk staff handle a difficult situation).
• Purpose: Used primarily for immediate staff coaching, ensuring compliance with health and safety procedures, and reinforcing standards.

By using these different methods, a travel and tourism organisation gets a complete, 360-degree view of its service quality, allowing it to continuously improve and stay competitive!