Analysis of Critical Incident Techniques - Case Study Example

Critical Incident Techniques Name Course Name and Code Instructor’s Name Date Executive summary Critical Incident Analysis is a set of procedures used for collecting direct observations of human behavior that have critical significance and meet methodically defined criteria. It provides an approach to structuring process of reflexivity within practice of learning contexts and to develop reflective writing. The observations collected are then kept track of incidents that are later used to solve practical problems and developing broad psychological principles. The use of Critical Incident analysis allows for construction of typical scenarios of user behavior particularly when they interact with various services. In this regard, they involve the establishment of the cause, description and the outcome of a critical incident; the users’ feelings and perceptions of the situation, actions taken during the incident ; and changes if any in their future behavior. Royal Hotel in this report is a speculative company that a customer experienced a critical incident. The report provides the description of the incident and explaining the dissatisfying experience. Similarly, the report identifies and explains customer gaps and the service provider gaps with regard to the Critical incident. At the end, the report gives several recommendations that the service provider must implement in order to meet customer expectation. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Critical Incident description 4 Critical Incident Analysis 5 Customer Gaps 5 Provider Gaps 6 Recommendations for provider 9 Bibliography 11 Critical Incident description During my academic tours across the country; I always book my hotel reservations online. In this particular circumstance, I sought for a three star hotel in the city rather than the usual five star hotels due to the financial constraints that I was experiencing. According to the Royal Hotel website, full serviced dinner, bed, and breakfast were the primary services that a customer is required to pay for in order to have complete reservation for a night. I promptly paid using my credit card one day prior to my visitation. On the next morning I called the hotel to confirm my reservation and the customer care attendant assured me that I was fully booked and I will be happy to enjoy my stay. On my arrival that evening, I was directed to my room. I unpacked my luggage and prepared for the evening. After twenty to thirty minutes in my room, I decided to have a cold drink in the bar. While seating at one of the bra tables, one of the waiters approached me and took my order. I ordered for an iced Pepsi Cola which she wrote down in her order note book. I was patient for about ten minutes waiting my order to be served. The order was not forthcoming in another fifteen minutes. Following this delay, I called another waiter and explained to him that I had placed my order more than twenty five minutes ago but I haven’t been served. However, the guy became unexpectedly rude and unwelcoming to me, insulting me of how disrespectful to their work. And above all he told me to wait longer to be served since I was not the only customer in the bar and if I was tired of waiting I was free to leave. At the time of this incident, many emotions were running through me. I felt embarrassed and out of place, I was not used to being treated that way. The evening that had envisioned to joyous was turned into a dissatisfying one; service-system failure seemed to be a prevalent and a common occurrence at Royal Hotel (Chung & Hoffman, 2008). Their services are slow or unavailable coupled with excessive delivery times. The unprompted and unsolicited employee actions caused me to curse why I booked my reservation in that particular hotel (Chung & Hoffman, 2008). The employee attitude was extremely poor and his unruly behavior was discouraging. This incident wholly affected my stay at the hotel and in fact it made me to contemplate how dinner will be served if that was the way employees treat customers. I felt like confronting the waiter by leaving the hotel and demanding back my reservation money, however, I just calmed down and waited for everything to play out. And with regard to this I decided never to visit the hotel a gain in my lifetime. The actions of the two waiters gave a clear picture of how customers of three star hotels are treated, and the kind of employee behavior you should expect when visiting these hotels (Chung & Hoffman, 2008). Service at hotels is supposed to be exceptional, where customers are treated in a cordial manner, with respect, and like valued stakeholders. Critical Incident Analysis Customer Gaps This is the difference between customer expectation and perceptions. This gap occurs when the customer’s perceptions of service does not satisfy his/her expectations. For this matter, it has been established that where there is a problem, a customer gap exists (Zeithalm, et al., 2013). Similarly, the presence of a customer gap implies that there are more problems with the service provider. From the critical incident description above, the customer’s expectations were compromised to the extreme. The customer expected to be treated with decency and respect; however, his perceived satisfaction was not met. There was a complete service-system failure; for instance, he placed the order for an iced Pepsi Cola; he waited for more than twenty five minutes without being served (Zeithalm, et al., 2013). The hotel bar services were unexpectedly slow with extended delivery times. In the same line of argument, there were unprompted and unsolicited employee actions that include rudeness and poor attitude towards the customer was significantly disturbed and compromised the perceived satisfaction of the customer (Gemkow, 2011). With regard to above described scenario, the waiters could have acted better, for instance, if the Pepsi Cola was out of stock, she had an obligation of informing the customer instead of keeping him waiting for such a long time without any communication. For the case of the second waiter, he could have acted nice and polite; explaining the real circumstance to the customer rather than yelling and being unruly to him. Provider Gaps There are four types of provider gaps which include: listening, service design and standard gap, service performance gap, and communication gap. The listening gap comes into play when the provider doesn’t know customer expectations (Zeithalm, et al., 2013). The service design and standards gap is exhibited when the provider don’t have the right service designs and standards. The service performance gap on the other hand is displayed when the provider does not deliver the right service standards. And lastly, communication gap is experienced when the provider doesn’t match service performance to the premise (Zeithalm, et al., 2013). Listening gap is the first provider gap and it explains the customer expectations and company of the customer expectations (Serenko, 2006). For instance, if the company performs an inadequate marketing research orientation will automatically mismatch customer expectations with the company perceived customer expectations. Similarly, lack of upward communication where there is no interaction between the management and the customer, insufficient communication between contact employees and management, and the presence of too many layers between contact personnel and top management (Martin & Hanington, 2012). The company will not be able to understand customer needs and meet them appropriately. Furthermore, lack of sufficient relationship focus by the top management is highly detrimental. For instance, if the company does not segment its market appropriately, focus on transactions instead of relationships, and focus on new customers rather than relationship customers it is bound to mismatch customer expectation with its perception of customer expectations. The scenario above significantly describes a listening gap; the top management seems not to understand what the customer expectations are and they are not doing something to ensure this is avoided. Service design and standards gap this gap explains the customer driven service designs and standard, and management perception of customer expectations (Parasuraman, et al, 1985). Poor service design for example unsystematic new service development processes, vague undefined service designs, and failure to connect service design to service positioning is a recipe of not meeting customer service expectations (Deckport, 2006). Consequently, the absence of customer driven standards and inappropriate physical evidence of and services cape usually make the management to misperceive customer expectations. The Royal Hotel critical incident as explained above shows a working environment where service designs and standards are not strictly taken into consideration by the management and thus employees are at liberty to do what they dim fit. The customer relationship is taken for granted (Martin & Hanington, 2012). The service performance gap is another gap that expounds on customer driven service designs and standards and how they are affected by service delivery (Parasuraman, et al, 1985). Accompany that has deficiencies in human resource policies including recruitment, role ambiguity, poor employee-technology job fit, inappropriate evaluation and compensation, and lack of perceived control and teamwork can hugely affect the company’s service delivery which on the other hand impacts on consumer-driven service designs and standards. Failure to match supply and demand, for example, overreliance on price to smooth demand extremely affects company’s service delivery (Hanhimaki, 2011). Royal Hotel from the above description, explains a company that lack human resource policies that are essential in guiding employees on how to deal with customer. Communication gap this scenario explains the actual service delivery and how the company communicates with external customers (Serenko, 2006). Factors that lead to this gap include: lack of integrated service marketing communication, ineffective management of customer expectations, overpromising, inadequate horizontal communication and inappropriate pricing (Gemkow, 2011). The scenario of Royal Hotel as described above, displays a situation where there is lack of integrated marketing communication, for instance the company does not interact with customers in real time to establish customer expectations. Similar, the employees have no knowledge of how to manage consumer expectations (Zeithalm, et al., 2013). Recommendations for provider Royal Hotel management should learn to ensure that their perceived customer expectations are in line with the customer expectations. In this regard, the company should conduct intensive market research in order with clear market knowledge explaining what customer expectations in the industry are. This will allow the company discover what the customer trends in the hotel service industry are and strive to cope up with these trends (Deckport, 2006). The company should also formulate human resource policies that will ensure successful employee recruitment, selection, orientation, training and development. Only qualified personnel with excellent interpersonal qualities should be employed. This will give the company the ability to deal with customers with different service expectation (Hanhimaki, 2011). Consequently it will position them as a reliable company that can provide services as promised, and are dependable in handling customer’s service problems. And above all, customers will receive the right services on their first visit thus they will be compelled to visit again. In addition, employees will be consistently courteous when handling customers. They will also be empowered to answer customers question in an appropriate and cordial manner, and if the questions require the attention of the top management the customer will referred as required. The company communication system between customers and the management, contact employees and the top management must be established (Stach & Serenko, 2010). This will ensure that the company is responsive to its customers; for instance, customers will always be kept informed as to when the expected service will be performed instead of being left in the dark. Similar, it will ensure that customers are given prompt and efficient services (Gatewood, et al, 2008). Further, the company will position itself as one that is to help the customers when they experience any difficulty on their visiting the hotel. In addition, the employees should show empathy when dealing with customers; for example they should give customers individual attention and have customer’s interest at heart with professionalism in their appearance will automatically increase satisfaction to the customer’s experience (Stach & Serenko, 2010). The company must also conduct an extensive marketing and promotional program to increase its presence in the hotel industry. Using the integrated marketing communication tools, the company will be able to get up-to-date consumer expectations (Gatewood, et al, 2008). For instance, through interactive or internet marketing the company will receive real time customer expectations and thus they will be able to align their services with the customer expectations. Similarly, the company will assure customers that whatever they are promised will be delivered accordingly. Employees will instill confidence in customer; making them to feel safe in their transaction. The Royal Hotel should also upgrade its facilities by purchasing and installing modern equipments that will visually appeal to the customers. For instance, their employee’s dressing code, should display neatness and professionalism. Similarly, visually appealing materials associated with the service will increase customer satisfaction. Bibliography Chung, B. and Hoffman, K. D. 2008. Critical Incidents: Service failure the matter the most. London: Cornell University. Deckpot, R. J. 2006. Human resource Management Ethics. Washington: IAP.p.77 Gatewood, D.R ‎Feild, S.H, and ‎ Barrick M. R. 2008. Human Resource Selection. London: Cengage Learning. P.303 Gemkow, W. 2011. An investigation of service quality in upscale hotels using critical Incident technique. Melbourne: GRIN Verlag Hanhimaki, E. 2011. Moral Profe3ssionalism in Interaction: educators’ Relational Moral Voices in Urban schools. Munich: Waxmann Verlag Martin, B. and Hanington, B. M. 2012. Universal methods of design: 100 ways to research complex problems, develop innovative ideas, and design effective solutions. New York: Rockport Publishing Parasuraman, A. Zethalm, V.A, and Berry, L.L. 1985. A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, vol. 49, pp. 41-50 Serenko, A. (2006). "The use of interface agents for email notification in critical incidents". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 64(11): 1084–1098 Stach, A. and Serenko, A. (2010). The impact of expectation disconfirmation on customer loyalty and recommendation behavior: Investigating online travel and tourism services. Journal of Information Technology Management, vol. XX, no. 3, pp. 26–41. Zeithalm, V. A, Bitner, M. J. and Gremler, D.D. 2013. Service Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm. Boston: McGraw Hill Read More